Christmas break

We've had a Christmas break from formal lessons and spent a lot of time just reading aloud.

Fina's homeschooling dad finished reading The Hobbit with her and they started The Lord of the Rings.
He read Kate Seredy's A Tree for Peter aloud for all of us over a few days at Christmas and it was a very touching story.

Fina and I read a bunch of Christmas-y books.
We absolutely loved Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I can't believe I've never read it. We both were impressed at the language, the turn of phrase. You can just tell a living book, even reading a few sentences. That book is beautiful, through and through. We ILL'd the version illustrated by P. J. Lynch, upon the recommendations of some CM moms, and it did not disappoint.
We also greatly enjoyed Astrid Lindgren's The Children of the Noisy Village. Such a cute book, with the Christmas chapter in it.
Rumer Godden's The Story of Holly and Ivy is the sweetest book we've read in a long time. It's a new favourite.

We were on a Tomie DePaola kick. We read his Francis: The Poor Man of Assisi which is a beautiful book! The Lady of Guadalupe, The Legend of Old Befana, The Legend of the Pointsettia, and The Story of the Three Wise Kings.

We read a few other more modern books.
We liked Susan Tan's Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinare. It is nice to see a biracial girl exploring her identity.
We also read Karina Yan Glaser's The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street. I really wanted to like that book, but I think it ever so slightly deals with things in a little bit more of a mature manner than I had hoped, based on the reviews. I didn't always love how the kids treated each other. And I didn't care for the love interest. But you do feel like the brownstone is a character. It is well-written. Fina really wants to read the sequel. We shall see.

Fina is loving all things E. Nesbit. After having read The Enchanted Castle in the fall. We read her Five Children and It and Fina loved it! As soon as we finished that, we started reading The Phoenix and the Carpet. I did not know that it was a trilogy, the third book being The Story of the Amulet.

She got this cute loom from Ikea and has been making tiny carpets and mats with it.

Plus lots of playing outside, some skating and some skiing.

We have had quite a few days where the snow is buildable this year. More than usual. Which has been fun.

We started back to school last week, but I'm working on a new post for that. Thank you for your patience, kind readers!

Term 1 exams

Fina is really loving this Bernat Velvet yarn. I have to admit, it is quite nice. It would make a good scarf, actually. It's sort of like a very fuzze fleece. Here are her first two completed projects. For your reference, these tiny ponies are two inches high.

Fina's Spanish is beyond impressive to me!

We did our term 1 exams last week and they went really well. Fina had the most trouble with the books I was expecting, The Story of Canada and Our Island Story. Her narrations of those two aren't terrible during the term, but I knew she hadn't really connected well with either of them. I know she is getting a connection to the history we are studying through biographies and historical fiction, however. She could tell me a lot about Tecumseh through these alternate readings. It is fascinating to observe the exam process.

I love this quote from Charlotte Mason's third volume, pp. 170-171:

Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

"How much does she care? and about how many orders of things does she care?" Well, she cares about Tecumseh. And that is saying something!

Her recitations were stellar, as always. She had some trouble with Shakespeare. She was unable to tell me anything about Much Ado About Nothing. Well, hardly nothing. She knew that there was some sort of love commotion, but that's about it.

I've told you before, it's always interesting.

And we started term 2 yesterday. I've got a few things I want to change this term, so we will see how that goes.

Blue jays, knitting, piano, free reads and more

Fina was sewing some pages together with a felt cover, to make a little booklet) and she sewed the whole thing onto the table cloth. We laughed and laughed as we ripped out the stitches and she started over again!

She has been working hard on some knitting. She wanted this fancy, luxurious velvet yarn and she is really enjoying working on it with some thick knitting needles that we picked up at our local thrift store.

We've got some new snow over here and Fina is quite pleased about that.

We started reading Susan Tan's Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinare and are enjoying it so far. It is a funny story about a little girl growing up in a family with a Chinese dad and a Caucasian American mom. The author, having grown up herself in that same kind of family, incorporates many of her own life-stories, as she explained on this episode of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast.

We also started another Edith Nesbit book, Five Children and It. There are already some similarities with The Enchanted Castle. It is a page turner, for sure!

We really are having a fun time with our free reads this term. We just need to find more time in our day to sit down and read!

I don't know why it took me years to come around to this idea. A little basket with our free reads and historical fiction and biography. The rest of our school books are on the shelf. But these are what we pull from when we are just doing some extra reading. Perfect!

For the first part of the term, alongside reading from our poetry anthology year round, we read some poems by William Wordsworth. And in the second part of the term, we are reading some poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was able to sign out the Coleridge book from the Poetry for Young People series from our provincial education library (if you homeschool in MB and don't know about that library, please ask me! It is a great resource. And if you don't know about that PfYP series, ask me about that too!) We are in the middle of their selection from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." And we are loving it. So much to talk about. Such lovely language. We are really getting into it. We read only 5 or 6 stanzas a day. I knew of that poem, but had never read it. This is a trope with our poetry. What a blessing to be exposed to so many wonderful things through our children. Moms are persons too. And moms also deserve the feast!

There are a couple of blue jays that spend a good part of their day in the crabapple tree behind our house. They keep coming to our tiny window feeder. They are much bigger than our feeder! Along with a dozen chickadees, a handful of white-breasted nuthatches, and some cool reddish thing we've yet to identify. We could sit on our couch for hours and watch them flit back and forth. Last year, we thought the chickadees were afraid of the blue jays, but these ones seem to take turns alighting on our bird feeder.

I hope he doesn't pull our feeder down. We are firmly entrenched in the below-freezing temperature range, and I don't know when I'd next be able to attach those suction cups. They need a warm-ish window to start. Then they will hold for a very long time!

And if anyone can help us identify this little guy with reddish on his back under his wings, that would be great! Zoom in to see some details.

Fina caught this picture of one flying away.

That band of red is on its lower back, usually hidden under its wings.

Please ignore the pyjamas. And the vibrato French. And the poor hand posture! Fina wanted to play it four times in a row with her eyes closed. And she did it! After much practice. We are having wonderful piano lessons right now.

This kid (aka "person") has a real knack of driving me 'round the bend at times. But I love her dearly and am so greatly enjoying the beauty of the everyday. Not all day, I'll be the first to admit. I have constant struggles. But every day. This is Charlotte Mason IRL, my friends.

Back to school!

We started back to school last week!

"How do we make our nature walk and journalling time shorter?" asked nobody ever! We had our first nature walk this week, on Monday (I couldn't get myself organized enough to actually take Fina on a nature ramble last week. She got in hours and hours of outdoor play, but either with her friends or with me, but without any journalling).

We went down to the creek and I asked her to wander a bit to find something that would catch her fancy.  Fina found a tiny clam (she loves clams!) and painstaking painted one half of its shell, from the convex side and from the concave side. And look at what she had me write!

This first photo shows three 3 images - the first is Fina's painting of the outer side of the shell, the second shows the painting of the inside of it. The blue splotch was Fina trying to trace the clam with paint -- the paint ran, she worked furiously to try to contain it, and then to wash the paint out of the paper etc. She was a bit upset as this was her new journal, but she did not get frustrated (which completely surprised me. I expected her to cry!) and decided it would be a lovely colour for a background and traced her shell in pencil. She really wanted to depict the actual size of the shell. I told her that next time she could draw just the outline with a really fine brush (without tracing, but free hand.)

We were out for 2 hours that afternoon. We had a lovely ramble and a detailed observation time, with lots of discussion and enjoyment and gazing at God's splendour, focusing on a tiny clam shell that is only1cm in diameter.

And on Thursday, she did these brush drawings during our nature time, with ample written narrative as well. (It was freezing cold, windy with such a terribly cold northerly wind blowing on us. But Fina would not be deterred. Good thing, because I would not have chosen to stay out there to journal.)

We got a new sloyd book this year and we are really giving it a go!

I'll have to get a pic of Fina cutting her folds with an exact-o knife. She just loves it!

One of our poets for the term is William Wordsworth. We read his "There was a Boy" poem on Thursday.

I didn't really know what this poem was about, but after we read it she told me that she thought the boy was maybe actually the sun, or maybe even God. Because she figured the boy wasn't human. How on earth did she get that? But she did!!! Incredible. She said it was because how he had his hands held, with fingers interwoven, and shouting across the Vale, and being received into the Lake. The sun could do all of that! We had this interesting discussion about this poem.

A little group of us have started a mom's study group to read volume 1 of Charlotte Mason's Home Education series. There were 8 of us at our first meeting. Such a blessing to have an actual, in real life, local group. This is something we've been praying and hoping for for a long time!

I'll leave you with this cuteness: Fina and her little friend built this house at outdoor playgroup this week.

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!

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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 2

We had a great first day on Monday. We've finally gotten around to doing some mapping. We started by building a model (with wooden blocks) of Fina's room and hid a bunny on the model and hid another of the same little bunny in the corresponding place in her room. Then she hid the bunny for me to find etc. It was fun!

We already finished Because of Winn-Dixie. We loved it. Such a sad and sweet story. We now started Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant. We are about halfway through it and it is such a great story as well!
We also started reading the D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. Fina loves it, of course!

It is freezing cold here. There were some beautiful sun dogs to be seen on Monday. I was going to take Fina skiing, but I just could not bring myself to do it. So we stayed in!

We started up our piano lessons on Tuesday. It went really well!

On Wednesday, the weather started warming up and Fina spent a bunch of hours outside skating, and then playing in the snow, with her little friend.

On Thursday we had a very time outside in the (warmish) afternoon with a dozen or so friends at the museum and on the frozen creek. Fina was glad to see (some of) her friends again!

And on Friday it was above zero celsius and we went for a lovely walk on the slushy creek.

Fina is continuing to enjoy The Wanderings of Odysseus. With the start of the second term, we started with our new artist (Constable) and composer (Handel, we are listening to his Messiah). Fina painted, worked on her math, started new recitations of two Bible passages, a hymn and a poem, started with a new hymn for singing and a new folksong.

On the weekend, Fina skied and skated and had lots of fun outside.

Here she is with a little group of friends, climbing the bank of our creek. 

It is like a mountain to these prairie kids!

And this morning, before school, she finished stuffing and sewing this little pig. Isn't he cute?

Leading up to December

Our architecture book has really inspired Fina to want to know more about pyramids. We picked up a handful of so-so books at our local library. But I've requested to borrow a copy of The Boy of the Pyramids by Ruth Fosdick Jones. I hope it lives up to the "living books" hype I've heard about it!

We read about pine cones in Arabella Buckley's Trees and Shrubs and found a cone (on her nature tray that we brought home who knows when!) that exhibited all the properties we read about. It was great fun!

On Friday, we went to Fina's "fort" that she is working on, in the forest.

For our nature study on Monday, we took a branch of of Fina's woodcarving box and painted it. It's becoming hard to tell which is mine and which is hers! She did such a great job with it. She observed it very closely and really got in touch with her branch!

She really wanted giant yarn, giant knitting needles and a giant crochet hook for Christmas. So, her new handicraft is knitting this! She thinks she wants to make a chair mat with it. It is really thick. I'm not even sure how she is able to knit with such large tools, but she is. And she loves it!

Fina is loving our historical fiction read, Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare. She is also really enjoying Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. All of our current books are really quite enjoyable.

We are trying to do a bit more "work in the kitchen." This week, she made zucchini moons. She cut the zucchini, sautéed them in butter and grated some parmesan cheese on top. They were yummy! I would love to find a way to have her spend more time in the kitchen, but we are still trying to figure out how to order our days to be able to fit everything in that we want to do!

We went to a concert at Fina's Homeschooling Dad's school, with a brass quintet from the WSO. It was lovely, as always. No Mozart, unfortunately, but that's ok!

knitting and skiing

We finished reading The Courage of Sarah Noble and our moving on to Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare as our historical fiction reading. We read the first chapter and it is riveting. I fear it may be a little mature for Fina (as there is a young woman who is being wooed by a man) but she told me she liked it and didn't want to stop!

I purchased three McGuffey readers and we are quickly making our way through them.

Fina is enjoying her knitting.

And continues to enjoy her brush drawing.

You might not be able to see that corn cob, but it is so detailed!

I love how in a CM education, you read slowly and spread out. It can seem counter-intuitive, but there is something wonderful about picking up a book, after having set it aside for one week. We are experiencing this with Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Wanderings of Odysseus. Fina loves it and easily picks back up from where we left off.

We had a lovely jaunt in our forest on Friday afternoon. Fina found a great tree limb to sit in!

One the weekend, Fina finally convinced me to let her go skiing. (I keep discouraging her, telling her it would not be fun to ski on the iced over slush and that she should wait for the next snow.) Well, did she prove me wrong! She had a lovely night-time ski on Saturday in our park and again on Monday night in a wind storm. We are still waiting on that new snow!

We've spent some lovely time watching our window bird feeder over the last few days. On Monday, we actually saw a blue jay come to it many times (though he is so big, almost too big for it), as well as the black capped chickadees and nuthatches who are our regular guests. Wonderful!

Another proof of recitation leads to memorization. We've been working on "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. We've only spent less than 10 minutes, 4 times (once a week) and today, Fina was able to recite it almost perfectly on Monday!

We finished reading The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, as one of our free reads. It is a cute story and we both enjoyed it. I think we're going to try Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux next.

We started some history things this week. I started our family's history chart (outlining the years from when Fina's homeschooling dad and I met to the present) and Fina started her own life's history chart, from her birth to the present). We spent about 15 minutes filling in some information and it went really well. This leads up to other history tools.

Today, on our way home from outdoor playgroup, we stopped by our town's nativity scene that was just put up this weekend. They don't put Jesus in until Christmas.

Thanks for joining us!