AO year 1, week 23, January 12

We read Luke 2:1-20 and Fina gave a great narration

We sang our hymn, "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty."
Fina finished up lesson 11 of her math. She will do her test next time.
We read "The First Letter" from Kipling's Just So Stories. It was very cute. I stopped once in the middle for a narration and at the end.
We read poems 56 and 57 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.
Fina read aloud "The Pancake" from the Treadwell Primer.  She read it with such expression! I wish I would have recorded it. I think it was her best reading ever.
Fina reviewed her letter K and wrote her friend's name.

I showed her the letter L and she did a few, but her heart wasn't in it. We will continue with it next time.

Fina recited a few passages for me. We started with the first line of our current passage from Twelfth Night. She learned the first line.

We looked at Jacques-Louis David's "The Coronation of Napoleon" painting in silence for (almost) three minutes. Fina gave a detailed description of it.

We started to learn The Parable of the Sower (from Luke 8:4-8). We read it through aloud together once.

We sang our folksong, "She's Like the Swallow."

I read "The Dogs and the Hides" from Aesop's Fables and Fina narrated it. The moral of it is don't try do something that is actually impossible. A good moral, I think!

The whittling continues here. She made a slingshot (with some help from nonno on Facetime).

And look what Fina's homeschooling dad bought me!  My own vintage copy of The Cloud of Witness.  Oh my goodness, it is just LOVELY!!!

Handwritten inscription is from 1896! 120 years old!!!

I love it! (He's the best!)

Now, Fina is doing some fingerknitting with sparkly yarn we bought for her yesterday. So, woodcarving and fingerknitting are our handicrafts of choice at the moment.

AO year 1, week 23 January 11

We had a very fun outdoor playgroup yesterday afternoon. It was very cold, but sunny and nice. Fina and I were outside for about 4 hours.  Here she is with one of her friends, playing in a little natural fort.

Today, we listened to some Schubert over breakfast.

We are working on some housekeeping habits here. I offered Fina the choice between taking the dry clothes off the racks or making the beds. She wanted to do both. And she organized her pj drawer. (We did a craft yesterday about an "Act of Kindness beads" which just so happens to be affiliated with St Therese de Lisieux, whose autobiography we are currently reading as a family). Fina pulled it out and thought she could count these 4 jobs as part of her 10 beads for the day. (And she wants to keep track on a calendar, for every day she does all 10 acts of kindness, she wants a check mark. And if she goes one week with all her check marks, she'd like to do something special. Funny, I never really used rewards with Fina, but they are working well with her today! Very motivated and "with a cheerful heart.") Win-win, I say! Thankfully she did her jobs quickly and efficiently and we were able to get on with our school work in a timely fashion.

I read Luke 1:26-38 and Fina gave a very good narration.
We sang through our folk song, "She's Like the Swallow."

I read the story of Antonio Canova from Fifty Famous Stories. Fina loved the story and gave a wonderful narration.

We read poem 52 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, "Upon Boys Diverting Themselves in the River" by Thomas Foxton.

Fina recited the Parable of the Mustard Seed.
She did 11E of her math book.
Fina wanted to have "recess" to play a bit while listening to Schubert. So she did. We don't really do recess as a normal thing, but every once in a while she gets wistful for it (though she never went to public school.)
She reviewed her uppercase cursive letters and learned the letter K.

She read a few pages aloud to me (from a Berenstain Bear's bible story book).
We did chapter 4 of her catechism.
She recited a bunch of Shakespeare passages to me. I read through her new passage to learn to recite, from Twelfth Night, Act II, scene iv, starting at 105.

VIOLA
My father had a daughter loved a man
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship. 

ORSINO
And what’s her history? 

VIOLA
A blank, my lord. She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm i' th’ bud,
Feed on her damask cheek. She pined in thought,
And with a green and yellow melancholy
She sat like Patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?
… 

ORSINO
But died thy sister of her love, my boy? 

VIOLA
I am all the daughters of my father’s house,
And all the brothers too—and yet I know not.

That is going to be a tricky one. It is quite lengthy!

We started a new hymn, "Praise to the Lord, the Almighty." Fina read through the entire first verse, singing it herself.

Fina also wanted to paint and this is her painting.

It is a gift for dad.

That is it for today. Join us tomorrow!

Leading up to January 10

MOTHER CULTURE

As part of my reading, I came across this quote in Megan Hoyt's A Touch of the Infinite that I wanted to share with you. (I have now finished her book. It was lovely!)

"In teaching my children, I tried to remember these three things and even meditate on them so that I never forgot them. Our main goal is to give our children:
1) something to love
2) something to do, and
3) something to think about.
We ought to keep this in mind for every subject we teach. It's the anchor." (181)

This really struck a chord with me. It isn't revolutionary or anything, but it is a good, simple reminder of what we are doing here with this whole homeschooling thing.


I started read Anne White's Minds More Awake. I also had the pleasure of chatting with her for 5 minutes at l'HaRMaS. I am incredibly glad that I went to that weekend.

So, my foray into typing for AO led me to ask my now good virtual friend (though I met him once in person!) Art M. if he needed any kind of help with the CM poetry work he does. And, guess what? He DOES need some help.  So now I will be working with his collaborator Linda, looking through some of Charlotte Mason's handwritten manuscripts to figure out what is going on and sort of gather some info from them, so that they can decide which ones they would like to put the effort into transcribing. Is that exciting or what? To be doing actual primary source work! All my years of researching in undergrad and grad school have prepared me for this! I feel so blessed to be able to give something back to the life-giving world of Charlotte Mason.

UPDATE: We are looking at CM's Volume 7 of her poetry, Story of the World. Handwritten manuscript that was presumably never published. Oh my goodness!

And I am also taking on this other project for Art. As I was reading CM's poetry attached to my Bible reading, through the Logos app, I wanted to find where a specific poem was in her 6 volumes of The Saviour of the World. (It was actually because I thought I had found a typo, so I wanted to go back to his typed transcription to see if it was there and then back to the actual scans of the pages of the books they have online to see how it was written there.) Well, it is (nearly) impossible to go back and find which book the poem is from. I ended up having to scroll through pages and pages of stuff to find where the poem was! This led me to wonder why they hadn't included the volume, book and poem number in each poem as they attached it to Logos. I mentioned that to him and told him this is exactly the kind of meticulous work I am good at! (Art himself wrote to me that when he has come across a poem in Logos that he wanted to reference in one of his writings, he has had to go through those same hoops to figure out where it is in the poetic volumes!) I am very pleased to be a part of this. The big job was transcribing and attaching all the poems to their respective Bible verses. Countless hours of labour, I am sure. This little tweak will just make things even better.



I love this poem by Charlotte Mason. I hit upon it while reading Genesis 3:8 with the Logos app.  I don't know from which one of her six poetic volumes it is (but once my work is done, I will be able to quickly find out!)

Before Abraham was, I AM 

Always, Oh Christ, wert there? At the cool of eve
Didst walk in the Garden with the primal pair?
When Enoch mounted chariot, wert Thou there?
Did old Methuselah see Thee and believe? 

Didst watch with David, hastening to retrieve
Thy chosen Singer, that he yet might share
Divine Companionship, might still declare
All that a man may of his God conceive? 

Did Plato know Thee in the dim obscure?
Great Alexander, saw he Righteousness,
A world his mighty arm was made to bless?
Was Phidias of Thy Beauty very sure? 

In every age, where man at goodness wrought,
Lord, wert Thou with him, unperceived, unsought?

Isn't that a lovely poem? Quite connected to the ideas in The Great Recognition, I think. God is everywhere, in everything, even when we don't know it.


**********

With all my mother culture overload going on right now, poor Fina has been left to do the menial tasks.   (And enjoying playing, drawing, painting, playing, reading, playing, lounging, playing outside, loving life.)


If you are old enough to make a giant mess at the sink when brushing your teeth, you are old enough to clean said sink. And mirror. And counter.  I brought up my Norwex cloths and she did it. Lovingly enough, thankfully.

Fina got some woodcarving tools as late Christmas gifts from both sets of grandparents. There are a LOT of wood shavings everywhere! She is having so much fun!

Today we have our outdoor playgroup. It snowed a lovely snow overnight, so it should be a fun time!  Hoping to do some school work tomorrow!

Thanks for joining me here. Please keep my work in your prayers.

Around Christmas 2016

We haven't done much formal schooling around Christmas time, but we have done quite a lot of learning.

We have done a lot of reading lately.  We finished reading The Pink Fairy Book and have started on the Orange Fairy Book by Andrew Lang. Fina LOVES these stories! We read The Ox-Cart Man (again, we had read it years ago). We also read Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin. I highly recommend this one. It is very fun for winter!
Fina has been reading aloud to us (or to her ponies) frequently. Fina finished reading Tony's Birds aloud. Reading a few pages at a time, she got through it. I enjoy Millicent Selsam's early reader books very much.

We did chapter 15 and the Christmas section of our catechism book.

We are getting in A LOT of outdoor play time.  Here are a few snapshots.

She may be a bit dramatic.

snowshoeing in our yard

prairie girl mountaineering (on our parking lot snow pile, with a long skipping rope)

We have got to get her proper skis. These are plastic thrift store skis and they don't do much.

Fina has been enjoying watching this beed feeder. They tend to come for breakfast!

Fina has done a lot of watercolour painting and other art projects. She has been drawing, doing handicrafts, wrapping gifts for Christmas, listening to "Zecchino D'Oro" Christmas music, playing board games, just playing with this and that, and so much more.

We have been reading the Bible after dinner every night for a long while, but we are trying to be more intentional about it. Fina's homeschooling dad backed this version of the bible on Kickstarter a few years ago and it finally made it to print.  He has been reading to us from this Bibliotheca bible every evening since just before Christmas when it arrived and we have even been drawing names to narrate it. Fina enjoys listening to it and she continues to surprise me with her narrations. We started from the beginning and are still in Genesis. Biblioteca is interesting in that it doesn't have chapter and verse markings. And the 5 volumes are "proper" books, printed on nice non-wood paper, with sewed folios and cloth bound cover.

Fina has been wanting to cook and she made French Toast on Christmas morning. It was delicious (it was my first time ever making French toast. Who knows why I waited so long to try it!)

We also made our first tire-sur-la-neige (maple syrup on snow). Fun as always.

Here is the tiny art she did the week before Christmas that she wouldn't let me see. It was part of our Christmas present from her. For dad, she painted a little pig. For me she painted these lovely birds from Tony's Birds. My paper is just a couple of inches tall. She used a fancy thin marker and watercolours.

She got this mini knitting loom for Christmas and is working on knitting a tiny scarf for a pony on it!

My sister-in-law bought Fina all 5 Holling C Holling books for Christmas. Isn't it wonderful when people ask you what to get? I had given her a wishlist on Indigo.ca with all 5 books, telling her to choose a few (enough to get free shipping since we live 2500kms away from each other!) and she so generously purchased all 5! We are all set now for a good, long while!

I sort of pride myself in getting as much as I can used or free online, but the Holling books have eluded me at every used book sale over the last year and a half.  I have been signing out Paddle over and over again from the library. I am thrilled to have my own copy (of all of them)!

MOTHER CULTURE

My friend E, L and I have started a Manitoba Charlotte Mason group on Facebook and are hosting our first event, a gathering / mini-seminar in January. It is going to be great!

I have been waking up VERY early over the last few months, and on the advice of my good friend L, I am embracing it. Rather than uselessly spending my time on Facebook etc., I have decided to do some very focused reading (away from the distractions of other humans being awake in our house!). This is what I started doing in the mornings since just after Christmas:

• reading the readings of the day

• looking up said readings in Charlotte Mason's poetic writings based on the Bible, The Saviour of the World using the Logos app and Art M's linking them to their verses as explained here. (Art blogs at Charlotte Mason Poetry. I met him at the l'HaRMaS retreat and have been following his work since then. He is a busy man with a love of delving deeper into Charlotte Mason's writings.)

• reading the day's poetic verses and Bible verses in Edith Gells The Cloud of Witness.  Riverbend Press has put out a lovely reprint of it, but I'm currently using this free one online. Fina's homeschooling dad has ordered an old one for me as a late Christmas present from Abebooks.  I'm using Art M's calendar to follow along.  They have a facebook page set up for the Riverbend Press reprit here, and there you can find the link to the calendar.

• Fina's homeschooling dad and I have decided to read some writings of the doctors of the Church. (I'm not sure what took me so long to come to something like this. It isn't like I don't enjoy this type of reading. I just haven't been intentional about it. There was a lot of twaddle in my last few decades.) 

I would like to read Catherine of Siena's major treatise The Dialogue of Divine Providence and he is reading Thérèse de Lisieux's The Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. Two of the four women doctors of the Church.  The translations (from Italian and French respectively) that I have linked to above seem to be the best critical editions in English. 

I actually started reading Thérèse de Lisieux's work today and I'm hoping to read Catherine's as well. Both at the same time. We shall see!  I am also toying with the idea of simultaneously reading Catherine in Italian. This critical edition by Giuliana Cavallini (on whose work my English translation is from) is available online for some unknown reason (it is from the 1995) at the Italian website for "Centro Studi Cateriniani." 

Tonight, Fina's homeschooling dad thought to start Thérèse's autobiography aloud. Fina loved it and asked for him to read more. The beginning at least is written in a very conversational style, recounting stories of her childhood memories and was certainly understandable by Fina. What a life we have! 

• reading Charlotte Mason's works. I am currently reading volume II, Parents and Children. Both Fina's homeschooling dad and I are taking part in the Idyll Challenge, reading the 6 volumes over two years and each joining in a monthly video conference with a group of women (and he, with a group of men) to discuss the readings. We joined it in their fifth month. Art M had the idea to start it for men, and right away a sister group was started.  I am so thankful I was invited to take part it in this challenge when I was at the L'HaRMaS retreat in Ontario in the fall.

• other reading. I just am finishing up Megan Hoyt's A Touch of the Infinite: Studies in Music Appreciation with Charlotte Mason.  I had the pleasure of meeting her at l'HaRMaS as well.  A lovely woman and a wonderful book! I highly recommend it.  She talks of things practical, theoretical and philosophical. Her writing style is lovely.  I am following many trails she has put me on to see how I can improve our music studies. (She also wrote this lovely picture book which I bought at l'HaRMaS, Hildegard's Gift. Fina and I have enjoyed it and read through it a few times. The illustrations are wonderful and Fina has been inspired to imitate the drawing style.) I'm not sure what I will move on to next. Possibly Anne White's Minds More Awake: The Vision of Charlotte Mason which I have as an ebook. I also met Anne at l'HaRMaS. She is the sole Canadian on the AO advisory.

• typing. Amblesideonline has a section of their forum dedicated to transcribing various Charlotte Mason or Charlotte Mason related works that are within the public domain so that they can be compiled and edited etc. I have done a few paragraphs of typing. I don't mind typing, when I have the time. And I feel like I'm giving something back to this wonderful CM world.

• common place journal entries. All of the above items are fair game. I have made more entries in just these past three days than I had made in the last long while!

All this I have done this week, in the stillness, quiet, calm and dark hours of the early morning, to the light of a candle, with a nice cup of tea, sometimes a breakfast-y snack, sitting on the couch, just savouring and enjoying the new day that God has given me.

To those of you who know my daughter, she is pretty "present" when she is awake. Yes, she will play on her own, but one knows she is here when she is here! I love her and I love interacting with her, and with Fina's homeschooling dad. But these quiet times are such a blessing to me. I feel so much better starting my day in this way.

I have tried to read in the past, but it is difficult with the distractions around me. Others can tune them out, but I can't really. So this is working wonderfully for me. I hope to be able to keep it up! I already can see the fruits.

I am planning to start our schooling back in earnest next week. Three weeks off is quite a nice break!

AO year 1, week 22, December 15

We read another bunch of chapters from Olga da Polga and we are quite enjoying them.

We listened to some Schubert this morning over breakfast.

We started with reading about the Knights of the Round Table from Our Island Story. Fina have a great narration.

We looked again at our picture study from last week, "Napoleon Crossing the Alps" by Jacques-Louis David. Fina looked at it for a few minutes in "silence" and then I turned it over and she drew this from memory.

I had her review her recitations. And guess what? She was able to do the whole Parable of the Mustard Seed on her own, without prompting. Maybe the "read it a bunch of times together" system really does work! I was completely floored!

She learned the cursive J.  I do like her cursive a lot.

We read another poem from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse, entitled "Cradle Hymn," a lovely poem about a child and about baby Jesus.

We sang "She's Like the Swallow," our current folksong. Fina knows the first verse.

We did a bit of 11B and 11C of our math, and all of lesson 11D. It is mainly review, which is good.

Fina read pages 42-45 of Tony's Birds aloud to me.

Then she did some drawing / painting / nature study (we'll call it) from the bird that Tony was seeing in the story.  Two tiny, lovely little paintings. I didn't get a proper photo of them and she has put them away "sorry, mom, I'm saving them for Christmas" but I can show you this photo of her while she was painting. We listened to some more Schubert while she painted and I prepared lunch.

We finished our week in three days, somehow, which is great, because I want to start week 23 right away and try to get in another good bit of school before Christmas.

We went out to play with our good friends J and J in the afternoon.  A wonderful day!

AO year 1, week 22, December 14

Yesterday evening, we read Blossom Comes Home by James Herriot and Fina narrated throughout.

We started reading Olga da Polga by Michael Bond (who authored Paddington). It is a cute story about a guinea pig.

We have also continued reading from The Pink Fairy Book, our other free read.

This morning, we listened to some Schubert over breakfast.

We started our new folksong, "She's Like the Swallow." It is a Canadian folksong (from Newfoundland). I had never actually heard it before, though I remember there being a piano piece based on it in one of my piano books. The lyrics are terrible. I think we'll stick to verses 1-3 and forget about the betrayal and the girl dying. All the youtube videos I found of it were very slow and dreary (no wonder!) and Fina didn't like them. So we just sing it ourselves at a nice pace!  I got the song from this lovely collection of folksongs which I borrowed from the library, The Penguin Book of Canadian Folksongs, edited by Edith Fowke. It has the melody and the lyrics.

Fina completed her unit exam in math. She did a great job. We also started our next lesson, lesson 11 about shapes and skip counting by 2s. Both these things are review from last year and she flew through lesson 11A.

I read Luke 1:5-20, 57-66 (the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and John) and Fina narrated it very well.

We sang our hymn, "O Come, O Come Emmanuel."

I read the story of "The Vain Jackdaw and the Borrowed Feathers" from Aesop's Fables and Fina narrated it.

We worked on our recitation. Fina now knows the "What is love?" speech from Twelfth Night.  I read chapter 17 from How to Teach Your Children Shakespeare, the chapter pertaining to this passage.
We continued to work on the Parable of the Mustard Seed.

Fina reviewed her upper case cursive letters and we learned the letter I.

Her cursive is really good. We will continue to work on doing our best at all times. But she has a nice hand, I think. Certainly better than mine!

We read a poem from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse.  We still haven't found one to memorize. But we are enjoying reading them. I usually reread the previous day's poems and then one (or more) new one.

Fina read pages 36-40 of Tony's Birds aloud to me. She is doing a great job!

We read chapter 10 of The Burgess Bird Book, about Redwing the Blackbird and Yellow Wing the Flicker (who is of the wood pecker family). We found both the birds online and listened to their calls.
I asked Fina if she wanted to paint one of the birds, but she is reluctant to pull out her watercolours. I am not concerned. I don't want to force her right now, so I'll let it be for a bit. She loves nature study. I think she is worried about painting an animal (we've mostly done flora this far), though this would be straight out of a field guide.

Fina did some Lego and played the afternoon away.

AO year 1, week 22, December 12

We have had a busy few days, with a Christmas banquet and a Christmas dinner with friends. Fina did a bit of finger knitting for a ribbon on a gift.

We started the day by reading one story from The Pink Fairy, our current free read. Dad has also been reading A Bear Called Paddington to Fina as her bedtime free read.

I read Matthew 1:18-24 and Fina narrated it. It is our gospel reading for this Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Advent.

We did the Liturgical Year section of our catechism book, including the Advent section (pages 151-156).

Fina read aloud the Parable of the Mustard Seed. Because she isn't such a strong reader yet, I think it is hard for her to memorize it this way. I will continue trying this method for the rest of the week and, if she still doesn't know it, we will do our regular "repeat one line three times" til you know it and then move on to the next line. It works well for Shakespeare.

Fina also recited "What is Love?" and "Out o' tune, sir" from Twelfth Night.

Fina did the first two pages of the Unit Exam #1 for Math. Two more pages to go. It reviews the first 10 lessons. She wanted the timer on, so I gave her 10 minutes. She was done in 7 minutes, so she used her remaining 3 minutes to catch up on some of her countdown-to-Christmas lego. (We have been busy these last few days and fell behind with it).

We read chapter 17 of Paddle to the Sea and Fina narrated it. I like how they equate Lake Michigan to a squash with leaves. It does kind of look like that, right?

We sang our folksong again, "My Paddle / Land of the Silver Birch."  Fina is singing along now, most of the time, which is great.

I read the story of "Maximillian and the Gooseherd" from Fifty Famous Stories. It was a funny story of a king who wasn't really able to care for some geese while the little gooseherd boy ran to fetch the King's book.  Fina gave a great narration.

I read "The Monkey and the Cat" from Aesop's Fables. Silly monkey, tricks the cat to scoop the chestnuts out of the fire by flattering her and then eats all the chestnuts and leaves nothing for the cat. Fina narrated it.

I read poems 45-47 from The Oxford Book of Children's Verse. Some are by Isaac Watts. We are still in the early section, but these poems are great fun! I think I did the right thing by skipping the first few chapters.

Fina reviewed her uppercase cursive letters, from A-G, and we learned the letter H. She is flying through these cursive letters!

We listened to some Schubert while Fina worked on her cursive.

Fina read four pages from Tony's Birds aloud to me. She laughed and laughed as Tony figured out that the bird was a Bluejay.

We sang "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" together.

Fina then did an episode of cosmic kids yoga. We hadn't done one in months, so it was good for her to get back into it.

Late in the afternoon, Fina went out to play for a few hours in the dark, freezing cold. She loved it!
At one point I saw her hanging from the top of a 1 metre snow pile, using sticks as climbing hooks and hanging from them in the snow, as if she were climbing the Alps, I guess! Fun!