Perk of homeschooling #132: After having completed a full school day, Fina spent 2 hours painting.
She took her inspiration from Constable's "Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds" (1823) with the arch-like trees!!!
She painted a detail of the nest
And that was
before going out to play with her friends in the snow. We are so fortunate.
She worked on sewing using an old costume of hers. Here is some of her stitching!
Neat and even, wouldn't you say?
We read this cute book,
Rocks in His Head by Carol Otis Hurst. It is about a dad who loves rocks and, after many trials in life, ends up as a curator in a museum.
We finished reading
Mr. Popper's Penguins. It was very funny and cute. And we finished
The Calico Captive and we loved it. Now we are reading
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare for our historical fiction and George MacDonald's
The Princess and the Goblin as our free read. Both are really exciting and great fun!
Fina worked a bit on her chalk pastel drawings
We did a great nature study through the window. We journaled about the snow that was falling and resting upon the crab apple tree and upon the apples. Fina dictated the following to me about what she was seeing:
There is snow on the tree. It doesn't look sticky, but I can't tell from in here. There are three cut-off branches plus three more and four more. The crabapples are all shrivelled up. There is a branch where you could sit. Some of the bark is shredding off. The bark is in little layers, not as waxy like a birch tree, but paper-y a bit, but harder and thicker, much thicker. There is snow falling and it is sitting on little pockets on the bark on the tree trunk. There is a thin layer of snow on top of the crabapples themselves, with a bit more in the middle of the top in the hole where the stem is.
Funnily, all morning there were birds at our feeder, but right now there aren't any in the crabapple tree at all.
The snow is falling sort of like little tiny flakes. Not "spitting" in snow. A bit faster than spitting in rain. The snow is coming a bit diagonally from the east. It is swirling a little bit. It must not be very windy. The flakes are not giant.
Over past the house, there is an evergreen tree - maybe a spruce. There doesn't seem to be snow on it, from here. But it is so far away and high up, it is hard to see.
There is a bush with dried leaves. There might be a titch of snow on them, but not enough. [Fina gets her binoculars] No, there is no snow on the leaves with the binoculars.
The sun is visible through the clouds, like a bit of each. The rest of the sky is all white, as white as the snow, because the snow isn't white. It's white-ish with a teeny bit of gray. There is no blue anywhere in the sky.
Afternoon occupations! Fina was able to spend another few hours doing some brush drawing while listening to
The Red Fairy Book by Andrew Lang on Librivox.
On Saturday, we spent about half an hour watching a Pileated Woodpecker on our crab apple tree through the window. We had never seen one, certainly not so close up. He was pecking and pecking at the rotten crab apples, with the same brute force he uses for a trunk of a tree. The colour of his crest was incredible!
This photo does not do him justice!
And we went for a nice walk with Fina's homeschooling dad in the forest and on the creek. Freezing cold, but the sun did peak out! It was -23 celsius (feels like -33 with the wind) but we lasted for almost two hours!
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The moment in math when your daughter realizes that she can count by 2s forever! She's at 300 now. Oh, what a grin on her face as she puzzles it out!!!
The way we are doing recitation this year, we cover less ground and Fina is less likely to memorize the poems, but she is enjoying the longer read narrations. As for poetry, she is really enjoying the poems we are reading. Again, I think she would enjoy memorizing some of them. I think a hybrid of the system we used to use with the system we are currently using might benefit Fina. Only because she enjoys memorizing poetry and reciting it from memory.
We didn't have a geography mapping lesson this week, but on Tuesday, Fina just decided she wanted to make a map of the meadow in our forest.
If you know our meadow at all, you will see that it is actually correct! She correctly depicted the hold the kids play in, the various wooded areas, the creek (in orange highlighter) etc. I was beyond impressed!
Our piano lessons are going very well.
Though we have some trouble connecting with (and narrating from)
Minn of the Mississippi, today we read about the voyageurs and coureurs-de-bois and the canoe that Minn found at the bottom of Lake Pepin. That sort of thing, we get!
And I just have to recount this episode from this morning's lessons. I'm taking painting lessons from my daughter! Haha! We were painting a spruce cone she brought home from outdoor playgroup this week and this is what she says to me:
"Your is not very realistic. You may want to look at mine, for the next time you want to paint a pine cone, for some inspiration. Yours is very pretty, but it really isn't very realistic, I'm sorry to say." And "Yours is too fuzzy. It looks like a piece of moss. It would be nice if it were a piece of moss. But not a cone."
Then, she proceeded to give me pointers on how to use certain techniques to make it look more realistic. I just had to laugh. Her conversation was in no way malicious, but completely in earnest. To be honest, hers
does look more realistic. And I'm not surprised!
Fina's drawing
And mine!
I'm a good sport, I'd say. But she
is the more talented painter!
Then, she continued on her theme from last week and painted this.
We're not doing the best with handicrafts during morning lessons (I've taken them out completely from the schedule), but because I am so fortunate, Fina finds time on her own to tackle some projects - during our evening family read-aloud time, or while I'm making lunch etc.
She made this little purse. She sewed on the button, then sewed the felt together at the sides, and I cut the button hole for her. Then she decided to crochet a long chain and she sewed it on the inside of the purse. And ta da!
Cute, right?
Fina got to skate for a little while. There was more snow than I was anticipating, and I cleared a little bit of it with my tiny shovel, but she was skating just fine in 3cm of snow! It is pretty cold but it is better than it has been lately.
