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 25, AO year 1, week 9

Fina has had lots of outdoor time the last few days. It was lovely yesterday at our outdoor play group. The kids went tobogganing. Then we went for a nice walk in the dark before supper as well.  Today she said to me, as she was climbing up a snow pile, "this is why I love winter!" Good thing she loves it, because winters in MB are towards the long side!

Silly geese!

We listened to some Brahms as we had our lunch. We had a medical appointment in the morning, and I figured, since we were dressed and out, that we'd take some time to play and running some errands before heading home to do our school work. Big mistake (see the end of our school day!)

We started with some math. We did sections 22D, E and F. That skip counting by 5 song is really working.
Next time we will be moving on to tally marks. Exciting!

We read chapter 5 from The Burgess Bird Book, about the robin and the bluebird. She was once again wanting to colour in the colouring page that goes with that chapter and then she was quite unable to narrated the chapter. Fool me twice, shame on me. That won't happen again. I was able to tease some basic things out of her (like the bluebirds build their nest in the fence post, while the robins build their nests out of mud and it can get washed away by rain or blown down by the wind).

Read some of our next free read, Pinocchio. She says she remembers some of it from dad reading it to her. She remembered the bitter water the fairy gives Pinocchio. We read three chapters of it. I have never read it (strange enough, as my family is Italian) and it is quite something. In the third chapter, Pinocchio has himself a hissy fit and throws himself down on the ground, while the onlookers,

Continuing to work on the cursive letter g. She wrote glass. Then she learned the letter j. She did fine with it.

She made a few Chi Rho symbols too (☧), for some unknown reason! 

So, they are backwards, but still.

Fina: "mom, do you know what this is?" Mom: "yes, it is the Chi Rho." Fina: "yup, you're right!" Fun!

This precious and lovely moment devolved a few minutes later into the following scenario: Fina crying, whining, making a hoarse donkey kind of braying while working on her letter j. Mommy-fail moment, I brayed right back at her, and loudly. Which led to more crying, tears, gnashing of teeth etc etc. Should I remind myself again that afternoon schooling does not work so well for us!!! So, we had to have some cuddles, apologies and a chat about why this kind of behaviour does not help us, it does not help our cursive to look nice and so forth. I had to send her upstairs (to be out of my sight) for a little while, so she is playing a few rounds of Rush Hour Jr.  As she is doing that, I hear her singing her skip counting by 5s song at the top of her lungs. She is over it, it seems (for the moment at least)!

So I ran upstairs to take a pic of her playing nicely and she proceeded to be a brat by rolling back onto the bed so that I couldn't get a good pic of her.

And now she is reciting from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream "I know a bank where the while thyme blows" "on my nose, on my nose, on my nice, clean nose." Yikes!

Oh, my life is quite something, isn't it? Go ahead and laugh, my dear friend J!

She now came back downstairs, wanting to colour, and asked to hear the quote from Midsummer Night's Dream that she was referencing, with the caveat that she "does not want to learn it," but just to hear it. So I found the audioclip of that passage and she is listening to all the passages while colouring.

I might as well share this resource with all of you, my loyal blog followers. Our friend L is using this book with her kids in her homeschool, to learn to recite passages from Shakespeare.  There is a website that goes along with the book, How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig. On the website, the quotes that are to be learned are available to be printed and there are also links to audioclips of those same quotes. Scroll down and you will find them too!

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 20

So, I just spent an hour this morning (while Fina slept in, FINALLY!) adding labels, in a very cursory way, to all of my previous blog posts. NMB, let me know what you think! I have not been able to get the "search my blog" box to perform any kind of searches, so I deleted it. I will try to work on my labels with more detail with my new posts. I hope this helps make my blog a bit more searchable.

We spent A LOT of time outside, playing in the snow, today. It was not as windy as yesterday, and it was snowing ever so gently. Beautiful!

She is trying to catch snow for "tire sur la neige" for the third time. She thought if she held the bowl forwards, more snow would find it. Alas, it did not!

November 19 - Co-op day #1

So exciting! We had an excellent co-op get together today. We met at our local library a little later than anticipated (the weather in Southern MB was treacherous! A lot of blowing snow.

We started with a pep-talk / devotional / wonderful words of encouragement by our friend E. The kids sang our national anthem and prayed the Lord's Prayer together.

We moved to recitation. T did a great job with his speech from A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Our friend SF recited a couple funny poems / tongue twisters. Fina recited "The Cow" poem wonderfully.

We looked at Rembrandt's Prodigal Son for our picture study.

L told us the painter's name, and then we looked at the painting for 3 minutes. Fina nearly freaked out crying because she remembered that she doesn't like having to look intently and then having the pic taken away to then tell back what she remembers. But she was able to remember, just like everyone else. She had some very insightful observations (like the people in the background look not nice). I think today's experience really helped her not be stressed about this anymore. She sees she did just as well as the older boys did.  I am so grateful for this co-op. Not having siblings and schooling alone is a challenge. Seeing the other children participate in this showed her she CAN do it. Priceless!

We took turns saying what we saw. Then L read to us the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke. Then we looked at the painting again and tried to relate it, though the kids didn't quite get who was who, but I know we moms enjoyed making the correlation.

Henri Nouwen has a book about this painting. The Return of the Prodigal Son.   I have a lenten devotional book based on the lectures that formed the book, From fear to Love.  In it, I remember reading that one hand is of a woman and one hand is of a man. I saw that right away when I saw the painting.

Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream as retold in E. Nesbitt's book - I can't believe that Fina remembered a lot about the story, and was retelling Puck's mischevious acts, and she could answer the questions about who did what. We had read this a few weeks ago! This CM reading and narrating thing REALLY works.

Hymn. L lead us in the Doxology. We sang it through a few times. It was fun, I thought.

Finger knitting. I was a bit flustered to start, but the kids got the hang of it just the same. It goes to show you how difficult it is each to teach people stuff! They enjoyed it. Even little 3-year old E did quite a few rows of hers.  We hope to knit a few tubes of finger knitting, and then sew them together to make a scarf.

Nature Study. E showed us how to paint a landscape, with a blue sky, golden fields and some green trees in the middle. The children took turns presenting their water colour painting (using the dry-brush technique) to the rest of us.

We had our lunch somewhere in there, because our time had moved on and the kids were getting antsy. Our plan is to have our lunch outside of the library.  We also did some jumping jacks, push ups and a few dances of "Ring around the Rosey" sprinkled throughout our time.

We got outside to play at around 2pm (it takes quite a while to wrangle up all 5 kids, plus 3 moms!)

We went to the park near our house, and the kids got to play on the play structure, on the dirt hills, and in the snow. It was a lovely time had by all!

Seriously, geese? You are tardy!!!

S says his favourite part was "playing with his friends and the finger knitting." Fina told me her favourite part was the finger knitting and the painting. SA said she liked the finger knitting and the painting (and signing out books, ha!). We will have to ask T what he liked most about the day.

What a blessing to have people to share this journey with. I have no words to describe how blessed I felt today with these ladies and their lovely kids. What we did today might not advance us in checking things off our homeschooling list, but it is SO MUCH more than that. Worth beyond measure.

It is so nice that the children enjoy each other's company. The play so nicely together. But they also learn well. They did their best to respect each other and to respect the moms. I know Fina enjoyed listening to others.

Our friend E summed up our day much more eloquently in our FB group.  This is what she wrote:

"What a great day! Our children sang, prayed, played, observed and reflected on a Rembrandt, laughed at the fun of and acted out Shakespeare, practiced practical handicrafting: finger-knitting! Painted a Manitoba landscape, practiced public speaking through recitation (poetry, rhymes, and Shakespeare lines) and presenting their artwork to one another.  A blessing of a day... Not to mention the first snow day of the season!"

Before supper, Fina did 10 cards from Rush Hour Jr game (thank you E, for the loan). She just loved it! And she really got in to it. I was concerned it would be too challenging for her (we haven't really played these types of games before) but I need not have worried. I'm going to be buying her the non junior version soon.

After supper, she wanted to do more water colour painting.

All in all, a wonderful day!!!

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 16, AO year 1, week 8 (in a prolonged incarnation!)

We have an exciting week in store!

Monday (yesterday, sorry I was late to post!): we are having one our little friends L over to play. She goes to public school and has the day off. She is bringing her 18" doll Kyla. Kyla and Fina's doll Christie are going to have a wonderful day together, I'm sure. And we got some outdoor play with L's siblings afterwards as well. A lovely day!

Tuesday: mom's group and our outdoor play group.

Wednesday: we will do some school work and possibly go to French story time at our local library. Fina was asking about going back to it.

Thursday: should be our first CM homeschool co-op meeting. We hope that will be a great day!

Friday: some more school work etc.

Life is so busy. I am so grateful I don't work outside the home and that Fina schools at home. How would we ever find the time to work and go to school with such a busy life we have!

I am trying to work on being grateful for the life we have. I am having a hard time right now, being a bit resentful of some things, and I have to get over it, because it isn't fair of me.