finishing up term 1

A snapshot of our days this week.

Playing in the not-quite-yet-frozen creek.

One of Fina's handicrafts. She loom knitted herself a neck warmer / ear warmer.

She was working on her chalk pastels and wanted to draw this as a non-lesson, free drawing. It is really lovely in person.

When it is a million below with very high winds, you do what you have got to do to go skiing!

Skiing with friends on a much milder day.

Fina is really enjoying solfège. She has got sol-mi-la down really well!
We finished up with our picture study of six of Vermeer's paintings. We really like the ones we have studied! (Thanks to online recommendations, I rigged up this ribbon and glue gunned clothespegs to it and, voilà!)

We studied Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and it was a great piece to listen to and talk about.

She has enjoyed the books we are reading and continues to give great narrations. Her Bible narrations, especially, are great this term. We are reading about the plagues in Exodus and have had some lively discussions about those.

We are finishing up Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux and we just love it. She is such an engaging author!

Next week? Exams!

Leading up to December

Our architecture book has really inspired Fina to want to know more about pyramids. We picked up a handful of so-so books at our local library. But I've requested to borrow a copy of The Boy of the Pyramids by Ruth Fosdick Jones. I hope it lives up to the "living books" hype I've heard about it!

We read about pine cones in Arabella Buckley's Trees and Shrubs and found a cone (on her nature tray that we brought home who knows when!) that exhibited all the properties we read about. It was great fun!

On Friday, we went to Fina's "fort" that she is working on, in the forest.

For our nature study on Monday, we took a branch of of Fina's woodcarving box and painted it. It's becoming hard to tell which is mine and which is hers! She did such a great job with it. She observed it very closely and really got in touch with her branch!

She really wanted giant yarn, giant knitting needles and a giant crochet hook for Christmas. So, her new handicraft is knitting this! She thinks she wants to make a chair mat with it. It is really thick. I'm not even sure how she is able to knit with such large tools, but she is. And she loves it!

Fina is loving our historical fiction read, Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare. She is also really enjoying Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. All of our current books are really quite enjoyable.

We are trying to do a bit more "work in the kitchen." This week, she made zucchini moons. She cut the zucchini, sautéed them in butter and grated some parmesan cheese on top. They were yummy! I would love to find a way to have her spend more time in the kitchen, but we are still trying to figure out how to order our days to be able to fit everything in that we want to do!

We went to a concert at Fina's Homeschooling Dad's school, with a brass quintet from the WSO. It was lovely, as always. No Mozart, unfortunately, but that's ok!

knitting and skiing

We finished reading The Courage of Sarah Noble and our moving on to Calico Captive by Elizabeth George Speare as our historical fiction reading. We read the first chapter and it is riveting. I fear it may be a little mature for Fina (as there is a young woman who is being wooed by a man) but she told me she liked it and didn't want to stop!

I purchased three McGuffey readers and we are quickly making our way through them.

Fina is enjoying her knitting.

And continues to enjoy her brush drawing.

You might not be able to see that corn cob, but it is so detailed!

I love how in a CM education, you read slowly and spread out. It can seem counter-intuitive, but there is something wonderful about picking up a book, after having set it aside for one week. We are experiencing this with Rosemary Sutcliffe's The Wanderings of Odysseus. Fina loves it and easily picks back up from where we left off.

We had a lovely jaunt in our forest on Friday afternoon. Fina found a great tree limb to sit in!

One the weekend, Fina finally convinced me to let her go skiing. (I keep discouraging her, telling her it would not be fun to ski on the iced over slush and that she should wait for the next snow.) Well, did she prove me wrong! She had a lovely night-time ski on Saturday in our park and again on Monday night in a wind storm. We are still waiting on that new snow!

We've spent some lovely time watching our window bird feeder over the last few days. On Monday, we actually saw a blue jay come to it many times (though he is so big, almost too big for it), as well as the black capped chickadees and nuthatches who are our regular guests. Wonderful!

Another proof of recitation leads to memorization. We've been working on "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost. We've only spent less than 10 minutes, 4 times (once a week) and today, Fina was able to recite it almost perfectly on Monday!

We finished reading The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, as one of our free reads. It is a cute story and we both enjoyed it. I think we're going to try Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux next.

We started some history things this week. I started our family's history chart (outlining the years from when Fina's homeschooling dad and I met to the present) and Fina started her own life's history chart, from her birth to the present). We spent about 15 minutes filling in some information and it went really well. This leads up to other history tools.

Today, on our way home from outdoor playgroup, we stopped by our town's nativity scene that was just put up this weekend. They don't put Jesus in until Christmas.

Thanks for joining us!

snow!

Here is a little summary of our last few weeks:

We started our Architecture lessons! I found V.M. Hillyer's elusive A Child's History of Art (including the three sections on Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) at a used book sale in September and I was so excited! We did the first chapter on Egyptian houses of the dead: pyramids and tombs cut from rock. Fina really enjoyed it!

Fina absolutely loves Wanderings of Odysseus. She isn't squeamish, like other kids can be, about Cyclops banging their heads on the ground and crushing their brain etc.

For our handicrafts, Fina is continuing to work on her loom knitting, knitting with two needles (that  grandma taught her), and whittling.

We started reading The Courage of Sarah Noble as part of our historical fiction. And we started reading George Vancouver, a biography, to go along with our Canadian history.

Fina is loving doing the brush-drawing work. She paints something almost every day.

We saw this manequin at the ROM last month and she wanted to paint the Pharoah's wife.

Fina also greatly enjoys drawing with chalk pastels.

Her cursive work is coming along nicely. We are learning a lot through copywork. I just pick a line or a poem from her readings and she works on that, one word at a time.

Fina reads aloud for at least 10 minutes every day. She is progressing by leaps and bounds.

Aside from our poetry compilation, we have been reading some poems by Robert Frost in Poetry for Young People: Robert Frost. She is reciting his winter poems wonderfully!

Her Spanish is coming along nicely. We work on our story, our song, our nursery rhyme and associated vocab. And she loves it. She has also created a strong relationship with a certain Topo Gigio album while visiting my parents (and their record player). Thanks to YouTube, we found a copy of it. Further continuing our Spanish and Italian lessons through song!

We are in full winter over here, but had a temperature respite this week. These are the kids at outdoor playgroup. They were actually able to build snow structures!

This morning, before we started our school, we spent a long while observing the birds at our window feeder. We saw many chickadees, who darted back and forth, and then two blue jays came. They scared away the chickadees who did not return for a long while. For our drawing lesson at the end of our morning, Fina drew this chickadee, first from memory (she laughed and laughed, because it looks like a seagull!) and then from her field guide.

It actually wasn't terrible. She got the cap and the neck part quite right, actually. It is just the body shape that was off.

In other news, I finally started keeping my own Book of Centuries. I'm using Laurie Bestvater's. I have another one, by Riverbend Press, ready for Fina when she is older. My first entry? 1576, Martin Frobisher's first voyage. It is all very exciting!

Ontario adventures (including the ROM)

Over the last few weeks, Fina and I had a nice trip (some business, some leisure) visiting our family in Ontario.

Before we went, she watercolour painted these for her cousins and grandparents.

We love this polar bear RCMP at our airport.

While we were in Ontario, we did some nature study about this Honey Locust (and many other things).

Fina always loves the ROM.

the subway station at the ROM

We found this cool exhibit with lots of paintings by Norval Morrisseau (the painter of Fina's favourite painting from the WAG, from when she was little)

One of Norval Morrisseau's painting

We went to the Chrysanthemum Show, which is always fun to see!

We visited Parliament Hill and learned a lot about our government. We were able to attend Question Period and saw our Prime Ministers and MPs "collaborate." We were unable to get any pics of that, as we had to go through security and had to check our devices. Security is taken very seriously at Parliament Hill.

Centere Block

The East Block (our library has a flag that flew there)

The Rotunda

Grandma taught Fina how to knit! She really enjoyed that.

Fina climbed grandma's fir tree.

And, later, nonna's maple tree

She planted one of the seeds/beans from the Honey Locust, and, within a few weeks, we had this!

We finished reading Clyde Robert Bulla's A Lion to Guard Us as part of our historical fiction. The story is really captivating and both Fina and I enjoyed it!

We took advantage and had both sets of grandparents tell Fina a bit about their lives, when they were kids, looking through photo albums etc.

As of October 31, we completed our third year of the 1000HoursOutside challenge. Fina hit 1338.5 hours outside from November 1 2016. (On Oct 31 2016, she was at 1384 and in 2015, she hit 1084). I'm not going to keep track anymore. I think we've got it!

And we came home to this!

We did our lessons today. Fina did two drawing lessons with chalk pastels. And some watercolour painting "from her imagination" as well.

reeds

poppy

We started reading through Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (we saw that play a few months ago).  We listened to an audio version. I think I might alternate the audio version with my reading aloud.

While we were away, I picked up a bunch of books at a big used book sale. I found three of the McGuffey Eclectic Primer Reading Series, so she started reading one of those today.

chalk pastels!

Fina was extremely proud with her cursive work here. She worked so hard. She wanted to make a count-down calendar and did not want to use lined paper. Considering she is writing on a blank page, she did quite a job, I think!

In her free time one afternoon, she wanted to continue on with her chalk pastel drawing lessons. She drew these on her own.

We've been trying to take advantage of this beautiful fall weather. Fina's homeschooling dad came home early from work one day to come with us to our local Provincial Park. Fina ran up and down this "mountain" many times. Her little heart was pounding! But it is such good exercise!