October 22, AO year 1, week 6

We listened to a bit of Brahms through breakfast. Then we did our morning prayer together this morning.

Then on to cursive. We wrote a bunch of words using the letters we already know.
and, sand, hand, add, had, Samantha, tax, "." and "?"
She is doing a great job!
I like that I am telling her the letters to write, or I sometimes write them in upper case print and she is able to figure out what letter it is.  (Rather than something where she sees the cursive and copies below. I feel like this method is showing me that she can not only form the actual letter, she knows what letter it is).

We read the readings for Sunday. We did session 4 of our catechism book. We learned about the trinity (and had some interesting discussions: "if Jesus is God, then someone HAS seen God. His disciples" etc.)  Fina enjoyed it today.

Fina finished up 16E and 16F of her math. She is doing well. We are going a bit slowly yet, but it is fine!

In the afternoon, we made it out to a pumpkin patch (that a farmer isn't going to harvest) and picked out a bunch of free pumpkins. The evening was spent scooping some of them out and roasting them. It was so much fun!

A prairie pumpkin patch!

a cute little worm digging in

We realized, late in the evening, that we did NO POETRY at all today. I think that is a first for us. (Though, she did proceed to recite some of her poems to dad over dinner!)

Some random thoughts, my philosophical side (not really!)

Before we start school today, I wanted to share some random thoughts.

We use predominantly ebooks (for convenience, for portability, for price!). Sometimes, though, I think she is missing some connections by reading a chapter a week from some random book. For example, she is really enjoying Fifty Famous Stories, but I don't think she gets that each of the episodes we have read is from that book. The tangible book would allow her to make connections with other chapters in that same book. I often will preface my reading with "this story is from _____ book. Remember the other stories we read in there, like _____ and _____." I'm not about to change to print books right now, but I completely understand the arguments for and against ebooks.

We are starting to get into the groove of homeschooling. I am still unable to properly include the feast subjects at this time, but I know it will come. I am glad she like recitation of poetry, so we do do a lot of that. And we have tried to do some artist study (though not as thoroughly as I'd like). We do listen to our composer. But we haven't done much in the way of hymns, folksongs (yes, I have a couple of music degrees. I'm not sure why I am resisting!). Our handicrafts aren't scheduled, though they do happen. I really want to do more routine foreign language work (yes, I am fluent in two other languages. Again, it shouldn't be that hard for me to do).  And we still haven't delved in to nature study with actually drawing / painting (though I'm hoping our soon-to-start CM co-op will help me with some of these.)  I don't know. I feel like she is still little and I want to give her as much free time as I can. We are continuing to work on diligence and my hope is that once the work goes more quickly and smoothly, we will have more time left over for these feast subjects.  I'm trying to be patient with myself. It is just easier to do things that are really scheduled (by AO) like this chapter, and that chapter, and math and cursive. I end up privileging those things when I have a time crunch. If I had 10 kids, or even 2, I would have to be way more organized! I really admire moms who homeschool (or parent for that matter) large families.

On the flip side, I am very happy with how things are going. Fina is enjoying herself. She is learning a lot. We are coming into contact with a great many things. And she is really quite interested and invested in what is going on. I am very thankful. I just know things could be a lot worse!

I am also grateful to have a supportive husband, both supportive in terms of the schooling and in terms of going to regular work so that Fina and I are able to live this life. I know not everyone has this opportunity, so I really appreciate him for that. (Goodness knows, Fina and I are not always easy to live with!)

And I am grateful for good friends who "get me" and are on this homeschooling journey with me, especially L. And N. And E. And all of them! Last week, I set up a facebook group for a few of us (I actually know all of us in person, one of my friends lives in Wpg so the other local moms don't know her personally) to share thoughts, ideas, encouragement etc regarding homeschooling. It is nice to have a place you can go to, at any time of the day or night, to share with others. I would never call any of them up on the phone (those days are pretty much gone for me), but facebook gives me instant replies (at their convenience, which is usually pretty instantly!). So that is just a wonderful thing.

I am also so thankful for my non-homeschooling friends.
J, if you are reading this, you are an inspiration to me in many ways. And Fina and I really enjoy our little adventures. Today we are going to a farmer's field not far from here to pick free pumpkins. Like a trip to the pumpkin patch without the price tag.  Who else would we do that with!?!?  Exciting!

And to L., a young mom who is juggling kindergarten for her oldest, day care for her toddler, and full time schooling for herself. Another inspiring person for sure.

I have written various times about the outdoor play group we started 3 weeks ago. It is going very well so far. It is just a blessing to have like-minded moms who have really cool kids. Fina loves her friends. She really does. We are happy to play with some kids that we know but with whom we have never really spent time.

We are so blessed to have friends like this. I'm not sure we'd have so many people who care about us if we were in a big city. We have such a close-knit little group here. It is incredible, beyond words.

And I am grateful for you, my faithful blog readers. This is mostly a journalling and record-keeping tool for me at this time, but it warms my heart to know that I have people who care to read about what we are doing.

I got a nice note from my dear friend N who noticed that I didn't post my blog entry til much later in the evening (I usually post as soon as we are done, by early afternoon for sure), saying that she had been checking for it and waiting for it. It is so nice to actually have people caring about what I am doing. Love you, my dear friend.

Time to get started with my day. I will start another entry for our school day.

October 21, AO year 1, week 6

Fina has been asking to listen to Zecchino D'Oro (an Italian kids' choir that we have always listened to since she was small) whenever we're just doing whatever. Her longing for foreign language study? I'm glad she has been asking for it herself. She knows many of the songs and lyrics. And she has recently been asking me what a certain line means. So that is great.

We had a great time yesterday at our outdoor play group. It was a little chilly and cloudy, but we won't complain just yet! It was still warm enough!!!

We started school this morning. Fina recited her poems to me, then I reread "The Unseen Playmate" and "My Ship and I." We read three new poems: "My Kingdom," "Picture-Books in Winter" and "My Treasure." Still nothing new to learn. She says she will tell me when she hears one she really likes.

I read and she narrated "Cornelia's Jewels" from Fifty Famous Stories. It is a cute story. Her jewels are her sons, not worldly jewels.

We read and Fina narrated Genesis 37:1-4, 11, 28B (Joseph and his coat of many colours). She wanted to hear the whole story so I pulled out The Jesus Storybook Bible and we read the whole thing. (I was going to read it straight out of the bible, but it spans various chapters and there is all kinds of stuff in there I wasn't ready to tackle in one story. See Genesis 38!

Paddle to the Sea - chapter 5. I don't know why she has such a hard time narrating from Paddle. She loves the story and we talk about what is going on etc., but her narrations are very difficult for this. Much more so than for other stories. Maybe it is because it is so descriptive and not much actually happening... Has anyone else noticed this with this book? She definitely looks forward to reading it. She just gives a really shallow narration of it.

We finished reading our latest chapter of Peter Pan.
We took our lunch outside and spent an hour playing in the park.
Then we went to the library, because mom had to cover the circulation desk for the afternoon.

Fina did some scanning of books.

She listened to her Paddington audiobook, she flipped through books.
She also did some math

And she did her cursive work. We learned the letter "d" and were able to write dad!

Her d's were very good, very quickly.

After the library, we spent another hour and a bit out at the park, and were joined by her little friend K for a short while.  Over a week ago, the kids found a tire in the park (who knows!) and have since spent HOURS playing with it. Even Fina by herself, before K came, was rolling it around the park and playing with it in various ways, including dragging it up the play structure and rolling it down the slide.

A tire?!?!? More exciting than one would think.

October 19, AO year 1, week 6

Well here we are at week 6, the last week in the first half of the first term of the rest of her life!

We prayed our morning prayer together. We started with our cursive. She is really enjoying it right now. We have learned that sentences start with an upper case and end with punctuation. We have learned the period and the question mark. We have written our first sentence "Sam sat." and our first question "Sam sat?" I wanted Fina to practice all her cursive letters, so I wrote them in upper case print for her to "translate" into cursive, and she asked me if she could write a word that used all the letters we know so far.  Well, I couldn't find one that uses all, but I did find one that uses all but "s" and "x" -- Samantha! Very exciting, for she had a little friend Samantha who used to live across the street.

"Why the Sea is Salt" from The Blue Fairy Book. She narrated it back quite well, after one reading, straight through without stopping.

Math. 15F, 16A and 16B. She is "getting it" much better now. At least we aren't getting frustrated any more. We will continue to work on 0-20.  She is very quick at knowing her doubles, 1+1=2, 2+2=4, 3+3=6, 4+4=8 and 5+5=10. So that is great!  She doesn't always need to use the manipulatives, so that is great as well.

Poetry: Fina recited all her poems to me. We re-read "The Unseen Playmate" and read for the first time "My Ship and I." She loves poetry. She really does.

We spent a few minutes doing our artist study.  We looked and talked about our painting, "A View near Volterra" and then I covered it up and she told me all she could remember. She did very well with this today.  Neither of us could remember the horse rider's coat colour (blue). When we looked at the painting again, around the bend on the path there is what mom thinks is another human, and what Fina thinks is a bear. "The horse and rider are going to be surprised when they turn the corner and hear a loud rrrooooaaaarrrr!" she says.

Art influences writing (see the continuation of Fina's story).

She has finally asked to write more of her story. Here is the continuation from last time (which was a few weeks ago). I'm repeating chapter 2 in its entirety, to refresh your memories.

*****CHAPTER 2

But Squirrel Nutkin said “where is our baseball bat and our baseball ball?”  And Jeremy Fisher said “you’re right.” And they looked together. And there was no sign of the baseball bat and the baseball ball. So they said “why don’t we just go inside?”  On the way inside, they saw a snail and they said “ hi, little snail, do you want to come live with us?” The snail nodded and said “yes, please, I’ve been looking for a home, but you better put me in a cage because maybe I’ll make slimy marks.” 

They made the cage out of hay, but then they forgot to put a window. So they cut open a space and put a glass window in it. Then the snail said “ouch” and then they looked. The snail had pricked himself on the hay. So they made it out of some flat wood instead. The snail said “thank you Jeremy Fisher and Squirrel Nutkin.”

Then Squirrel Nutkin and Jemima Puddleduck said “there is no sign of your baseball bat and baseball ball.” So JF said “shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” They all see a sign that says “Free baseball and baseball bat here.” [here starts the new part].  Then they wanted to get one so they asked “how much does it cost” to each other. They realized it was one penny and they went inside to get one penny. “OK” said Jemima Puddled and “ok” they all said. So they went inside and they bought it. And then Jemima Puddleduck said “shhhhhhhhhh” because there was a bear. And then, when they turned the corner, what they saw was “rooooaaaarrrr.” Because there had been a bear. And they ran home. But the bear blew down their house. But the snail’s cage was still there. Jemima Puddleduck said “never mind. We’ll make a new house.” So they made a new house out of twigs.

*****

And, look. Happy math!  We had seen a pic of a child's volcano made out of MUS manipulatives. So, she wanted to make her own (as I wrote up this blog). It is very tricky, as the blocks don't really click together like Lego. (and it's a wee bit lopsided. No matter!)

That is it for this morning.
Today is election day here in Canada, so we will be heading out to vote together later on. Fina knows the green (we know our local candidate) and the red (Justin Trudeau) and the blue (Stephen Harper is our prime minister). No interest in the orange, I'm not sure why, she just doesn't have anything to connect herself to them.

Fina also wants to go to the park and work on some of her acrylic painting. This might be the last time before the winter hits that we can actually do this outside!

Thanks for starting week 6 with us. Tomorrow we have our outdoor playgroup, so no schooling for us. We are looking forward to it.

UPDATE:

We did get to paint at the park. It was such a lovely day. We were glad to spend a few hours outside at the park.  And a friend and her mom joined us for a few hours as well.
If you know Fina, you know she is ALWAYS hosting birthday parties for her stuffed animals. This became a happy birthday painting for Acorn, her stuffy chipmunk.

Yes, she is holding a painter's palette.  Too funny!

And we did get out to cast our votes in our federal election.

Very serious business. Well and the sun made it difficult to smile, I guess.

Fina had a keen interest in politics this year (hopefully she will continue with this when she is older). She knows who is the leader of which party, the colours (red, blue, green. For some unknown reason, she had no interest in orange), she knows that Harper was the current Prime Minister. She watched part of two debates (the leaders' debate as well as our local candidates') and was very excited about the whole thing.  She asked one of our friends (the mom of one of her little friends) how she was going to vote. The kindly mom took her into her confidence and told her. Later, F to me "why is it so private? Why can't you tell your friends how you will vote?" I brought her to the little booth with me ("why do you have to hide behind here to vote?") and picked her up so she could see my ballot going into the box.  I believe she will be quite pleased this morning to know that Trudeau and the "reds" won in Canada (though she would have voted green! Not only because we know our local candidate, but also because she is a fan of nature)!

October 18 - BOREDOM!

A blurb about kids being "bored." A good friend of mine L has taught me (among many, many other things) not to worry if the kids are bored. They'll get over it. It is good for them to be bored.  (She has a really wonderful and positive hands-off approach to parenting). And they need and want a lot of unstructured play. Well, I can attest to this working and showing its fruits. After many days of being inside with this terrible cold Fina has had, this is what she did this week.

This lovely nothing-planned-for-you-to-do-Fina leads to her building houses with a toy shelf and a fridge and pantry.

Toy shelf up high on the left, pantry and fridge (with eggs) lower right.

Acorn the chipmunk is in this bed.

And to building a crazy fort/toy store/apothecary at the edge of the bed, with many tunnels and a working light!

Yes, Fina is scanning the price of the vaseline and of the teddy bear.

Let your kids be bored. Let them find their own creative play. Indoor and outdoor!
(Even a singleton like Fina can do it. Imagine the possibilities for siblings!!!)

Here are a few outdoor boredom-type of shots from a while back. When she played alone.

She loves to chalk on the sidewalk. Then she took pics with my iPad.

In the dead of summer, she wanted to go into the (mosquito infested) forest. Mom stood on the bridge and didn't go in. Yes, that is a mosquito shirt. And a giant wild rhubarb leaf as a parasol.

Here are the first three stanzas of a poem we are reading together right now. I found them inspiring and fitting to this blurb of mine today.

The Unseen Playmate

When children are playing alone on the green,
In comes the playmate that never was seen.
When children are happy and lonely and good,
The Friend of the Children comes out of the wood.

Nobody hear him and nobody saw,
His is a picture you never could draw,
But he's sure to be present, abroad or at home,
When children are happy and playing alone.

He lies in the laurels, he runs on the grass,
He sings when you tinkle the musical glass;
Whene'er you are happy and cannot tell why,
The Friend of the Children is sure to be by!

Though Fina has never really had an imaginary friend, like some kids, she does interact with her play things and imagines all sorts of things. I do think the unseen playmate is around, when she is happy and lonely and good.

Let your kids be bored. You won't regret it!!!

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 15, AO year 1, week 5

Fina is still sick over here, but we are going to try to do some school work today anyway. She slept better than the night before.

We started with morning prayer. And then listened to some Brahms as well.

Tackling math again today. We spent some time reviewing 1-20, using the MUS nomenclature system, and it finally worked much better (without the confusion of the teens. We will learn their English names later.).  We then did MUS 15 A, B and C with no problem at all.  (I'm glad that, on the wise advice of some good friends, I took a step back and tried again. I know she can do it, and both of us being frustrated is not the point.) I'm so happy we did it!

Poetry: she recited the 5 poems she knows. Then she asked me to recite them. I was not able to recite all of them. I kept getting stuck (not on purpose) and she was able to correct me and get me on the right track. Very funny! We read three new poems today, "The Hayloft," "Farewell to the Farm" and "North-West Passage."

We read "The Story of Regulus" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. Fina was able to narrate it back to me satisfactorily. It isn't easy to narrate back, but she is trying. Some narrations are better and more complete than others. But I'm pleased so far. We took a look at the map to see where Regulus was (in Carthage) and went back and forth to Rome.

Then we read the first half of "St Kentigern" from Our Island Saints. I had never heard of him. He is also known as St Mungo (I've never heard of him either). We're interested to see how his story continues next week. Fina narrated the first half back to me. She got some of it. There is an old man saint in the story, who is Kentigern's master and benefactor, St Servanus. Fina asked me if there are any women saints. (Of course, there are. We just haven't come across any in our readings yet!)

For both Regulus and Kentigern, we took a look at our timeline and added them to it.

We read "The Fox and the Grapes" and "The Bundle of Sticks" from Aesop's Fables and Fina narrated them back to me.  I feel she sometimes doesn't really get the moral of the story. She asked me "were the grapes ripe or not?" at the end of the first fable!

We also read "Only One Woof" from the James Herriot book. It is a cute story of two sheep dog pups who are separated. The one dog never barks, and only barks once (one single woof) in his life when he is reunited with his brother after a few years. And he never barks again. Fina narrated it back to me - ish.

I think we probably did too many readings in a row, but we were nice and comfy on the couch! (Terrible cold = tissues, chamomile tea and oranges while reading and narrating.)

Then she took another stab at her cursive h. It is getting better. She wrote "hat," "ham" and "has" today. Cursive writing isn't easy. You have to really work on your flow and your shapes. She enjoys it, though.

We took a very cursory look at Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot's painting that we are currently studying. "A View Near Volterra." We will continue with it over the next couple of weeks.

I told her about how MUS has a place online where you can post things you build with their math manipulative blocks. So, of course, Fina just had to do one! A flower in a garden with a pink gate and the blue is water to water the flower.