Mid-winter schooling

Perk of homeschooling #132: After having completed a full school day, Fina spent 2 hours painting.

She took her inspiration from Constable's "Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds" (1823) with the arch-like trees!!!

She painted a detail of the nest

And that was before going out to play with her friends in the snow. We are so fortunate.

She worked on sewing using an old costume of hers. Here is some of her stitching!

Neat and even, wouldn't you say?

We read this cute book, Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst. It is about a dad who loves rocks and, after many trials in life, ends up as a curator in a museum.

We finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins. It was very funny and cute. And we finished The Calico Captive and we loved it.  Now we are reading The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare for our historical fiction and George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin as our free read. Both are really exciting and great fun!

Fina worked a bit on her chalk pastel drawings

We did a great nature study through the window. We journaled about the snow that was falling and resting upon the crab apple tree and upon the apples. Fina dictated the following to me about what she was seeing:

There is snow on the tree. It doesn't look sticky, but I can't tell from in here. There are three cut-off branches plus three more and four more. The crabapples are all shrivelled up. There is a branch where you could sit. Some of the bark is shredding off. The bark is in little layers, not as waxy like a birch tree, but paper-y a bit, but harder and thicker, much thicker. There is snow falling and it is sitting on little pockets on the bark on the tree trunk. There is a thin layer of snow on top of the crabapples themselves, with a bit more in the middle of the top in the hole where the stem is.

Funnily, all morning there were birds at our feeder, but right now there aren't any in the crabapple tree at all.

The snow is falling sort of like little tiny flakes. Not "spitting" in snow. A bit faster than spitting in rain. The snow is coming a bit diagonally from the east. It is swirling a little bit. It must not be very windy. The flakes are not giant.

Over past the house, there is an evergreen tree - maybe a spruce. There doesn't seem to be snow on it, from here. But it is so far away and high up, it is hard to see.

There is a bush with dried leaves. There might be a titch of snow on them, but not enough. [Fina gets her binoculars] No, there is no snow on the leaves with the binoculars.

The sun is visible through the clouds, like a bit of each. The rest of the sky is all white, as white as the snow, because the snow isn't white. It's white-ish with a teeny bit of gray. There is no blue anywhere in the sky. 

Afternoon occupations! Fina was able to spend another few hours doing some brush drawing while listening to The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang on Librivox.

On Saturday, we spent about half an hour watching a Pileated Woodpecker on our crab apple tree through the window. We had never seen one, certainly not so close up. He was pecking and pecking at the rotten crab apples, with the same brute force he uses for a trunk of a tree. The colour of his crest was incredible!

This photo does not do him justice!

And we went for a nice walk with Fina's homeschooling dad in the forest and on the creek. Freezing cold, but the sun did peak out! It was -23 celsius (feels like -33 with the wind) but we lasted for almost two hours!

**********

The moment in math when your daughter realizes that she can count by 2s forever! She's at 300 now. Oh, what a grin on her face as she puzzles it out!!!

The way we are doing recitation this year, we cover less ground and Fina is less likely to memorize the poems, but she is enjoying the longer read narrations. As for poetry, she is really enjoying the poems we are reading. Again, I think she would enjoy memorizing some of them. I think a hybrid of the system we used to use with the system we are currently using might benefit Fina. Only because she enjoys memorizing poetry and reciting it from memory.

We didn't have a geography mapping lesson this week, but on Tuesday, Fina just decided she wanted to make a map of the meadow in our forest.

If you know our meadow at all, you will see that it is actually correct! She correctly depicted the hold the kids play in, the various wooded areas, the creek (in orange highlighter) etc. I was beyond impressed!

Our piano lessons are going very well.

Though we have some trouble connecting with (and narrating from) Minn of the Mississippi, today we read about the voyageurs and coureurs-de-bois and the canoe that Minn found at the bottom of Lake Pepin. That sort of thing, we get!

And I just have to recount this episode from this morning's lessons.  I'm taking painting lessons from my daughter! Haha! We were painting a spruce cone she brought home from outdoor playgroup this week and this is what she says to me:

"Your is not very realistic. You may want to look at mine, for the next time you want to paint a pine cone, for some inspiration. Yours is very pretty, but it really isn't very realistic, I'm sorry to say." And "Yours is too fuzzy. It looks like a piece of moss. It would be nice if it were a piece of moss. But not a cone."

Then, she proceeded to give me pointers on how to use certain techniques to make it look more realistic. I just had to laugh. Her conversation was in no way malicious, but completely in earnest. To be honest, hers does look more realistic. And I'm not surprised!

Fina's drawing

And mine!

I'm a good sport, I'd say. But she is the more talented painter!

Then, she continued on her theme from last week and painted this.

We're not doing the best with handicrafts during morning lessons (I've taken them out completely from the schedule), but because I am so fortunate, Fina finds time on her own to tackle some projects - during our evening family read-aloud time, or while I'm making lunch etc.

She made this little purse. She sewed on the button, then sewed the felt together at the sides, and I cut the button hole for her. Then she decided to crochet a long chain and she sewed it on the inside of the purse. And ta da!

Cute, right?
Fina got to skate for a little while. There was more snow than I was anticipating, and I cleared a little bit of it with my tiny shovel, but she was skating just fine in 3cm of snow! It is pretty cold but it is better than it has been lately.

starting term 1

Dear blog followers:

I'm going to change up my blogging style a bit. I'm not going to post every day (with a detailed schedule). Rather, I'm going to just give you the highlights every few days.

We are enjoying our literature tales' selection for this term, Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Wanderings of Odysseus. Fina loved The Odyssey by Gillian Cross that we borrowed from a friend and read through twice over the last year, so Sutcliffe's (well, Homer's) story is a bit familiar to her.

With our Bible lessons, we have an atlas of the Bible that we are using and Fina is engaging well with the maps. We now know where the Jordan River is (John the Baptist) and where Egypt is (Exodus)!

And Fina really enjoyed her chalk pastel drawing. I'm not sure we're doing it "right." We'll have to work on not letting it smudge while drawing. Once she was done, I sprayed it with a clear fixatif which has coated it nicely. The smudging was all from before the spray.

We had a second great nature study on Wednesday. We are taking the "paint less, write more" approach. I don't know why I never "got" this before! We intently looked at a spruce tree on our Museum grounds and Fina dictated much to me. And she sketched this cone from the ground beneath the tree.

Here she is, sketching at the Museum.

On Thursday, we started Minn of the Mississippi and Fina loved the first chapter. She gave great narrations throughout and enjoyed the story so much. It is written in quite a different style than Paddle to the Sea (which she liked, but did not love.)

We started our sewing lessons. Fina knows how to sew, but I never had her wrap her own bobbin, cut her own thread, thread her own needle or tie her own knot. So we did all of those things.

On Friday, Fina was asking for chalk pastels, but we were doing bry-drush today. A wonderful part of a CM education is that you feel ok saying "we're sticking to the lessons. You will enjoy it more by waiting until next time." And because you've said it often, (like pertaining to reading another chapter in a book) the kid doesn't argue! She did get to do her same daisy drawing lesson in dry-brush and she liked that a lot!

Here's the "side by side" comparison. Aren't they pretty?

And she wanted to have me read aloud a free-read while she did her painting. I was going to chose something from this year's list (we have lots of fun things to chose from) but she wanted to continue with Lang's Olive Fairy Book which we haven't finished. We have a few of Lang's colour books left to read and I suspect she will be asking for those for a while yet. The other books will just have to wait (or be staggered in amongst the Lang's!)

We started reading Howard Pyle's The Wonder Clock and the story captured our attention for sure. Fina gave good narrations throughout.

We started our other nature lore book, Arabella Buckley's Trees and Shrubs. We read about the Oak Tree (and the Oak apple, how slugs lay their eggs inside a rolled up leaf, and galls, and all sorts of interesting things we did not know anything about!)

When we went out for our nature study, low and behold what do we find in a folded up leaf on a raspberry cane? A teeny, tiny caterpillar! She was thrilled. When Fina's homeschooling dad came home, she re-iterated, many times, that what we had just read about in our book we then saw in real life. She was thrilled. So was I! We did our non-dry-brush nature journalling today. Fina sketched a ladybug, a weed leaf with what-we-think-are-posssibly-galls and gave an oral narration of what she saw with the caterpillar (which I wrote down for her in her nature journal)!

And here is Fina jumping off of the swing at our park, on our way home from our nature walk. Yup, swinging in her comfy lounging (aka pj) pants and rubber boots. That is how we roll around here!

Thanks for joining us this week!

Year 1, week 33, day 2, March 31

For those of you who are wondering, here is a photo of what our current Spanish vocab book looks like (the Berlitz First 1000 words in Spanish one).

Fina listened to some of The Red Fairy Book on Librivox over breakfast.
Then she practiced her piano pieces.

I read Genesis 4:1-16, Cain and Abel. Fina says "see! Even Cain had original sin." It was quite the moment.

We started on subtraction today. Fina did 18A.

We reviewed her recitations.

I read "The Hare and the Tortoise" and "The Fox and the Crow" from Aesop's Fables.

We read pages 15-18 of Peppa se va a dormir. Fina's Spanish comprehension is above and beyond what I imagined. This kid is really something. (It makes me feel a lot better about my guilt for her lack of fluency in any other language other than English. I guess it DID all stick with her. Spanish, Italian, even French.)
We reviewed all our nursery rhymes and even looked at two new vocab pages, "En la sala," about the living room. There were all kinds of things Fina knows nothing about. VCRs, walkmen, CD players. Words that are useless to her!

I read poem #165, "The Owl and the Pussycat" by Edward Lear from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. We listened to Stravinsky's rendition of this poem, which I remembered from undergrad. Very cool!

We sang our hymn and started our new folk song, "The Red River Valley." Seeing as we live in it, I thought it would be a good choice.

Fina worked on some cursive.

She likes the top blue one the best.

Fina finished reading Squirrel Nutkin. And she started Benjamin Bunny.

She spent the rest of the day playing outside with her friends. It's nice to have the public school kids home and outside!

Year 1, week 32, day 2, March 24

I read from Sarah, Plain and Tall and Stuart Little over breakfast.
Fina practiced her piano pieces.
I read Genesis 3:1-7 and Fina gave a great narration!
We worked on 17X of her math.
We reviewed Fina's current recitations.
I read "The Two Travelers and Bear" and "The Dog and his Reflection" from Aesop's Fables for narration.
We spent some time with our Spanish work. We sang "De Colores," did pages 5-6 from Peppa se va a dormir and reviewed page 6 of the vocab book (kitchen).
Fina worked on her cursive. Fina needs to work on connecting different letters together. We are just writing random words and hoping to hit connections we need to work on. Today, we happened upon "ot" which is good to work on!

We finished reading Paddle-to-the-Sea! So exciting. We reviewed Paddle's journey on the globe and on a map.  We will watch the NFB film soon! She is going to love it. (I don't think I ever saw it.)

We read poem #155, "The Months," from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

Fina read aloud from Squirrel Nutkin. It is a fair bit above her reading level, but she is wanting to read it. We will get back to Frog and Toad which will be a bit easier!

We sang our hymn and folksong. Fina actually knows all 4 verse of our hymn!

She wants to carve her own Paddle-to-the-Sea. I found a template online and she transferred it to a wood block she has.

Then she spent a while painting. I asked her to do a nature study first, so she painted our little succulent.

And then she painted for another half an hour.

We went outside in the afternoon.

Year 1, week 32, day 1, March 23

By the way, my last post was post #200!!!  Thanks for reading!

Yesterday, we had a nice visit with a friend and her 4 year old daughter. Fina was an excellent hostess (she isn't always!) and the girls had a great time together. Before supper, Fina took her homeschooling dad on a walk through town.

This morning, we started with some piano practice.

I read Matthew 4:1-11, Jesus being tempted by the devil. Fina gave one of her best narrations ever!

She worked on 17E2, and 17F of her math book.

We worked on her recitations. She has almost memorized the Parable of the Lost Coin, just by reading it through once a day.

I read "Harald's Battle" from Viking Tales and Fina narrated it.

We read pages 3 and 4 of Peppa se va a dormir and Fina narrated it in English. We also looked at page 6 of our vocabulary book, kitchen words.

She worked on some cursive. She is continuing her list of "things that people think they can't eat outside." A nectary is the little sac of nectar at the back of a flower.

We read "The Mouse and the Shrew" from Eyes and No Eyes.

I read our next poem, "Mary's Lamb" from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. It is the original "Mary had a little lamb."

We did chapter 17 from our catechism book.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina read aloud a few pages from Squirrel Nutkin.

Fina spent 30 minutes working on her handicrafts, while I started reading from our next two free-reads, Stuart Little by E. B. White and Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patrician MacLachlan.

We listened to our Palestrina selection for this week.

Then she spent a long while working on her painting, while listening to the Librivox recording of The Red Fairy book.

Steps to build a raft.

And she started a new Japanese braiding project. And did some wood carving.

She went out to play in the afternoon.

Year 1, week 31, day 3, March 20

Fina started by practicing her piano pieces.

We read Matthew 3:13-17 and Fina narrated.
We did some math work. 17D2 and 17E1.
We reviewed her recitations.
We continued with the D'Aulaire's Benjamin Franklin. We read from page 18 to 28, narrating throughout.

We reviewed our Spanish nursery rhymes and we read through Bedtime for Peppa in Spanish. Fina was able to understand much of it, just by the pictures and of her knowledge of Italian. Next, we will read a few pages at a time, with Fina repeating in Spanish and narrating in English.

She worked on her cursive for just a few minutes.

We read "Nuts and Nut-Eaters" from Eyes and No Eyes. We learned about catkins and weevils.

I read poem #150, "The Migration of the Grey Squirrels" by William Howitt in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. It was cute. The squirrels use their tails as sails on the rafts. "Just like Squirrel Nutkin!" Fina shouted!

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina then read aloud from the English version of Bedtime for Peppa.  She read the whole book.

She worked on her crochet while I read from The Olive Fairy Book.

We looked at our next Hans Holbein painting, "The Last Supper."

Fina had a lot to say about it. We think that Judas is on the left. He's wearing sandals because her was in charge of the purse!

Then Fina spent 40 minutes painting this, a plan for a bedroom for her pony. This is the pony's bed.

She played outside all afternoon. It was plus 5 celsius and so sunny!

Yup, she is sitting in a freezing puddle!

And she did some loom knitting before bed. She is working on a "surprise" scarf, for my birthday. She keeps saying funny things like "mom, if you could choose your favourite wool, would it be thick and multi-coloured?" and "do you think a scarf would be your favourite gift, hypothetically?"

I had my first meeting as board secretary last night. It was great! A little long, but great!

Year 1, week 31, day 2, March 17

Fina started the day by practicing her piano pieces.

I read Genesis 2:10-21 and Fina narrated it.

She did 17C and 17Dp1 of her math.

We reviewed her recitations.

We finished reading "40 Thieves" from The Blue Fairy Book and Fina narrated it throughout.

We reviewed our Spanish nursery rhymes and the family vocab words.

Fina worked on her cursive for 5 minutes.

We read chapter 26 of Paddle-to-the-Sea. He is on a ship crossing the Atlantic, going to France! It is so exciting!

I read poem #149, "The Wind in a Frolic" from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

Fina read aloud from Squirrel Nutkin.

We sang our folksong and hymn.

Fina spent some time drawing, while listening to The Red Fairy Book from Librivox.

And then she spent a good portion of the afternoon woodcarving and drawing! And she worked on her loom knitting after supper.

Year 1, week 31, day 1, March 16

We started our day with some piano practice. No new piece, just a review.

I read from Matthew 3:7-12 and Fina narrated.

She spent some time with 17B of her math. I think we will need to do some extra review of her math facts before we move on to subtraction in lesson 18.

We reviewed Fina's recitations. We read through the Parable of the Lost Coin again.

I read "Harald is King" from Viking Tales and Fina gave excellent narrations throughout.

We reviewed all our Spanish things. We continued on the second page (page 5) of the "la familia/family" pages in our vocab book.

We read "The Robber in the Old Orchard" in the Burgess Bird Book. Mr. Blacksnake tried to eat Skimmer's eggs! Fina gave a great narration here too.

I read poem #148 "The Seagull" from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

We did chapter 16 of our catechism book.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

We listened to our next piece by Palestrina, "Sanctus and Benedictus - Missa Brevis." As a musicologist, I know that it is difficult to describe or narrate the music itself. Fina is now favouring this description "this sounds less Vatican-ish than the first piece." Ha!

We worked on our difference Japanese braiding handicraft. Our good friend who owns a local craft shop found these cardboard wheels for making friendship bracelets.

We watched some YouTube videos, here and here read some instructions and are now making a fancy bracelet.

Fina read a few pages aloud from Squirrel Nutkin.
Fina then spent a long while painting while listening to The Red Fairy Book from Librivox.

And she went out to play in the rain! Rain, in Manitoba, In March! Incredible!

Year 1, week 30, day 4, March 15

We had a piano lesson this morning. Fina learned a new piece, in the Bastien p 4 and 5.

I read Genesis 2:4b-9 and Fina narrated it.

She worked on her recitation. We started the Parable of the Lost Coin.

I read up to p 247 of "The Forty Thieves" from The Blue Fairy Book.  Fina gave excellent narrations throughout! (She has always loved these Lang Fairy Books.

We reviewed our Spanish nursery rhymes. We also started our vocabulary book, learning "la familia / family" words.

She worked on her cursive. She got frustrated and had a little fit and scratched out her mistake. I had to confiscate her Lamy fountain pen for the rest of the day. Really!

We read our next poem, "Buttercups and Daisies" in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina finished reading Peter Rabbit aloud and started the next book in the series, Squirrel Nutkin.

She spent some time painting.

The start of yet another boat in the creek painting!

Then she spent some time working on her handicraft. She did some crochet work and some loom knitting as well.

She went out to play outside in the afternoon and with her little friend after school. It was +1 degree celsius!

Year 1, week 30, day 2, March 13

Our clocks changed this weekend and that is never fun! Spring forward means we started our school a bit late this morning, as Fina slept in!

We started with Genesis 2:1-4 and Fina narrated.
I read "The Goatherd and the Goat" and "The Wolf and the Housedog" from Aesop's Fables. Fina narrated both. As I gave the title of the second one, she narrated an old one we had read (who knows when) with wonderful specificity. It was also about a wolf and a dog. I told her this was a different one.

We worked on her recitation. We went through over half of the previous Shakespeare passages. She says she can't remember some of them and that they are hard, but she was able to recite all of them!

We did some math work. 16X and the test for 16.

We reviewed our Spanish nursery rhymes and our song, "De Colores." Fina is doing really well with her Spanish!

She worked on some cursive.

We read chapter 25 from Paddle to the Sea. Paddle gets out to the Gulf of St Lawrence!

We read poems #133 and 138 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

Fina read "The Dream" from Frog and Toad aloud.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina spent some time working on her crochet.

Then she painted while listening to The Red Fairy Book on Librivox.

This is her canoe on shore.

Because I had a conference call in the afternoon, Fina ended up staying inside and doing hours and hours of woodcarving. And after supper she did some crochet work as well! A great handicraft day!

We haven't been doing a tonne of free reads daily, but Fina's homeschooling dad is still reading aloud to us after dinner: the Bible readings for the day, a portion of the Bible from Biblioteca (we just started Numbers tonight), from a secondary source on Leviticus, and from our next primary source of St Thérèse. He usually reads for 30 minutes or more.

Year 1, week 30, day 1, March 9

Fina listened to a Librivox recording of a chapter from The Red Fairy Book over breakfast.

We did a few minutes of piano practice.

I read Matthew 2:19-23 and Fina narrated.

We did catechism lesson 14.

Fina finished 16E and 16F of her math. Next we will do the test for making 10 and making 9 and then we will move on to lesson 17.

We worked on her recitations. We had just started Twelfth Night V, i, 226 "One face, one voice" this week and she has it almost completely memorized. She is trying hard to "recite" her passages. It is going remarkably well!

I read "Foe's Fear" from Viking Tales. Fina gave great narrations throughout.

We reviewed all our Spanish nursery rhymes and we sang "De Colores" together. She knows the first verse. I sang through all 4 verses for her. She is enjoying it.  I want to start bringing in some vocabulary stuff. I need to get a book first.

She worked on some cursive. I want to have her write "This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard" which is one of her lines from our co-op passage from A Midsummer Night's Dream. She did part of it today.

I read "A Family of Squirrels" from Eyes and No Eyes. Fina gave great narration throughout.

We read two new poems from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, #131 "The First Tooth" and #132 "Cleanliness."

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina read a few pages from Peter Rabbit. She is improving by leaps and bounds!

We listened to Palestrina's "Kyrie" from the Pope Marcellus Mass again. And we talked about the piece a bit more.

Fina spent 20 minutes working on some handicrafts. I asked her to do a few stitches of her crochet, so she did. She also worked on her Japanese braiding. She also wanted to do some woodcarving, so she spent a while doing that.

We listened to some Italian kids' songs by Zecchino D'Oro.

It was very cold today, but Fina got in some outside play time just in our yard.

It was a great day!

Year 1, week 29, day 4, March 8

Yesterday, we had a day full of riches only! Fina's homeschooling dad was home from work, they are on their reading break. We did a piano lesson. Fina learned p 10 out of the Alfred book.

She spent a long time in the morning working on some handicrafts.

This was a pre-existing doll's sleeping bag. 

Fina wanted to machine sew over the three sides with a fancy stitch!

And she is sewing a Moana costume for herself. The red and brown triangles were an existing patch. But she machine sewed all the other little patches to it.

I really must keep the machine out. She would easily sew a few times a week if it wasn't that I had to drag the machine down from the closet upstairs.

She also did some hand sewing on a doll's dress.  She also did some wood carving.

We read a few stories from The Olive Fairy Book as our free read while she worked.

She also did some dry brush painting to send a little note to our Ontario friends.

In the afternoon, we had our playgroup. We had 70km winds and it was a blizzard (but with very little snow). One other family joined us and the kids had a lovely time. We really are polar bear mamas!

Our creek was slushy, kind of frozen in spots, but not in others.

On a peninsula and tiny island in our creek. Yes, that is Fina sitting in 30cm of slush! 

Her boots and pants were soaked!

I have been busy getting my feet wet in my new position as secretary of the board. I don't think it is quite public yet, so I won't say which board it is. But I'm being blessed beyond belief there already!


TODAY

Fina practiced some piano and we learned a new piece, Alfred page 11. We are having short lessons every few days, with practice sessions in between. And by short, I mean less than 10 minutes.

I read from Genesis 1:26-31, day 6 of the creation story. Fina narrated throughout.

She completed 16 C, D and page 1 of E in her math book.

We reviewed Fina's recitations. She ran through all the passages she learned from A.A. Milne's When We Were Very Young.

We read two Aesop's Fables. "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothes" and "The Milkmaid and Her Pail." Fina narrated both.

We continued with our next passage from Pio Peep. "De Colores" which I sang for her and she tried singing along. It is a catchy tune. I can not believe what a good attitude she has towards this whole Spanish thing. I'm so glad that I finally decided to start it in earnest!

She worked on her cursive for a few minutes.

We read chapter 24 from Paddle to the Sea, where we see that Paddle spends the winter with a kind old lady outside of Montréal, along the St Lawrence River. Fina wanted to check some things out on Google Earth, so we did that. We looked at Winnipeg and St Pierre and Toronto, Niagara Falls, the Great Lakes and more.

We read our next poem, #130 "The Boy and the Snake" by Charles and Mary Lamb, from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina read aloud from Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit.

She spent about an hour painting, while I read some of our Olive Fairy Book free reads aloud to her.

A diamond shaped canoe in our creek. Aren't the summery banks just lovely?

There was a snow day here with the local schools, so Fina spent the afternoon outside playing with her little friend K.