AO year 1, week 10

We did our morning prayer. We were unable to hold our second co-op meeting, due to illness in one of the families. Even with only three families, it is going to be tricky to find a week where EVERYONE is healthy!

We started with artist study. This is our final painting by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, "Mur.". She did better with it today, she was less stressed. I asked her to just look at it and then narrate it to me, just like she does with readings. And I reminded her that narrating never stresses her out, so not to worry, and just tell me whatever she remembers.

We took a look at lower case print letters. Before we start reading, I figured she had better learn to recognize these. She knows how to write upper case print, and now cursive. We never learned lower case print. A good thing about waiting this long to introduce it, she learned them all in about 3 minutes.  Just to recognize them, not to actually form them herself.

We caught up on yesterday's Jesse tree, and today's, as well as our advent devotional for both days.

We worked on some Christmas cards that need to go into the mail for our long-distance family members.

And we listened to a whole lot of Brahms and sang a few advent hymns.

December 9, AO year 1 week 9

Yesterday's outdoor play group went very well. Such lovely weather we are having, for December in Manitoba!

Dad had the car assessed by our insurance and the damage is reparable. I am so pleased there wasn't more extensive, frame damage.  We are all feeling fine, which is wonderful.

This morning, I read "The Tempest" from Nesbit's Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare. Fina was able to narrate it to me. I did not know the story.

Fina and I finished listening to the Little House on the Prairie audiobook. Fina followed along with our novel.

I read chapters 21-23 of our current free-read, Pinocchio.

We did some math. 24 C-F. Making 10. She is doing fine with this. I happened to look at the Instruction Manual for this chapter as Fina was doing her work, and they have a cool activity called "racing to 100" where you fill a hundred block with different ways of making 10. She did it and then she read all the statements she had created to me. "1+9=10, 7+3+10." It was a fun activity.  I am glad I happened upon it.

Fina then wanted to build some mosaics on her hundred block, so she did that.

We have been keeping up with our Jesse tree and advent devotionals. And lots of outdoor time and lots of random stuff at home (crafts, playing, dressing up, this and that!)

Hopefully tomorrow we will be having our second homeschooling co-op meeting (if everyone manages to stay healthy). It should be fun!

December 7

Hello faithful blog followers.

After our car collision on Thursday evening, we haven't done much schooling since, as you can imagine. My neck and shoulders were sore, but I am feeling much better. Back to normal, I'd say. Fina isn't traumatized. She wasn't scared to get back into the car, so that was great. Dad is ok too. Not exciting, but we are grateful things weren't worse.

On Friday, we had a fun outdoor playtime with some friends in their backyard. The weather is so warm and lovely here right now. This is not regular December weather in MB.

On Saturday, we went with some other friends to St Malo beach to play. Fina was so pleased to see the "lake" was frozen over.  It was a gorgeous day.

In the evening, we headed back to the university for a Christmas musical celebration put on by the music department. The Winnipeg Brass Quintet was also there (WSO brass players, I believe). They were wonderful as always. Fina and I enjoyed it (dad was involved in reading some of the Bible passages, so he was up on stage). Though we have listened to a fair amount of classical music, I guess we have never listened to any opera. There was a mezzo-soprano soloist who sang a couple of pieces. The first one was in German. Fina leaned over and whispered "what is she saying? I can't understand it." So I told her it was in German. Further on in the programme, this same mezzo-soprano sang again. "Mom, I still can't understand it!" I told her it was in English. She made a disgusted face at me and said "why does she have to sing so loud? It doesn't sound good at all!"  Hillarious. Goodness knows, the operatic voice takes some getting used to. Some of us will never acquire the taste for it. I believe Fina will fall into that category. (As an aside, she has been listening to a lot of Adele right now. And loving that. So, Adele's crooning voice, or a very harsh operatic voice... You be the judge!)  All in all, Fina did really well. We didn't get home until 10:30pm.

On Sunday, we headed to Winnipeg for church etc, and Fina and I spent a couple of hours at one of our favourite places, Bois des Esprits, in the south end of the city. Just lovely!

The Seine River (no, not the one in Paris! The one in Winnipeg!) was mainly frozen over. Fina was so pleased to see that. There were some still moving water parts, but it was much more frozen than our Joubert Creek in town. Strange. The Seine is much wider, but it must be shallower and maybe less flow-y!

We have been keeping up with our Jesse tree and our advent devotionals. Last night, Fina and I played a few roungds of Go Fish with some cute Disney cards we found.

Today, we are heading to dad's school again (shocking, I know!) for a Christmas party for the Moms and Tots group. In the afternoon, we plan on heading back out to the forest area there. It is supposed to climb up to plus 5 this afternoon, so we will take advantage of that while dad teaches until late in the afternoon.

And tomorrow, we have our outdoor play group. And Wednesday we have a Christmas banquet at dad's school. And Thursday we have our homeschooling co-op (if everyone is healthy again!) and Friday we are going to our friend's house to decorate Christmas cookies. Considering we have no family within 2500kms and have very little Christmas commitments, we are pretty busy right now!!!

So, all different kinds of learning and experiencing over the last few days!

December 3

Our homeschool co-op ended up getting postponed (one of the siblings in our group has croup!!!) so we decided to go with dad to Kids College at his work. It is a fun moms and tots type of play time in the school gym. Fina has been asking to go to it, expressing her concern that now, because she is homeschooling, she never gets to do fun stuff like that anymore!  Right. So, we went.

We watched the video for chapter 24 before leaving the house, making 10s (you know, 9+1, 8+2, 7+3, 6+4, 5+5 all equal 10). Once we got to the university, we sat and did a bit of math (24A-C) before the play time started.

I am having a hard time right now with her not holding her writing utensil properly. Even with her Lamy ABC fountain pen, that has the grips built right in, she is doing acrobatics to get her third finger into strange places. I'm not quite sure what to do about that. It is causing so much frustration that during this math time, I took the pen and filled in the answers for her.  I read somewhere online about using stubby pencils (or taking a pencil and cutting it into three and sharpening the tiny pieces). I might have to try that. I don't want it to be an issue of contention, but now I feel like she is doing it on purpose!

We had a nice day at the university. Went for lunch with dad and his (and our) professor friends.After lunch, we went for a short hike on campus. There is a lovely forest-y area towards the (nearly-frozen) river there. We had never walked there before. We came back in and Fina played some Rush Hour Jr.  I read a few chapters of our free-read, Pinocchio, to her. Then it was time to go.

We had an eventful drive home from school, however. We were rear-ended (by a student, no less) as we came to a stop at the stop sign before turning on to the highway. Fina was drinking from her water bottle, so her lip was bleeding. And she was crying from the scare. I felt it in my neck and shoulders right away. Dad seemed ok. The car is fine (just the back bumper took the hit) but we are filing a claim. Time to replace the car seat.  Say a prayer that injuries don't pop up in the next few days. And a prayer of thanksgiving that it wasn't more serious of a crash.

I was worried Fina would be more traumatized, but she was so good once we got home. Busying herself with making a wardrobe out of cardboard and lots of tape for her 18" doll's clothes (and keeping quiet and out of the way as dad was on the phone with the insurance).  This is how we do stuff around here.

I am thankful we are all ok, the other driver too. It reminds us how important seat belts and car seats are. And how things can change in just a minute. We are very grateful to be alive and well right now!

December 2, AO year 1, week 9

We had a wonderful afternoon yesterday with our outdoor play group. The kids were having so much fun and the weather was so mild, that Fina and I ended up being outside for 4.5 hours. Just lovely!

Here she is sledding with some of her friends.

We started our day today with our Advent devotional "stuff." We lit the advent candle, did our devotional, and I read the Bible verse that goes along with our ornament of the day for our Jesse Tree. Fina colours in the ornament as I read it.

We started with some cursive work, our new letter, the letter "r."

We went to story time at the library, it was pyjama day. We can say that is our foreign language for the day, as it is in French.

Fun, though useless, craft with shaving cream. She had so much fun doing the buttons! Olaf snowman on a moonlit, starry night.

After a quick jaunt through town, to the post office and The Artist Pivot, we continued working on the letter r. The letter r is very hard and quite personal, I think.

You can see mom's red "r"s are all different.

Not great, but we will keep working on it. We just had to learn i and e so she could write her name! She was beyond pleased!

We did some poetry. Fina recited a few poems to me and I re-read some of the more recent poems. We read a new poem today, "To Minnie." We are almost finished with A Child's Garden of Verses. Soon, we will be moving on to our next poetry selections from A. A. Milne's Now We are Six and When We Were Very Young.

On to math. We did MUS 23X from the extra activities book as a review of tally marks. She MAINLY gets it. We will move on to the next chapter next time.

We read chapters 15-18 of our current free read, Pinocchio.

It was a bit of a light school day, but we will continue.
Tomorrow we have the second meeting our homeschooling co-op and we are really looking forward to that.

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 27, AO year 1, week 9

After yesterday's inside day, I'm glad we are going to meet our friend J and J for some outdoor fun right after lunch.

We listened to some Brahms this morning.

We read chapters 5 and 6 of Pinocchio, our free read.

Chapter 23 of our Math.  Tally marks. It is very simple, but it is taking her a bit of concentration and diligence (hello?) to wrap her head around it. It is funny how the things I think will be difficult are not, and the things I think will be simple are not either!!! But she is getting it. We did 23 A, B and C.

We did some poetry. She recited all that she could recite. I read three new poems "To Willie and Henrietta," "To my Mother," and "To my Auntie."

We sang through "Praise God from whom all blessings flow" a few times.

We read "Androclus and the Lion" from Fifty Famous Stories Retold. She gave me a wonderful narration of it. And we had a chance to speak about people being fed to the lions (!)

We reviewed her cursive letters g and j. She wanted to do a review of all her letters, so we did that as well.

Mom's in red.

A quick lunch, and then out to play. You know, it is only *minus* 8 (feels like minus 17) celsius!