skating and skiing!

This week, we learned about rhythm in our Sol-fa lesson. Fina wrote out the rhythm for the poem "Peas Porridge Hot." The Zs are to represent quarter rests.

We have taken up our piano lessons in earnest and things are going very well.

Skiing

and

Skating! 

Zoom in and look at the love in those closed eyes! 

We don't have trouble getting out to play in all kinds of weather, but we haven't gotten our act together for picking up with our nature journalling.  It is too cold to take my hands out of my mitts to write our entries. I need to figure something out. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

We are making our way through Mapmaking with Children by David Sobel as part of our geography lessons. We have been doing the hands-on activities of building models, making maps and creating treasure hunts. Fina has taken to this and made a treasure hunt for me, writing down clues and having me follow them, as well as drawing a map with me having to follow the arrows on the map to follow the path to the treasure.

Fina took some scraps and sewed a blanket, a pillow and a mattress for Alfred. And she has been picking up her knitting and her crochet regularly throughout the week.

Not that serendipity is a driving force in my life or anything, but it is lovely when it happens. This morning we were reading in Calico Captive about a May Day celebration, where the habitants put up the may pole and tells about all the festivities surrounding the holiday. And then, during our history lesson from Brown's The Story of Canada, we read about the feudal system equivalent brought about in New France, with the seigneurs, the habitants and the very May Day celebration. You can't plan things to work out like this!

starting term 2

We had a great first day on Monday. We've finally gotten around to doing some mapping. We started by building a model (with wooden blocks) of Fina's room and hid a bunny on the model and hid another of the same little bunny in the corresponding place in her room. Then she hid the bunny for me to find etc. It was fun!

We already finished Because of Winn-Dixie. We loved it. Such a sad and sweet story. We now started Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant. We are about halfway through it and it is such a great story as well!
We also started reading the D'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. Fina loves it, of course!

It is freezing cold here. There were some beautiful sun dogs to be seen on Monday. I was going to take Fina skiing, but I just could not bring myself to do it. So we stayed in!

We started up our piano lessons on Tuesday. It went really well!

On Wednesday, the weather started warming up and Fina spent a bunch of hours outside skating, and then playing in the snow, with her little friend.

On Thursday we had a very time outside in the (warmish) afternoon with a dozen or so friends at the museum and on the frozen creek. Fina was glad to see (some of) her friends again!

And on Friday it was above zero celsius and we went for a lovely walk on the slushy creek.

Fina is continuing to enjoy The Wanderings of Odysseus. With the start of the second term, we started with our new artist (Constable) and composer (Handel, we are listening to his Messiah). Fina painted, worked on her math, started new recitations of two Bible passages, a hymn and a poem, started with a new hymn for singing and a new folksong.

On the weekend, Fina skied and skated and had lots of fun outside.

Here she is with a little group of friends, climbing the bank of our creek. 

It is like a mountain to these prairie kids!

And this morning, before school, she finished stuffing and sewing this little pig. Isn't he cute?

Christmas break!

We had a lovely trip over Christmas to visit both sets of grandparents in Ontario.

After we finished her Tale of Despereaux, we read Kate DiCamillo's The Tiger Rising. It was a bit mature for Fina, in its themes, and given the chance, I would have waited a few years before reading it.

We read Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson and the final chapters with Francis of Assisi were so incredibly moving. I wasn't expecting it.

Fina's homeschooling dad read DiCamillo's The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane outloud to all of us at his parents' house. Fina's cousins and aunt really enjoyed it. The adults were crying at the end.

Here are some pics from our travels.

She got to skate in a brand new, state-of-the-art outdoor rink in Ottawa.

And she built this fort with nice, non MB sticky snow!

And in Hamilton, she got in lots of outdoor snow time with her little cousin.

sledding with her baby cousin!

And she got to feed lettuce to nonna's bird. She loved it!

We have been home for a few days now and are looking forward to starting back to school this week.

Fina painted this detail from a book on Egypt.

Neat, right?!?!

Happy new year, dear followers!

Exams 1A term 1

We did our term 1 exams this week. Fina did really well!

She impressed me with her knowledge of Spanish (she was able to tell me the whole Hungry Caterpillar story in Spanish). She really enjoyed Vermeer. She loves the literature we are doing. She did not connect well with the Canadian History book we were using and we are switching to Brown's The Story of Canada for term 2. Her recitations were great. She can sing our folksongs, our hymns, our Spanish songs. And she is doing really well with solfège. She didn't do that well with Minn of the Mississippi, which seems normal for her with Holling C. Holling's books. For some reason, she narrates well enough during the lessons, but she just has trouble connecting with them at the larger scale. I am glad we took them!

Here is a small selection of some of Fina's answers.

Tell about the Contest of Miracles (Exodus):
So God said “tell pharaoh to let my people go and worship me. And if he says no, throw your staff down here and it will turn it into a snake and then pick it up and it will turn back into a staff. So he did. He asked “let my people go” and he said “no.” So he ended up doing the staff thing. So he went and threw his staff down and it turned into a snake. Aaron did that because Moses didn’t want to. So then Aaron did what God said to Moses. Moses told Aaron to do that. So Aaron threw down the staff and it turned into a snake. The magicians did that too, but Aaron’s ate them all up. All of them. 

Tell about one story from The Wonder Clock:
“The Step Mother Story” So, there was this girl and her step mother was evil and she wanted the girl to die or go away. Because her daughter was ugly, but she wanted her daughter to be the best. She didn’t want her step daughter to be the best. So she made this ball and it had writing that only she could understand on it. But it was enchanted that she needed to follow it. So the stepmother gave her this gold ball and said “this is your new plaything.” And she threw it and let the ball roll into a big, deep pit that she couldn’t get out of. So she followed it right into the pit and then she couldn’t get out. And then these gnomes or dwarves or whatever gave her all these jewels in the pit. [Do you remember how it ends?] Oh, they made her the queen of all of them. 

Tell all you can about Odysseus, his crew and the Cyclops:
So, Odysseus landed on this island and he wanted his men to go on the shore to investigate and they didn’t come back. So Odysseus went and there was a big cave with cheeses and big jars of milk and there were sheep and goats, I think, and they were going in and the Cyclops came. So they hid in a corner but he saw them. And then he said “what’s your name?” And Odysseus said “Nobody.” Then they decided “we can escape if he can’t see.” So they made one of his big branches really hot and stabbed his eye when he was asleep and then he couldn’t see. And he started yelling, and all the rest of the cyclops said “who’s hurting you?” when they came. “Nobody’s hurting me!” “Who’s murdering you?” “Nobody’s murdering me!” [laughing] Well, they didn’t come, because, like, “if nobody’s murdering you, then why are you yelling?” [laughing] When the sheep are out, he always feels them because he’s blind now because of the poke he got in the eye. So he would feel them when they came out, his sheep. So Odysseus got an idea. They would hold on, tied up, on the bottom of them, and then he wouldn’t feel them, so they got out. Odysseus got the big, big ram and the cyclops asked the big ram “Why are you going so slowly? Is it because you’re sad about your master because of his eye?”

Tell all you can about Vermeer's "Girl with Pearl Earring" -from memory

There is this girl, she has a pearl earring. It’s all black at the back. I think she has a bit of a yellow and blue thing on a ponytail, or her hair is up in a bun. And the thing is wrapped around her head and is draping down. It has a blue line on it and yellow. I can’t really describe her face. She’s not sad and not happy. You can see her teeth. She is very pretty. There’s nothing except her face and her neck. It’s all black. The pearl earring was very shiny and big, not quite like a pearl, sort of stretched. It is dark, but there is light pouring on her face. The earring had a little thing at the top of it that was pretty.

Describe in detail the birds we have been observing this term:
These are some of the birds that I have seen. Nuthatches, Chickadees, Blue Jays and this big thing that is red and brown. It’s very mean to little chickadees. So that’s what he does. He’s not nice at all. Blue Jays, when you see them, it looks like they are going to break the feeder, because they are so big. When they stand on the top of it, they can’t even fit. The cute little chickadees are so cute. They sort of swoop down, they jump right off the branch and swoop down, as if they jump right off the branch and swoop right down. They are so cute! I love them. They are probably my favourite bird. And nuthatch. They sort of cock their heads, so do chickadees. But I think nuthatches cock their heads a bit more. Chickadees are much smaller and have different colours and different facts than nuthatches. And they have these little teensie beaks and these cute little round faces. The nuthatch is all grey, different shades of grey, with a long beak. Can birds hear? With their ears? Blue Jays are not as bad as the “what’s it called” (the big red ones). People say that blue jays are bullies, but they aren’t as bad as that other guy. Remember when we saw the red guy and he was not being nice at all to the little chickadees. [vamps the bird’s discussion with each other.] When the blue jay is there, the chickadees all go away because they know he won’t let them have any food. In the winter, sometimes we get robins, but not at our feeder. They eat crab apples from the tree. They sit at the bottom of the tree, eating the crab apples. They sit at the bottom, eating. There are lots of robins when we see them. More than 10. You try to count them, but then you can’t, because they move. More than 10, more than 20.

*****

We finished up Kate DiCamillo's The Tale of Despereaux. We really enjoyed this book and are looking forward to reading her other books.

We read Alice Dalgleish's The Bears on Hemlock Mountain and it is a really cute story.

We are looking forward to a nice Christmas break with family.

See you next year!

Here are some parting pics of the last few days.