November 15

On Friday, we did this and that (some Brahms and free-reading, and lots of Lego, thrown in the mix) and spent some time outside in the afternoon. The weather is incredible for MB at this time of the year, and we fully intend to take advantage of it.

On Saturday, we spent 6 hours outside. It was 11 degrees celsius, sunny with next to no wind. We got to spend some of that time outside with friends on this hay stack in a field just on the edge of town. The girls had so much fun, pretending the hay stack was a nest, digging in it to make a little area for the eggs (or the birds) to nest in, and just climbing and rolling around on it.

And yes, they found some ice! Fina has been on a hunt for ice lately, and we have found some on a few occasions. We are really waiting for snow (well, she is anyway!)

I'm having a hard time with the whole I-don't-drive thing right now (I don't usually care, but living in a small town where you can't get anywhere without driving, it can be difficult at times. If we lived in a city, we could certainly get around on our own by bus etc.  And when we do go in to the city for church and for shopping, it is hard to carve out the kind of time I'd like to spend in places of nature. I'm a bit sad about it right now. Send me positive thoughts), so I am so grateful that I have a haystack (and other fun places) where Fina can play with her friends within walking distance of home. If only they would fix the ski bridge so we could get in to the forest. This would have been the perfect year for it, but we can't cross the creek into the forest here in town until the creek freezes because the bank around the bridge has eroded and they have closed the bridge. See why we look forward to winter?

Off to our regular Sunday routine now. Into the city we go. Missing out on another warm and sunny day (though the forecast calls for a windy day).

A shout out to zia C, whose birthday it is today! We love you lots!

Stay tuned for my next post. School is flexible right now, but life keeps going!

UPDATED: We didn't miss out on the lovely day. Dad took us to Bois des Esprits, a lovely protected urban forest area, where a local artist has carved a bunch of logs and tree stumps throughout. So fun!
We even saw a few deer, including a big buck! We didn't get a pic of him, but it was incredible.

Fina and I LOVE this place. We have been twice with dad and once with our friends J and J. To think that we lived 4 kms away from this place when we lived in the 'Peg and that even now we do a lot of our grocery shopping at the grocery store across the street. I only learned about this place a few months ago.

Leading up to November 12

We had a lovely afternoon on Monday, listening to our free read on a picnic blanket in the park. I think it got to 12 degrees, but it was so sunny and not at all windy. Just incredible!

We got a chance to play with our friends too, with wood chips left over from the outdoor exercise equipment that was just installed in our park.

Over just a few days, Fina listened to the entire Little House in the Big Woods book, from her free read list. And I didn't have to read it myself.

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I feel like I have had a revelation. I want to slow our schooling down a bit. I feel like we are rushing with our readings, just to complete the week, and that is not what I want to do. I'm going to restructure my thinking. I hadn't intended on starting formal schooling so early. It was Fina's idea to start when all her friends were starting. I really want to buy Laying Down the Rails and do some of that with her. I do feel like habit training is lacking. And I also want to focus more on the feast subjects. Certainly the point of homeschooling isn't to do things just to get them done!  What a liberating revelation!!!  School isn't even mandatory in Manitoba until the September of the year the child turns 7. That gives me 10 more months!  I am thinking math and cursive regularly, but the rest to be spread over many more than 4 days per week. Probably 6 or 7 or even 8 days. Whatever it takes to leave more time for finger knitting, hymns, artist study, foreign language, composer study, folksongs, Lego, play time at home! We try to spend lots of time outside and Fina sometimes feels like she doesn't get to play much at home, because she is doing school work when we are in and then spending time outside of the home. Imagine me, rushing her around. Not what I want to do, for sure. I'm going to give her more time to play, by spreading our readings out much farther.

I did read Better Late Than Early by the Moore's a few years ago (loaned to me by one of my early homeschooling benefactresses, DH), and, in some ways, the title says it all.  I think I have done that with Fina, by not pushing her to write, or to do math, or to sit for extended periods of time, giving her freedom to wander and giving her space for imaginative play. I haven't taught her to read even now at 6 years old. But I think I can continue the principal into the early schooling years, by taking it slow. Savouring the feast. Not rushing through "weeks." I think I can make it work!

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Yesterday was Remembrance Day here in Canada, and we took part in the ceremony in our town. We had many discussions throughout the day about war and peace and sacrifice.  A lot of learning, speaking, and thinking.

Today is Thursday November 12, and we just had to hollow out and carve the giant pumpkin we picked just before Halloween! We did lots of Lego and Fina also made a haunted house area for her pumpkin.  We read some books, coloured, and recited some poetry.

And it SNOWED. Fina tried putting out a bowl to gather enough snow to make "tire sur la neige" maple taffy. Not quite!

We did lots of fun "around the house" type of things. I feel like we both needed a regular day like this.

November 9, AO year 1, week 8 continued

We are still not completely over our colds, but we are much better. We have some beautiful fall weather today (high of 12 celsius, very warm for MB) so we will be heading outside for lunch time to spend the afternoon outside, and hopefully we will be able to go for a night-time walk with dad. The sun sets so early right now and since it will be not cold and clear skies, we hope to enjoy a walk to see the stars.

Our good friend L gifted us with a free mp3 copy of "Seeds of Courage" from seedsfamilyworship.com.  I would encourage you to check them out. The songs have the Bible chapter and verse titles built right into the lyrics. We are just listening to them randomly during the day. I am not using them "intentionally," I'm just hoping Fina picks up the chapter and verses by just listening and singing along. They are really fun!

We have also been trying to read one chapter from the bible each evening after supper.

Fina has been working on her finger knitting. And lots of random crafting of this and that. She is being creative just on her own. And she has been enjoying her yoga. Because the weather has been so favourable, we have also been trying to go for a walk as a family each day. We have fancy new exercise equipment that was just installed in our park, so we have been trying that out. Fina loves the spinny stretching thing.

Today, we started with our morning prayer. Fina has taken to listening to Zecchino d'Oro during breakfast and today's pre-breakfast Lego building time as well.

We read the second half of the chapter on St Patrick. Not so much with the narration. I do find that Amy Steedman's Our Island Saints are very well written, but the language can be complicated at times. I think Fina got the basic story of St Patrick, so that is good enough for now!

We started reading Hudson by Janice Weaver.  Henry Husdon was an explorer (Hudson Bay was named after him). We read about how he tried to find a navigable passage from England up through the north pole to Asia in 1607. He couldn't find an unfrozen passage, but ended up finding a bay full of whales in Spitsbergen (northern island belonging to Norway) and by the 1630, a thousand ships were going there a year to exploit the riches of the whales (blubber and bone for corsets etc).  I like this book. Again, hard to narrate from, but fuel for much discussion, map work, learning about explorers etc. It was the most fruitful 30 minutes we have had, though not immediately quantifiable in terms of checking off boxes on our homeschool work. It was great!  We got to page 18.  The books is meant to be read over three weeks.

Fina recited some of her poetry to me and we read a new poem, "The Dumb Soldier."

We also were able to do chapter 5 of our Catechism. We learned about the liturgical year, ordinary time and God's creation.

That is it for us for week 8. Tomorrow we have our outdoor playgroup, and Wednesday is Remembrance Day here in Canada. So I guess week 9 will begin on Thursday for us.

Off to enjoy the great outdoors. Thanking God for his creation!

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.

November 5, AO year 1, week 8

We are still both very sick.  We both have coughs now, that are hopefully breaking up. I have resorted to drinking garlic tea with honey and lemon. Don't come near me for a while. That being said, I'm trying to do as little talking as possible (which is fine, Fina usually talks enough for the both of us anyway!).

So, we started with finishing up our "solving for the unknown" chapter in math. MUS 21B-F. She is doing really well with this. We took a sneak peek at the next chapter, which is skip counting by 5.

We continued on working on the cursive letter f. It is tricky, but she is getting better. We wrote "flat." Some are better than others. But she is enjoying it. It is difficult to learn what spacing works, so I keep trying to talk her through it (once you are at the top of the f, go straight down). One she has the letter, though, she can do it herself. It is a slow process. But I am enjoying it and so is she.

We read two Aesop Fables "The Gnat and the Bull" and "The Plane Tree." She narrated both very well.

She recited "The Cow" for me and her first stanza of "Night and Day." We couldn't do more than that. We were both coughing.

Now, I want to give her a head start on finger knitting. I will be leading that at our Homeschooling Co-op group, and I want her to know what she is doing so I can help the others.  She also said she wants to do some loom knitting today.

One of our free reads for year 1 is Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Little House in the Big Woods. We have the whole series on audiobook, read by Cherry Jones, so we will listen to that this afternoon, while following along in the actual book to enjoy the illustrations together.  Fina has listened to the entire series, but in snippets on her own, or while I brush and floss her teeth. We have never read it from the book. Since I have no voice today, following along with the audiobook is the next best thing for us.

Thanks for reading!

November 4, AO year 1, week 8

Boy, we have had an exciting day over here so far. Friends of ours have pinworms (so we have been doing laundry etc in the hope of not getting them) and I paid a visit to our local, friendly pharmacist in an effort to keep our local group of moms informed. A HSing mom friend of ours L has put her back out and has had to go to the hospital (praying for you L), and this same mom and two of her kids are in our homeschooling co-op that might not start tomorrow. Dad delayed his departure this morning in order to watch (some of) the swearing in ceremony of Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet ministers. Fina and I are both still sick, though it seems that our congestion is breaking up (thanks, in part I am sure, to L's donating us a few drops of her Sniff B Gone essential oil blend that I have mixed into some coconut oil.  Think like Vicks, but so yummy tasting that you almost want to eat it!).

We have yet to get any school work done. It might just be one of those days (and I'm not the one directly affected and impacted by most of the things I just listed above, so if you are the praying type, please pray for these situations).

So, today we spent a long time doing math. Fina wanted to get to the next chapter, "Solving for the unknown," probably just because it sounded mysterious. So she finished her whole chapter of adding hundreds. 20C-F. Then 21A and B. Solving for the unknown up to 10. So x+5=10. She did really well with it. I was impressed. This is probably not the best way to do math, but I figured today was kind of an all-over-the-place day anyway, so it was ok, as long as she was enjoying it. She still has a bit of trouble when reviewing skip counting by 2, getting mixed up with 12 and 20, and sometimes 14. We will continue with it!

We spent just a few minutes writing her cursive letter f. And that is it for us today.

November 3, AO year 1, week 8

It was supposed to be a no-schooling day today, but since Fina is still quite sick, we didn't want to go to the indoor playgroup we usually attend on Tuesdays, so as not to spread our germs. We will go to the outdoor playgroup in the afternoon, because germs are much harder to spread outside!!!

Anyway, we decided to do a bit of school work. We finished up 19F in math and started chapter 20, adding hundreds together.  We did 20A and B. She is doing well.

We also learned a new cursive letter, the letter f.  It is a tricky one, as it is the first one that goes below the line.  She is trying hard.

Today showed me something. It took us 40 minutes to do just these two things.  Even when she is not frustrated or complaining or fussing, it still takes her a lot of time to accomplish things. Just because she is always wandering around in her mind. Wanting water, thinking of questions to ask, stopping to go to lalaland!

So, other homeschoolers: take heart!!!

Update: Oh my, I just looked ahead at our math curriculum. The next chapter is solving for the unknown. "? + 6 = 9." That will be interesting!  I'm a bit afraid, but I will just trust the process.