It's March!

One day last week, we got no less than five lovely recitations of "Exodus 12:31-36" by Twilina. They were lovely! Then, we learned about quotation marks and various speakers as Fina read the narration and Twilina did the spoken parts, voicing pharaoh. Fun! As always, Fina so enjoys reciting. She is very expressive!

I want to recommend "Children of the Open Air" for Solfege lessons (you can find her channel on YouTube). Fina has learned how to notate these three little songs. Incredible.

She is quite proud of herself and has them hanging on the white board. I'm beyond impressed myself, actually.

Our math is going really well. We are at number 22 of Richele Baburina's The Charlotte Mason Elementary Arithmetic Series volume 1.

Fina is really excelling in our Spanish lessons as well. We have learned the "Padre Nuestro," she enjoys the Spanish songs and poems. We continue to use "La oruga muy hambrienta" story as our backdrop for learning vocabulary, grammar etc. She can narrate that book in Spanish so well!

Our recitations are fun, as always. She now knows Psalm 23 and is able to recite it from memory.

We are enjoying our composer (Handel) and artist (John Constable) for the term.

We do 20 minutes of piano every morning before our school lessons. She is enjoying it. I'm glad we waited.

Fina loves The Wanderings of Odysseus. We had gotten ahead in this literature book, so today I gave her the exam question for the term, before continuing on in the story.

Tell me about Odysseus on Calypso's island:

Odysseus landed on Calypso’s island. And he went up and she fell in love with him. And then he ended up staying with her, because she said “stay with me”  but he didn’t want to stay. He wanted to go back. She gave him clothes and food and lots of stuff. And they feasted for a long time. And then one of the gods came to Calypso and said “let him go.” So, she let him go. Even though she didn’t want to. She wanted him to stay with her. So she gave him all the material like wood and stuff that he needed to build a ship. She also gave him food and wine for his voyage. And then he kept sailing.

Good answer!

Fina reads aloud to me for 6 or 7 minutes each day. She reads so well, it sort of surprises me!

Look at this apple she painted in water colour! (Then she added on the background, but the colours of the apple are impressive!) She greatly enjoys brush drawing.

Enjoy this glimpse into our outside time these last few weeks:

in the forest

on the frozen creek with a big crew from our outdoor playgroup

skiing on a big snow pile in our park

skating!

the morning of our latest blizzard

in the forest after the blizzard

Mid-winter schooling

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!

**********

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.

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.