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!

AO year 1, week 22, December 12

We have had a busy few days, with a Christmas banquet and a Christmas dinner with friends. Fina did a bit of finger knitting for a ribbon on a gift.

We started the day by reading one story from The Pink Fairy, our current free read. Dad has also been reading A Bear Called Paddington to Fina as her bedtime free read.

I read Matthew 1:18-24 and Fina narrated it. It is our gospel reading for this Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Advent.

We did the Liturgical Year section of our catechism book, including the Advent section (pages 151-156).

Fina read aloud the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Because she isn't such a strong reader yet, I think it is hard for her to memorize it this way. I will continue trying this method for the rest of the week and, if she still doesn't know it, we will do our regular "repeat one line three times" til you know it and then move on to the next line. It works well for Shakespeare.

Fina also recited "What is Love?" and "Out o' tune, sir" from Twelfth Night.

Fina did the first two pages of the Unit Exam #1 for Math. Two more pages to go. It reviews the first 10 lessons. She wanted the timer on, so I gave her 10 minutes. She was done in 7 minutes, so she used her remaining 3 minutes to catch up on some of her countdown-to-Christmas lego. (We have been busy these last few days and fell behind with it).

We read chapter 17 of Paddle to the Sea and Fina narrated it. I like how they equate Lake Michigan to a squash with leaves. It does kind of look like that, right?

We sang our folksong again, "My Paddle / Land of the Silver Birch."  Fina is singing along now, most of the time, which is great.

I read the story of "Maximillian and the Gooseherd" from Fifty Famous Stories. It was a funny story of a king who wasn't really able to care for some geese while the little gooseherd boy ran to fetch the King's book.  Fina gave a great narration.

I read "The Monkey and the Cat" from Aesop's Fables. Silly monkey, tricks the cat to scoop the chestnuts out of the fire by flattering her and then eats all the chestnuts and leaves nothing for the cat. Fina narrated it.

I read poems 45-47 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Some are by Isaac Watts. We are still in the early section, but these poems are great fun! I think I did the right thing by skipping the first few chapters.

Fina reviewed her uppercase cursive letters, from A-G, and we learned the letter H. She is flying through these cursive letters!

We listened to some Schubert while Fina worked on her cursive.

Fina read four pages from Tony's Birds aloud to me. She laughed and laughed as Tony figured out that the bird was a Bluejay.

We sang "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" together.

Fina then did an episode of cosmic kids yoga. We hadn't done one in months, so it was good for her to get back into it.

Late in the afternoon, Fina went out to play for a few hours in the dark, freezing cold. She loved it!
At one point I saw her hanging from the top of a 1 metre snow pile, using sticks as climbing hooks and hanging from them in the snow, as if she were climbing the Alps, I guess! Fun!

Wednesday April 6, AO year 1, week 16

On Tuesday we had our outdoor playgroup. It was a blizzardy April day, but the kids had such great fun in the swirling snow. Fina never complains that she is tired or cold or that she doesn't want to walk or that she wants to go home. That is a blessing for me. We were outside for about 4 hours.

In the evening, Fina even tried to get a friend to come outside to play with her on such a wintery day, but K didn't want to come out and play. Fina contented herself with doing two episodes of her yoga.

We have continued singing "O Canada" in French. Incredible. Whatever Fina doesn't know off by heart, it is by my laziness. She is a sponge that could learn so much more than what I'm teaching her!

This morning, I read "Farmer Weatherbeard" and "Minnikin" from The Red Fairy Book, as part of our free reads.

We listened to our folksong, the "Ice Worms Nest Again," for the last time. Then we started our new folksong, "I've been working on the railroad." Fina is enjoying it, actually. I'm having a hard time getting myself into folksongs, though we have often sung the Ice Worms one out and about. It is catchy.

Our bean plant is coming along nicely.

We noticed that the primary leaves (the two at the bottom) are dying, now that they have done their job of feeding the plant. Interesting!

These tiny things in the middle are buds / flowers we think.

I read through our Sunday readings. The Gospel is Jesus asking Peter to "feed his sheep."

We went through our memorization box.  Fina finished her Orsino passage "If music be the food of love, play on." Wonderful!

Pretty good for her first day learning the ending!

We read three new poems from When We Were Very Young: "The Invaders," "Before Tea" and "Teddy Bear."  All three were cute poems. We need to pick a new one to memorize. We just haven't "hit" upon one yet.

We continued with our learning to read, learning the letters j and w today. Fina read book 1:7 "Jig and Mag." She does wonderfully!

She wanted to do some reading and narration, so we read from Fifty Famous Stories Retold.  We read the story of "Inchcape Rock." She narrated it so well.  We looked up this painting of the location.

Peter Graham "The Inchcape Rock" 1908

She wanted to continue, so I read the two sections that are scheduled in week 17, "Sir Philip Sidney" and "The Ungrateful Soldier" and she narrated those as well. It was great! Fina tends to have a much easier time connecting with 50 Famous Stories compared to Our Island Story. They are little biographies, which just proves that biography is a great door into history!

Fina did 7B in her math, continuing to add plus 2.

We did Chapter 11 from our catechism book. We also came upon Peter being asked by Jesus to take care of his friends and how Jesus' friends make up the Church. Connections, connections.

We also did question 9 from The Baltimore Catechism.

What a great start to week 16!

We listened to some Schubert as I prepared lunch and Fina coloured and drew a pic of her guardian angel.

I guess her guardian angel could be the archangel Gabriel. A wee bit lofty, but still!

After lunch, we are going out to make a little fire in the park. We will let you know how it goes! Something along the lines of a fairy fire, a small fire for fairies!

March 30, AO year 1, week 15

On Tuesday, we had a lovely get together in the big back yard of one of our friends. There were more than 20 kids there (it is Spring Break here in MB) and a bunch of moms. It was so wonderful! All in all, Fina and her friend K were out from 9:45am until 8:15pm.  We were at our friend's house from 10:30 until after 5 and then Fina and K had a quick something to eat and continued playing in our courtyard. Such a wonderful time! (This is the wonderful weather period between snow and mosquitoes in MB. You can't quite spend 10 hours outside in summer. Sometimes, but not always.

Today (on Wednesday) we started the morning listening to some Schubert while Fina did some drawing.

She used one of these "learn how to draw characters" books

We did some math work. Fina finished up Test 6, writing the numbers from 0-100.  She still has a tiny bit of confusion yet with 20, 21, 22, so we worked on that.

I read "The Ass and the Load of Salt" and "The Lion and the Gnat" from Aesop Fables. Fina narrated them well.

I read "Prince Hyacinth" from The Blue Fairy Book.  She enjoyed it, but gave a sort of mumbly narration.

We continued with our learning to read with Bob books. We finished reading pages 5-9 of book 1:6 "Dot and the Dog."  She is doing really well.

We worked through our memorization box. Fina learned the third line of the Orsino passage she is working on from Twelfth Night.

She did an episode of her yoga. It had been a long time. (When you spend so much time outside, you don't really need to do yoga as an exercise.)

Here is our  black turtle bean sprout. A new trifoliate leaf set has grown in the middle, plus a few other tiny ones. So fun!

We spent the afternoon playing outside with some friends, at various places around town.

Tomorrow we have our coop. We have the older PS siblings with us, so that will be fun!

January 25, AO year 1, week 11

On Friday afternoon we were listening to Brahms. And being inspired by watercolours at co-op the day before, Fina pulled out the supplies.  "I want to be an artist when I grow up, mamma" she said as she created these watercolour paintings.

"Peaseblossom mountain" (peaseblossom is one of the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream)

"3-Dimensional Images" - a wall, a vine, a witch, an apple

She really enjoys painting. I need to provide more opportunity for her to do dry-brush technique for painting something from nature.

On Saturday, we finally got to go cross-country skiing for the first time! We went with our friend K and her mom L. It was beyond incredible. I can not believe how well the girls did. We probably skied about 2 kms and were out for more than two hours. Fina did such a great job. They both loved it and have been asking to go back.

We both had a great time!

Monday morning:

I was doing some maintenance on my blog, changing some labels to be more long-term, like changing artist names to just "picture study" when I had the bright idea to give the search box another go. It seems like blogger fixed something.
I now have a functioning search box!!! Yay, yay, YAY!!!  
😀😃😊😍😍😍👏👌👏💚💙💛💜💗💖✅ 
I'm not all tech savvy, so I don't know what else to write that can express my abundant joy at this now working! (You will have to content yourselves with these emoticons.)

Dear blog followers, PLEASE try to search something in the box and let me know in the comments that it does actually work! (I want to be sure that this isn't just a dream!)

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Monday morning school time:

Fina emptied the dishwasher with me.  We started our school this morning with reading part of the chapter called "The Unknown Land" from Parables from Nature. I read from the modern paraphrase today and it went well. We read about half of it, and we stopped three times for Fina to narrate. She did well with it. We followed the link to hear the warbler's song, which was neat.

We sang our current hymn and Fina recited "The Apostles' Creed."

Recitation: I asked Fina to recite all her poems from A Child's Garden of Verse and she was able to do all of them wonderfully. I think I need to make a memorization box with all of our poems. I had to flip around in iBooks to find the poems she knows. I'm going to write each poem on an index card and put them into a recipe card box, similar to the set up the SimplyCharlotteMason has on their website for scripture memorization. (Updated to add, Brandy just posted this at her blog, it is clearly laid out, http://afterthoughtsblog.net/2016/01/how-we-organize-our-memory-binder-an-update.html) I then asked her to recite "Corner-of-the-Street," the poem she knows from When We Were Very Young. She did that. She also had memorized another poem from there "Happiness" without my quite realizing it, so she asked to recite that as well.  I read a new poem from there, "Puppy and I," to her, and then we listened to Peter Denis' recitation of it on our audiobook.  Then I had her recite her Shakespeare passages to me as well. Which she did very well. We learned lines 5 and 6, the end of Theseus' speech. We will continue next time with Hippolyta's answer to him.

I read another little chunk from our Italian bible. We are still on the story of Noah and the flood. We only spend 5 minutes with it, but she is listening.

We read chapter 9 of Paddle to the Sea and Fina was able to narrate it, well enough. We like to linger over the drawings and pull out the atlas and look at where Paddle is. It is interesting (incredible, really!) how something so small could lead to geography work in the way that it does.

We sang our current folksong, "Home on the Range." Fina actually sang along with me!

We picked up our cursive, after a very long time! She tried very hard to hold her pen properly. We reviewed most of our letters, though we still have 6 or 7 left to review next time. She did a good job with her pencil grip. Understandably, after such a long hiatus, she needed a refresher on the letters.

We went on with our math. She said she was "tired" of doing the clock, so we went on to SUBTRACTION! She did wonderfully with it. We did 29A, C and D. We will go back to the missing pages and the clock stuff next time.

She is doing an episode of yoga while I write this blog post and while I'm preparing lunch.

That is it for our school work today.

She is really on this Hermia and Helena kick with her little friend K. She wants to put on a play of A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is long term work for her, prepping costumes, deciding who will do what, making lists of characters, signs with the name of the play, etc etc etc. Fina just LOVES it!

January 18, AO year 1, week 10

We started the morning with Fina's request to listen to some Zecchino D'oro, while she planned costumes for Helena and Hermia from A Midsummer Night's Dream. She has gotten it into her head that she wants to put on a play. I'm not sure with whom she plans on doing this: if it is for co-op or just with her friend K. We shall see how that progresses! She is certainly working hard.

We prayed the Lord's Prayer together(-ish). I read a bit from it Italian bible. We sang "Canticle of the Turning" (Gather, 527). We sang the first verse and the refrain. I think we'll stick with this one for a bit. The hope is that she will join in more and more.

She recited her four Shakespeare passages to me. She does an excellent job with that.

Fina did a couple of episodes of her cosmickids.com yoga.

We started reading from When We Were Very Young by A.A. Milne. We have this big collection of Winnie the Pooh that includes both story books and both poetry books.  We read the first two poems, "Corner-of-the-Street" and "Buckingham Palace."  We also borrowed the audio book on Overdrive, read by Peter Dennis, and listened to his readings of the two poems as our second read through. Then we looked up a photograph of Buckingham palace and talked about how the Queen lives there.

I read "King Alfred and the Beggar" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold and Fina did an excellent job narrating it to me.

I read the story of the spies to Canaan and the grapes from Numbers 13:1-14:9. She also narrated that well enough.

I thought it was high time to start some folksongs, so I found this version of "Home on the Range" (sung by Gene Autry) and I sang along to it. Fina recognized it because my brother has sung a different, funny version to her. So she enjoyed that. We will stick to this folk song for a little while, I think.

We did our next lesson of math, session 27, just the hours in telling time. We reviewed minutes and she did a great job with that. Next, we will do hours AND minutes.

I read one story from The Red Fairy Book, her current free read. I read "Jack and the Beanstalk." It was great. Right at the start, someone has "fever and ague." We had heard about that in The Little House on the Prairies series, and we looked it up and it is malaria.  And then Fina remembered that in Hudson the sailors got malaria from not eating enough fresh fruits and vegetables. Charlotte Mason would call this the science of relations. I love when these types of connections are made.

We had a great start back in earnest today. I carefully avoided all writing with a utensil today. We need to keep working on that pincer grip and I didn't want to tackle that today, so I wrote down her math for her.

Leading up to Dec 30

We have been having a nice time since Christmas. On the 26th, we were invited over to our friends' house for supper and Fina had a lovely time as always with their kids.  The 27th was dad's birthday and we went to the city for church and we brought home pizzas for his birthday. We had also made a cheesecake for him.  She also got out to play for a while.

For those of you who know Fina, you will know that a bag quickly becomes something else. After dad opened his gift, she cut out the bottom of the gift bag and became his very own little present!

On the 27th, I was also able to give Fina her belated Christmas gift.  This crocheted mermaid tail lapghan I made for her this fall. The pattern is here. The youtube video she has linked in her pattern is not only helpful, but necessary!

On the 28th, we went to visit one of our friends and got in some outdoor play time. On the 29th we had our outdoor playgroup and we got to go into the forest again. We were able to go over the temporarily fixed bridge with some of our companions.  No pics of the forest, but here is the intricate snow piles in the Museum's parking lot. The kids had fun playing there for a bit.

After playgroup, Fina and one of her little friends, K, were not ready to go in, so they went to play in K's backyard (she lives right across the street from us) and they had the best time ever, playing til after it was dark. K's mom said they were playing house and so many other imaginative games.

Canoe-sled? Look how happy they are!!!

On the 30th we went out to a giant snow pile in town with dad. Fina had fun, though she did get a few bumps along the way. It was pretty hard snow, quite packed down, with rough icy chunks! Someone had also made a little ramp at the bottom of it. Look how she flies right over it!

We went to the city for dinner at some of our friends' house (dad's professor colleagues and their wives were there) and Fina did so well with their large dog (who usually freaks her out!), but she was petting him etc. She also had a great conversation with the English professor about The Chronicles of Narnia, her preferred reading order and the merits of the movies and of the BBC version. I mean, she is just a kid, but it is always heartwarming seeing her be able to hold some semblance of an intelligent conversation with adults. One that doesn't revolve around kids' commercialism.

She has been doing some episodes of yoga, every once in a while.

We have been reading from this book of Norwegian Fairy Tales, on loan to us from our friend L.  A Time for Trolls: Fairy Tales from Norway told by P.C. Asbjörnsen and Jörgen Moe. We have read the first five chapters. Fina is really into it. I overheard her narrating the tale "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" to dad the other day.   I also heard her telling dad about "The Cock and the Hen in the Hazelwood" which goes like "Petruccio" an italian fairy tale / nursery rhyme, where the story keeps repeating and getting larger (like "The House that Jack Built" in English).  She got a lot of it in her narration. The last and largest iteration of the story is:

"Dear charcoal burner, give me charcoal to give to the smith, who will give me an axe to give to the woodcutter, who will give me wood to give to the bakeress, who will give me a bannock to give to the thresher, who will give me corn to give to the sow, who will give me bristles to give to the shoemaker, who will give me shoes to give to the Virgin Mary, who will give me ribbons of red gold to give to the lime-tree, who will give me leaves to give to the spring, who will give me water to give to Hickety, my dear hen, who is fighting for her life in the hazelwood."

 It is very fun to read aloud! We will continue reading it. There are 13 tales in all.

November 30, AO year 1, week 9

Yesterday was the first Sunday of Advent. We have our advent wreath (almost) ready and we lit the first candle. We are also starting our Jesse Tree tomorrow. We have used this Jesse Tree before. She has free little colouring pages with the ornaments that you colour yourself and add to your tree.

We are doing our daily advent devotional by Henri Nouwen, "The Lord is Near." I have had this advent meditation booklet for years.  I love Henri Nouwen. It is a bit above and beyond for Fina, but that is ok too. With the addition of the Jesse tree, starting tomorrow, she will have plenty to chew on.

We are continuing to read our bible every night at the end of supper (while little Miss Takes Her Time finishes eating).

We did our morning prayer this morning and listened through the Seeds of Courage album as well. We also listened to some Brahms.

We sang "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." And "Praise God from whom all Blessings Flow" together

When I offered her the choice of continuing reading Hudson, or reading the story of St David, Fina answered: "I wanted to read more about Henry Hudson. I thought it was already done!" We read from p 29-43. Poor Henry Hudson suffered a mutiny and nothing further was known about him.  We talked about it as we went, rather than a true narration. And we continued looking at the globe as we read through it. We learned about scurvy, "the grey killer." Quite interesting!

Fina did a few episodes of her yoga, as a break.

Continuing with tally marks in math. 23D, E and F. Done!

Catechism, we did the advent sections, pages 151-156 and 222.

Poetry, Fina recited Fairy Bread very fast while running through the house like a madwoman!!!

We read about St David from Our Island Saints and Fina narrated it to me. It was a good story. I don't know David who this is, from Wales.

We wrote a few cursive words, using j and g, without yet learning a new letter.

November 26, not really a school day

Yesterday (Thursday November 26) we spent the day at dad's university. He along with 11 of his professor friends and other colleagues gave a series of 15 minute lectures on many different topics for studnts and staff and faculty of the university. Fina and I participated in the entire day. She brought some Lego, her new found love of the Rush Hour Jr game, a few toys, her favourite new back pack and some blank paper to colour and doodle on. She was exceedingly well behaved. Even after having her favourite ice cream cone from the cafeteria at lunch!

Here is dad giving his talk on U2.

Fina with her toys (and notice her backpack!)

She made a Lego Ninjaturtle

When we came home, she dictated this story to me. I thought some of you might enjoy it.

November 2015 Story About a Candy Cane

1  Once upon a time in a far off place there was a candy cane and it was like a shepherd's staff and that's how it got its name because it looked like a cane. And it was a very hard candy to find because it was striped. And it was very big. There was a little girl and she loved this kind of candy. This girl was sweet and, like I said before, she loved candy canes because they tasted nice and sour and minty. And her name was Lucy. Lucy lived with her friends, the acorns. She lived in a small cottage and it was a gingerbread cottage and she loved that little cottage because every single day she was allowed to break off a little piece of her roof and eat it. She loved colouring. It was her best thing. She had a friend and her name was Elizabeth. Elizabeth loved strawberries and candy canes and mints and colouring. They were almost like sisters. They were both sweet little girls. They were both six. The loved playing dress-up and doing all kinds of things, they were very busy girls. They usually spent their time playing together. Whatever they did, they never ever made a mistake with their writing, wherever they were. And they got lots of money because they were really being good. Because they ate lots of gingerbread and gingerbread was good for them.

One day, when Elizabeth and Lucy were playing outside, they saw an eagle, flying with an olive vine in its mouth. The Eagle said “caw caw.” They asked the eagle if they could have a ride and the eagle said “caw caw yes.” So they got on the back of the eagle and they started to fly. They said “what happened?” It was a very funny thing, they loved carrots and they asked the eagle, “could you please fetch us a carrot from a store?” The eagle said “caw, caw, yes, caw, caw.” They also loved strawberries and they also asked the eagle, “could you please fetch us strawberries from the store?”  And the eagle said “caw, caw, yes caw, caw.” And they also asked the eagle “we love broccoli. Could you please fetch us some broccoli and maybe a tambourine too?” The eagle said “I will fetch you a broccoli and a tambourine.” “And a father clock,” said Lucy and Elizabeth together, “we love father clocks.” So the eagle got them all of this. They were so happy. They decided, “Elizabeth and I would like to go back home” so the eagle started to fly away and they came back to their gingerbread house. I didn't tell you but they are sisters. So every day for lunch and supper they broke off a little piece of their house and ate it because it was healthy. They looked at their globe and wondered, “why is the world so small on the globe? I'm not even the size of that country. It isn't even the size of my foot.” 

“How about let's bake some strawberry blueberry pie?” “Oh yeah, blueberry pie is good. It's beautiful and sweet. Oh yes,” said Lucy. “Best, because today’s our birthday, so of course it’s best.”

2 (she told me to write 2, because she wants to continue this story at some time.)

Note: She drew this candy cane during the lectures, and used her kneaded eraser to do the subtractive drawing.

She also did a few episodes of her yoga. It was an indoor day, without much moving around, so I'm glad she did some yoga at least.

November 23, AO year 1, week 9

We did a lot of Lego building this weekend (and some more this morning).

Fina recited some of her poetry while I was preparing breakfast. She is going to recite "Fairy Bread" at our next co-op meeting. She is continuing to work on "Now and Then," she knows the first two stanzas.

We did our morning prayer and listened to some Brahms through breakfast.

We bought Fina a backpack this weekend (she wants it to carry around her water bottle and to gather items she finds when we are playing outside!). It was the best $7 we ever spent. She has had it with her all day and she loves it!

We finally got back into some math. Chapter 22 is skip counting by 5s. Those little skip counting songs really work. She know 5 through 50 without any trouble. We did 22 A, B and C. And 22X from the extra activities booklet. She is doing a great job!

We are singing "Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow" at our Co-op as our hymn. So we sang that a few times this morning as well

She did two episodes of her cosmickids.com yoga. (You would think it would help her to be less hyper, and active and excited, but not really!)

We read Exodus 3:4-17, Moses and the burning bush. Fina narrated the first part well. Then she "couldn't remember" anything else. Right...  Oh no, my mistake. I was actually supposed to read Chapter 3: verses 1-4 plus 17. Yikes! We reread the correct part and she was able to narrate it very well... Oh my!!! (Not my worst homeschooling-mommy fail ever, trust me!)

Cursive letter g. She did a great job with it! We also wrote: gas, gab, gag and gaga.

We read pages 19-28 of Janice Weaver's Husdon, our Canadian replacement to the Benjamin Franklin biography by Ingri D'Aulaire. We read it in chunks, with narrations / discussions throughout. We had the globe with us and we looked at Henry Hudson's trips where he tried to cut over the Article Circle to try to get to China and his other voyages. I am surprised at how much Fina is retaining about Hudson. It is great!

We read two Aesop Fables.  The moral to the "The Farmer and the Stork" is that you will be judged by the company you keep, even if you are not guilty of their crime. And "The Sheep in the Pig" is a cute story about a pig getting caught and squealing so hard because he knows he is headed to the butcher's. The sheep don't understand why he is making such a fuss, but that is because the farmer merely wants their wool. "It is easy to be brave when there is no danger."  She narrated both this short fables very well.

We spent some time reciting some poetry. She also learned stanzas 3 and 4 of "Night and Day." She can now (just about) recite the first 4 stanzas.

Yes, this is how we recite poetry around here!

We looked at our next picture, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's Homer and the Shepherd's in a Landscape.  It is a lovely painting. She was still a bit stressed about remembering stuff, though I reminded her how well she did at co-op. So, I had her describe what she saw with the image in front of her. And then I turned it over and we talked about it again. And then we looked at it again and talked about it again. It is really only in her head. She is very perceptive!

Then we decided to have our elevenses (some little fruit maple tarts we made last night) with some tea. While we sat, we continued listening to Brahms. Just another few weeks and we will be moving on to our next composer, so we had better keep up with our listening!

Then Fina wanted to play some Rush Hour Jr (we have it on loan from our friends).  She did cards 18 and 19. It is a great thinking puzzle. She is really enjoying doing them. We have purchased the regular, non-junior version for her. We will loan it to our friends for a while, once we receive it. She will move on to it once we are done with the Junior version. A good trade, I think.

We have our outdoor play group tomorrow, and it is supposed to be a balmy zero degrees, so that will be great! Fina is wanting to get outside to play this afternoon once we have lunch. Her little friend K will be coming to play in our yard once she gets home from school. Should be fun!

Thanks for reading about our day. Does anyone have any comments about the labels? Do they help at all?

November 18, AO year 1, week 9

We have had a lot of fun lately, and it has been a good break for us.

Our outdoor playgroup was wonderful yesterday. It is so lovely to have a group of moms who want to do this with us. Beyond incredible.

The weather is changing for us. Goodbye plus 0 weather! You have lasted even TOO long for normal this year.

Fina decided to do a few episodes of her yoga after breakfast. That gave mom a chance to catch up on some computer secretarial-type work (I have been helping out some friends with their maple syrup products and catering company.  Check them out at Chez Mémère. Their stuff is really yummy. I have been setting up mailchimp, working on their order forms and other administrative work. It is nice to have a little bit of extra income, while helping out some very nice people.)

Today, we decided to do some math (while listening to Brahms). Thankfully we had stopped at 16 in our Primer Activities book, so this was a great way for us to review sections 16 through 21. That wasn't planned, but it certainly worked out for us!

I read to Fina "The Story of a Warrior Queen" (Boadicea, the Briton Queen from circa 60 CE) from Our Island Story. She narrated it well. We learned about poisoning (which Fina was quite interested in!), Boadicea poisons her daughters and herself rather than allowing themselves to be captured by the Romans.

Next, I read "How the Rhinoceros Got his Skin" from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. For some reason, I decide to skim through the introduction, and we read that he would tell these stories (before ever having written them down) to his daughter Josephine (nicknamed "Effie." One of Fina's aunts calls her Effie) and that he had to say them "Just So" without any changes, or she could correct him. Ring a bell, anyone? She narrated it well. It is a very cute and funny story.

This is how we recite poetry around here, crawling around while dusting the floor!

Fina practiced reciting "The Cow" for me, as tomorrow is our first CM Co-op meeting and the kids will all be reciting something at it. She also recited all her other poems. They we learned the second stanza of "Night and Day/" She now can recite stanzas 1 and 2 of that poem. It is incredible how she can memorize things, and yet keep her other poems straight. We also read a new poem, "The Gardener."

We read chapter 7 of Paddle to the Sea, in which a French-Canadian lumberjack finds Paddle and rescues him from the log just as it is about to go under the saw in the mill. He adds a line to Paddle's engraving and sets him back in the river (deciding not to bring him home to show his young son Henri who would have likely pitched a fit, wanting to keep Paddle for himself. Ring a bell, anyone?)

We also recapped our cursive, writing a few more words with the letter f in them.

Forgive the poor pic quality!

Our white board is working well as a place to keep all our cursive letters. I don't have a fancy border going around the room or anything like that, I just add the new letter to the top of the white board and it is always there for Fina to refer to and look at.

Now Fina is doing/building/making something (?) behind our living room curtains, while listening to Brahms.

Well, our school day went well today. I am still remiss in the feast subjects. I may have to start some kind of morning time, so I can fit in the hymn, folksong, foreign language study and artist study and other things like that.

November 6, AO year 1, week 8

Yesterday, Fina did indeed end up spending much more time than I had anticipated in learning to finger knit. She was able to pick it up easily, right away. She even knows how to "cast on" herself, which is far beyond what I had hoped. She ended up doing two one-metre lengths of finger knitting. Her intention is to make a rectangular carpet (try as I might to convince her to start with something smaller, like a rounded coaster or placemat, or tiny carpet). She worked at it for over an hour for sure.

As an aside, she was listening to The House at Pooh Corner read by Peter Dennis.  We are listening to it on overdrive, borrowed from the MB libraries. It is an excellent version. This is a quote from overdrive:

This is the only reading of these enthralling stories authorized by A. A. Milne's son, Christopher Robin, who wrote, "Peter Dennis has made himself Pooh's Ambassador Extraordinary and no bear has ever had a more devoted friend. So if you want to meet the real Pooh, the bear I knew, the bear my father wrote about, listen to Peter."

We have also heard his volume 1 of Winnie the Pooh. We also enjoy Stephen Fry's dramatization (with many actors playing the voices, including Judy Densch.) Also very well done. I highly recommend both of them. If you can get them on overdrive through your library, go for it!

Anyway, here are some pics of Fina's finger knitting work.

Here she is wearing the two lengths of finger knitting that she made.

She also spent some time last night doing some pencil drawing. The excitement was that she use her newly-acquired kneadable eraser (we bought an Artist's Loft one, from Michael's store in Canada for $2.29, still quite cheap).  I have never used one before, but it is very exciting.  No erasing crumbs, no ripped paper, fun to play with and you can also do this cool thing with it:

She drew the entire sock, and then used a technique called subtractive drawing, where you mold and shape your kneaded eraser to erase or remove some of the pencil, to leave different gradations of pencil.  You can make stripes! Very fun. Check out this video for how to use the eraser. We are waiting on a friend to save some water bottle caps for us to use for storing our kneaded eraser in, so it doesn't collect as much stuff in it when you throw it in a pencil case. We got the idea from this video.

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We listened to some Brahms this morning.
She did one episode of cosmickidsyoga.com.

We also did our morning prayer together.  We are feeling much better (not 100%, but much improved) after a good night's sleep.

She has been asking to read more stories from The Blue Fairy Book, so we read Charles Perrault's short fairy tale "Toads and Diamonds." A cute story that Fina narrated very well.

Then we read "Cincinnatus" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. She narrated it in three chunks. Funny that I have never even heard of this figure of Roman history.  Cincinnatus was a wise and noble Roman who lived as a farmer. When the Roman army had been trapped by "a tribe of half-wild men," the white-haired fathers of Rome asked him to take the boys and guards who had stayed in the city to go and rescue the Roman army. He was the ruler of Rome for 16 days, and in those 16 days he saved Rome.  He then relinquished his power and went back to his life as a farmer.

The we went back to The Blue Fairy Book and read "Prince Darling." I told Fina it was a long story and if she was sure she wanted to do it now, but she did. It is a wonderful fairy tale, new to me as well.  So, I read the whole thing and she narrated it well. It deals with the virtue of keeping to your word and being in the habit of doing good. A very CM friendly fairy tale, I thought.

Fina wanted a "recess", so she did another two episodes of yoga. I think all the being-inside-because-we-are-sick is leaving her longing for physical activity!

Well, we didn't finish week 8, though we schooled 5 days this week! They were lighter days as we were sick. So we will try to finish up on Monday.

October 16, AO year 1, week 5

We had a bit of a later start this morning because I decided to do some baking (lots of pumpkin) and dinner prep.  Fina helped me by emptying the dishwasher after she had done some drawing, colouring and crafting on her own (she made a little rat with a house with an awning for when it rains). Fina is still sick, but we are going to try to do as much as school as we are able to do today.

Fina narrated Genesis 28:10-22 very well. Jacob's Ladder.

Fina wanted to use her princess etch-a-sketch thing to do some 1-20 number drills. She had said so yesterday, and we had a sticky note in our math book to remind us. So, we did a bunch of them. Again, using 1T1 etc and it worked fine.
Then I decided to give her a timed math time. 15 minutes and she was able to do 15D and E. Not bad at all. I'm trying to encourage her to use her time wisely. But she spent some time making curly-cue 2s etc. When the timer rang, she really wanted to do one more page. I explained to her that she had wasted some time doing fancy numbers and that if she hadn't wasted that time, she would have been on the next page already.   She was ok with that (surprisingly!)  They are pretty, though!

Fina is doing two episodes of her yoga. There are 20 plus episodes from her to choose from, and again, she likes to take 7 minutes to leisurely scan through them to decide which one to do. I stopped her right away and told her that she can not spend 5 minutes choosing which one to do. So she is doing number 1 and we will be doing them in order. Unless she has one that she can tell me immediately that she would like to do, then that is fine. If not, I will be choosing the next one. I hope this helps her not to dilly-daddle over things and get more use of her time and more enjoyment. We'll see if this works! The habit of prompt attention...

I should do her yoga with her, but I prefer to take the opportunity to write this blog and to tidy up the kitchen a bit from all my morning pumpkin baking!

We read chapter 2 "Law of Authority and Obedience" from Parables from Nature. We tried using the modern translation and it worked much better. She was able to understand it more clearly, I think, and her narration demonstrated that. It is a cute story about a worker bee who overhears two children talking about bees and how there should be no queen, but that all bees should be alike. She

We read chapter 4 of Paddle to the Sea. She narrated it ok. We mainly talked about it together, looking at the pictures and talking about how dams are made, how the pond can flood over the dam, how the beaver makes a hollow house with an underwater entrance but how there is an above ground portion in it, above the water, with air.

Cursive upper case S. It is the only upper case until the remaining lower case letters have been learned. They incorporate it here so that we can start writing sentences with proper capitalization and punctuation too, I think. It works for us, because Fina's name actually starts with an S (though we are still missing a few letters from her name). She did a great job with S. We practiced some previous letters as well.  Then she wrote Sam, Sat and Santa. Then we went on to the next lesson, with punctuation: "Sam sat."  Wow, even a period!!!

We finished with Fina reciting all her poetry to me. She still wants me to recite all of them to her, but I can't. She thinks it quite funny that she has to correct my small words (and, as, etc).  We read a new poem today, "The Unseen Playmate," but haven't yet found another to memorize and recite.

Well, we had a three-day week, but we covered (basically) everything. I'm happy to start week 6 next week and fill in some missing things (like artist study, catechism, hymns).

Thanks for following this week with us!

October 7, AO year 1, week 4

So, yesterday we had the first weekly meeting of our outdoor playgroup here in our little town. It was great fun. We had our regular people plus two boys (6 and 8 yr olds) whose pregnant mom went home to nap with her two year old. More of the village raising kids. It was nice to help her out and her boys were very fun and were well enjoyed by the other kids. Fina had never really had dealings with them and said that they were very nice and very fun. So that was great. The weather was just beautiful! It was a great afternoon outside for us! Unfortunately, I didn't get any pics. At the end of the afternoon, the kids found their way to a giant mud puddle, the only water anywhere for miles around, but they found it! Fina was covered in mud, but very happy. I had her splash pants and boots, but she went in with her pants and bare feet. That shows you how warm it was.

I've put up posters around town for our outdoor playgroup and I'm hoping we get more people next week.

Listened to Brahms during breakfast.

Of course, Fina wanted to do poetry first. We read some new poems: "The Swing" and "Time to Rise." She almost has "The Cow" memorized. She needs to work on the last stanza. She enjoys reciting poetry.

We read "Moses the Kitten," the first chapter from James Herriott's Treasury for Children. James Herriott is a vet and he tells of his adventures. It was very cute. Lots of pics, which is different for our school work, and Fina narrated it very well. The gist of it is that the vet finds a baby kitten on a farm and the farmer and his wife take care of it. The farmers have a sow who had just had 12 piglets, so they had put a heater in with the pigs to keep them arm. So they put the kitten and his bowl of milk in there to keep him warm as well. The next time the vet comes, the farmer shows his a funny sight. The kitten had decided to suckle with the other piglets and cuddles up with the sow all the time and follows her around. The kitten becomes part of the pig family. Even years later, the cat looks at the pig barn lovingly.

Fina's a bit antsy today. (Our homeschooling friends in town went out to jump on their trampoline for a few minutes before starting school today. We can't do that, but we can do some yoga. Indoor movement). Fina wanted to do episode 9, "Mike the Cosmic Space Monkey" from www.cosmickids.com. It is a shorter one, but a good episode.

Then we continued working on her cursive x, and ax as well. She did fine. Though we really need to keep working on paying attention (and not throwing herself on the floor whining, with mom raising her voice. Yeah, not a stellar moment for us.) It isn't that the cursive itself is difficult for her. She likes it to be perfect (and so do I) but she gets so easily frustrated. Part of it is her acting very dramatic, everything is the end of the world etc. Very annoying to me. Very fun yet upsetting for her. And a great waste of time for all of us. How I am going to fix this, I don't know. Her letters were fine though, of course! My mother would say "B-R-A-T!" At least if there was frustration for a real cause, it would be a bit easier to handle.  I literally prayed aloud that God would help me not be upset, and she kept whining right through it. Help! Thankfully this doesn't happen all the time, but I would love it to NEVER happen. I'm asking too much, right?

We got over that spat just fine and moved on to some fun and well-done narration. We read "Alexander and Bucephalus" as well as "Diogenes" from Fifty Famous Stories. Becephalus is Alexander the Great's horse. The boy Alexander tames him and his father realizes he is destined for great things. Diogenes is a wise old crazy man who Alexander goes to visit. Alexander asks is there is anything he needs, and Diogenes just asks him to move out of his sunlight. Alexander says to his soldiers "If I could not be Alexander, I would be Diogenes."  She got it, I think. Cute stories from Greek history. We are going to the add these historical figures to our Timeline.

Then we read two Aesop Fables: "The Kid and the Wolf" and "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse." She narrated them fine as well

On to MUS, 13D, E and F. She gets it very well, but is slow to get through her pages, and then gets tired of Math. I would like her to give her full attention to what she is doing. She is learning, though. It isn't dire (yet!). I might consider doing the timer thing. She gets the concepts and she enjoys it. She just likes to fiddle around and work slowly, I think. We will keep working on it.

Catechism Session 3. "God is our Father." Fina drew a picture of Jesus holding her hand and holding mom's hand.

The Bible is God's message to us. It shows us how God loves us. God sent Jesus to show us how to love.

Overall, it was a bit of a stressful and finicky day, (though it got better) but certainly not as bad as I had anticipated that some of our school days could be. This is just to show you things aren't perfect at home. But we are happy to be doing this together!

September 24, AO yr 1, week 2

Yesterday afternoon, we went out to the park for a couple of hours. The sun had warmed things up nicely at that point of the day. While out there, we flew a kite for a bit. And Fina ran around playing, jumping off picnic tables and the like.  (The kite was down when I took the pic and somehow I got too involved in the kite flying to manage another pic.)

After a while, she comes to me (while I'm trying to finish reading the last half of the 6th and final volume of Charlotte Mason's work, Towards a Philosophy of Education. I'm reading the paraphrase in modern English. I had intended finishing all 6 before we began homeschooling, but that didn't happen.) and says "Mom, can't we please read Peter Pan while we are outside?"

So, I run in and grab our copy of Peter Pan (the original book by J.M. Barrie, with illustrations by Mabel Lucie Attwell. You can get it for free here. We bought a 2013 edition by Dalmatian Press at a used book sale somewhere. I see the $1.00 price scribbled in pencil on the first page.) and a fabulous made-of-denim quilt we use for outdoors (made with lots of love by my sister a few years ago. I bought denim squares at a thrift store and mailed them to her in Ontario and she made me a quilt with a water-resistant backing for outdoor use. I guess it is all my doing that she has now become an avid quilter. Correct me if I'm wrong, that was your first quilt, right CB?).

We find a lovely tree to sit under and I read chapters 2 and 3 to her.  Aren't these lovely colours?

She was listening so intently, it was quite something. There is something incredible about reading outside, lying on a blanket. Dad met us at the park after work and we walked around the path for a little while. We walked home (we live about 100 ft from this park) and Fina wasn't ready to come in yet. So she did a couple of episodes of her favourite yoga for kids out on our lawn.

I sat on our steps and read a bit more of my volume 6.  The mosquitoes started coming out at about 6pm, so we finally headed in for supper.

For those of you who know and love me, you will know that last November (November 3, to be exact), Fina and I started ourselves on a 1000 Hours Outside challenge. Basically it is a movement to get kids (and adults) outside more, rather than inside watching tv etc.  The website was started by a couple of moms (influenced by Charlotte Mason's ideas that kids should be outside for 4-6 hours a day) who wanted to counter the statistic that the average American kids watches 1200 hours of tv a year.  You can find their explanation here. Well, you will be proud to know that as of yesterday, we are 995.75 hours. And it is only the end of September! I am proud to know that we will very soon make it to our goal and I hope to greatly surpass it.  You can imagine that this isn't always easy in a Manitoba winter (or worse, a mosquito-riddled Manitoba summer). Thankfully, Fina isn't bothered by the -40C (yes, that is -40F too, for my American readers!) cold, so we did get out a lot this winter as well.

Try it yourself. Adults, kids, whatever. Even an hour a day outside is probably more that what many people are doing. It does make all the difference. I can't express how much I love it. Homeschooling is going to make this possible for us even now, during the schooling years. (Though kids do it while attending regular school as well. Their families just have to be more intentional about using non-school days, weekends, holidays, etc).

Another website and FB page that I really enjoy is http://www.activekidsclub.com/.  This is the brain-child of a Toronto (via Norway) mom who gives lots of tips and resources for spending time outside with kids, in all types of weather. (A shout out goes to my own Canadian-Norwegian friend who introduced me both to this website and the love of the outdoors with kids).  We do, as a culture, spend way too much times sitting inside (at a computer, tv, etc etc). Being out in the forest, out in a meadow, splashing through puddles, sliding down snow hills (tiny ones, this is FLAT MB after all), climbing on trees, looking at leaves, bugs, squirrels, flowers - these are activities that refresh us. We much prefer these free-play activities than scheduled extra-curricular ones.

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Well, time to start our day.

We did our morning prayer (and we have been doing night prayer in bed before going to sleep as well).
Fina decided to do some Handicrafts today (embroidery) before starting with her school work. She also swept the kitchen floor, and swiffered it with the dry swiffer cloths (she wanted to swiffer wet it too, but she got distracted with going upstairs to play with her doll house). We ended up not doing any school work until after lunch.

Poetry: Fina recited her two poems.  We read a new poem today, "The Land of Nod." I had thought she might like to recite it, but we have decided to wait for a "better" poem.

Burgess Birds Book, Chapter 1 "Jenny Wren Arrives." Narrated it well. I had her colour in a colouring page of a Carolina Wren, and that did not work. She, unlike most kids, didn't seem to concentrate as well while colouring. Funny!

Gen 8:13-22. Narrated the end of the flood well.

Cursive "s". Fina is still having trouble being consistent with her letter s. We wrote "as" and "sass."

So, I pulled out the old "cornmeal in a container" trick and we are working on forming the letter s with here index finger. I hope this will help. I am trying not to let her get frustrated, but she wants to do it right and just can't seem to form it properly consistently.

Yup, even in the cornmeal, she didn't really want to make an s. So she made an a.  She made some s's, but was still not happy with them, nor forming them easily the right way. We will start with the cornmeal s tomorrow.

Paddle to the Sea. We read chapter 2. She doesn't have the attachment (yet) that other kids seem to have to the story, but we are only on chapter 2. She listens to it and does narrate it.

"Bridge at Nantes." We looked at the painting and described it again.
Then, I wanted to try the second painting by our artist for the term, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, "Chartres Cathedral."

I tried something different this time so she wouldn't get all freaked out like the first time.  We looked at it and spoke of it, and without warning I turned it over and both her and I tried recreating the basic idea of it on paper. (This probably wouldn't work with all kids, but she did well). Hers is on the right, mine is on the left. I am NOT an artist, but I thought I had better do it alongside with her.

Then we started trying to reproduce it while looking at it. Mine has a splash of colour on it.

She didn't get very far before wanting to move on and sculpt with her Thinking Putty for a bit.

We made people on our fingers.

Lastly, Fina did just a little bit of MUS, from 11C p 2  through to 11D.

We listened to Brahms a bunch of times through the day today.

***
A few things I've learned today:
- we need to slow down and repeat and repeat with the cursive. The letters a, m and n are ok, but s needs work before moving on.
- do not try homeschooling in the afternoon, unless absolutely necessary. It wasn't terrible, but it flows much more smoothly in the mornings. And now we didn't get outside, or do the other bunch of things we had done yesterday, for example. It slows us right down! (Fina also woke up at 6am this morning, instead of the 7:30 or 8 she is used to, because she had a bad dream. She went to cuddle in bed with dad to talk until after 7 when they came down. I think she is pretty done! We finished math around 4).
- keep at the artist study because Fina does have a good eye. I need to keep trying other ways of looking before moving back to the look-at-it-then-cover-it-up-and-narrate style.
- Fina doesn't work well with colouring while listening for narration. At least not now. We might try that again at a later date.

I will get the folksong in at some point. Right now, I don't want it to feel like a chore (for me or for her!) so we will come to it eventually. That, and the nature study painting with water colours. I haven't forgotten. I just need to work our schedule so we can do it.

Thanks for following our journey. If you are so inclined, please say a prayer for us. My good friend says it is a marathon, not a sprint. I can already see how right she is.