Year 1, week 34, day 2, April 10

Fina started her morning with some yoga. (She needs the movement. She did not go out to play at all yesterday and, obviously, she feels it!)

I read Genesis 5, Adam's descendants to Noah.
Fina did 18C and D of her math, continuing to work on subtraction.
We reviewed her recitations.
I read "The Lion's Share" and "The North Wind and the Sun" from Aesop's Fables for narration.
We reviewed our nursery rhymes in Pio Peep and then I read through Oso Pardo (Brown Bear).  Fina repeated some of the words after me. We will go through it, one page at a time over the next few weeks.

Fina worked on her cursive. The slate seems to be working well.

We read our next poem, #189 "Robin Redbreast."
Fina read Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? aloud to me.

We sang our hymn and folksong.
And Fina worked on her dry brush painting.

Her butterfly net, with some very detailed tiny butterflies. The blue blob is a piece of the sky.

While she painted, we listened to a few chapters of The King of the Golden City on Librivox.

She went out to play and chase butterflies after lunch for a bit.

We've got a busy week at church this week, it being Holy Week and all! But we are looking forward to the wonderful celebrations!

Year 1, week 34, day 1, April 6

We had a great Manitoba Charlotte Mason Enrichment evening last night. We were 11 moms. We did a discussion on narration and then we spent some time doing a dry-brush of a pussywillow branch. It was really wonderful!

We're continuing to read The Wizard of Oz as our free read. Fina is enjoying it. So far, I find that the movie is surprisingly faithful to the book, which is neat. (Fina has not seen the movie.)

I read Matthew 5:13-16. Fina worked on her recitations. We finished reading Benajmin Franklin by the D'Aulaires and Fina narrated throughout.

We finished Peppa se va a dormir in Spanish.
We read "A Fisherman Robbed" in The Burgess Bird Book. We read about the Osprey and the Bald Eagle.  We watched this very cool video of an Osprey swooping down on fish.

I read poem #179, "The Mouse and the Cake" by Eliza Cook in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

We did chapter 19 of catechism and read the section about Holy Week as well.

We sang our hymn and folksong.
Fina read aloud from Benjamin Bunny.
We re-read Me on the Map.

And we spent many hours outside at the 6th birthday party of our little friend J. It was a great day!

We've skipped a few days of piano practice. We have had a few late nights and Fina has been sleeping in and I've been wanting to finish by lunch. We will get things back on track!

Year 1, week 33, day 3, April 3

I read some Skylark while Fina ate her breakfast. Then she practiced her piano.

I read Matthew 5:1-12, the Beatitudes.
Fina worked on some cursive. I bought this 11x15" magnetic chalk board for $4 at Dollarama. It has two (useless for our purpose) easel legs and can be wall mounted.

This is for you, Elena.

So she did her cursive on her chalk board. It seemed to go better.

She did 18B of her math, subtraction.

We worked on her recitation. We tried reciting our most recent hymn, spoken not sung (as per Charlotte Mason's suggestions). It was an interesting experience.
We also started working on reciting "The Owl and the Pussy-cat" by Edward Lear.

I read "The Sea Fight" from Viking Tales.

We worked on our Spanish. We reviewed everything in Pio Peep, we reviewed all our vocab pages and we reviewed all of Peppa se va a dormir plus our new pages, 19-20.

We finished "A Maker of Thunder and a Friend in Black" from The Burgess Bird Book.  We looked up the grackle. Such beautiful colours.

I read "Mr and Mrs Spikky Sparrow" by Edward Lear, another nonsense poem in The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. It was funny.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina read a few pages from Benjamin Bunny aloud.

We looked at our next painting by Hans Holbein, "The Oberried Altarpiece."

We looked at the two middle portions. On our print, they were the other way around, however. And Fina wondered why the Three Wise Men came to the left of the Nativity portion. It was a great picture study!

The weather is BEAUTIFUL here, so we spent the afternoon outside!

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 4, March 29

We had our outdoor playgroup yesterday. The kids had so much fun. We had a pretty large group. Fina went through three changes of clothes. Good thing for friends who are willing to loan!  There was SO MUCH WATER! 

We were out from 11 til 4:30 and then she came home and continued to play outside with a neighbourhood friend (the public school kids are on spring break) until 8:25. This weather is just wonderful!

This morning, I read two chapters of Stuart Little over breakfast. Fina then practiced a bit of piano.

I read Genesis 3:8-24, stopping three times for narration. This was one of her best narrations ever. Something is really clicking. I'm glad her Bible narrations are so good! We had a big discussion about the passage.

She worked on the test for unit 2 in her math work.

"These are the neatest numbers I've ever written in my whole life!"

We reviewed her recitations.

I read "The Cat that walked by Himself" from Kipling's Just So Stories to Fina for narration. She was taken by it!

We worked on our Spanish, reviewing page 7 of our vocab book, learning our next nursery rhyme "El patio de mi casa" and reading pages 11 and 12 of Peppa se va a dormir.

She worked on some cursive. We tried working on the whiteboard (she is still having some perfectionist frustration. I think we need to get a slate that she could use at the table instead. Writing vertically is quite different. Good, but different!)

I read poem #163, "Little Things," from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse and we reviewed our last few poemas.

Fina read aloud from Squirrel Nutkin.
We sang our hymn and folksong. We will start our next hymn and folksong tomorrow.

Fina spent some time painting, while listening to The Red Fairy Book on Librivox.

Then she spent all afternoon and evening playing outside. We went back to the forest at the creek and the water had risen at least another two inches. I was unable (unwilling) to cross and fill my boots with water!

Year 1, week 32, day 3, March 27

I read some Stuart Little over breakfast.
Fina practiced her piano.

I read Matthew 4:12-17 for narration.
Fina did the math test for lesson 17. We will do the unit test next time and then we move on to subtraction!

Fina reviewed her recitations.

We continued with our Benjamin Franklin. We read from p 30-42 and Fina narrated throughout.

We reviewed our Spanish nursery rhymes, we moved on to the second page of the "kitchen" vocab words (page 7) and we continued with pages 9+10 of Peppa se va a dormir.

Fina worked on her cursive for a few minutes.

We read chapters 17 "More Robbers" and 18 "Some homes in the green forest" from The Burgess Bird Book.  We looked up the Blue Jay, the Crow, the Ovenbird and the Redtail Hawk and saw photos and listened to their calls.

We read poem #159 "Good Night and Good Morning" from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina read aloud from Squirrel Nutkin.

We took a second look at Holbein's The Last Supper. Fina drew this.

"These guys [with the halos] love what Jesus is saying, are listening to him. The one on the right is looking into the crowd.  I sort of drew the continuation of what is going to happen. Crown of thorns. Jesus resurrected."

In the afternoon, we went to our local provincial park with our friends J and J. The girls had fun playing in the ice, slush and puddles!

On our way home, we stopped by the local bison farm.

Tomorrow, we have an all-day outdoor playgroup. The public school kids are on their spring break, so we will have some of the "older" crowd with us, which is always great fun!

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 3, March 14

We started our day with Matthew 3:16 and Fina narrated.

We started our next math lesson. Fina did 17A.

We finished our Shakespeare review for recitation and we reviewed our current selections.

We started reading Benjamin Franklin by the D'Aulaires. Fina narrated it throughout. We will pick back up at page 18.

We reviewed all of our Spanish nursery rhymes.

Fina worked on her cursive for a few minutes. Seeing it here, it doesn't look that great. But she was trying hard and really concentrating. Thankfully, cursive is a long term thing!

We read the next chapter from Eyes and No Eyes, "The Skylark and her enemy." Fina narrated.

I read the next poem aloud, #146 "The Spider and the Fly."

We sang our hymn and folksong.

Fina read a few pages from Peter Rabbitt aloud.

We looked at our same painting from last week. Fina looked at it for 3 minutes. Then, I covered it up and she tried to sketch all she could remember.

She did a great job, I thought!

She spent some time practicing her piano pieces.

We had a great time at our outdoor playgroup. It was just warm enough to be comfortable and it was so sunny. The kids had a great time playing with the ice on the creek for hours!

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.