Christmas break

We've had a Christmas break from formal lessons and spent a lot of time just reading aloud.

Fina's homeschooling dad finished reading The Hobbit with her and they started The Lord of the Rings.
He read Kate Seredy's A Tree for Peter aloud for all of us over a few days at Christmas and it was a very touching story.

Fina and I read a bunch of Christmas-y books.
We absolutely loved Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. I can't believe I've never read it. We both were impressed at the language, the turn of phrase. You can just tell a living book, even reading a few sentences. That book is beautiful, through and through. We ILL'd the version illustrated by P. J. Lynch, upon the recommendations of some CM moms, and it did not disappoint.
We also greatly enjoyed Astrid Lindgren's The Children of the Noisy Village. Such a cute book, with the Christmas chapter in it.
Rumer Godden's The Story of Holly and Ivy is the sweetest book we've read in a long time. It's a new favourite.

We were on a Tomie DePaola kick. We read his Francis: The Poor Man of Assisi which is a beautiful book! The Lady of Guadalupe, The Legend of Old Befana, The Legend of the Pointsettia, and The Story of the Three Wise Kings.

We read a few other more modern books.
We liked Susan Tan's Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinare. It is nice to see a biracial girl exploring her identity.
We also read Karina Yan Glaser's The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street. I really wanted to like that book, but I think it ever so slightly deals with things in a little bit more of a mature manner than I had hoped, based on the reviews. I didn't always love how the kids treated each other. And I didn't care for the love interest. But you do feel like the brownstone is a character. It is well-written. Fina really wants to read the sequel. We shall see.

Fina is loving all things E. Nesbit. After having read The Enchanted Castle in the fall. We read her Five Children and It and Fina loved it! As soon as we finished that, we started reading The Phoenix and the Carpet. I did not know that it was a trilogy, the third book being The Story of the Amulet.

She got this cute loom from Ikea and has been making tiny carpets and mats with it.

Plus lots of playing outside, some skating and some skiing.

We have had quite a few days where the snow is buildable this year. More than usual. Which has been fun.

We started back to school last week, but I'm working on a new post for that. Thank you for your patience, kind readers!

Term 1 exams

Fina is really loving this Bernat Velvet yarn. I have to admit, it is quite nice. It would make a good scarf, actually. It's sort of like a very fuzze fleece. Here are her first two completed projects. For your reference, these tiny ponies are two inches high.

Fina's Spanish is beyond impressive to me!

We did our term 1 exams last week and they went really well. Fina had the most trouble with the books I was expecting, The Story of Canada and Our Island Story. Her narrations of those two aren't terrible during the term, but I knew she hadn't really connected well with either of them. I know she is getting a connection to the history we are studying through biographies and historical fiction, however. She could tell me a lot about Tecumseh through these alternate readings. It is fascinating to observe the exam process.

I love this quote from Charlotte Mason's third volume, pp. 170-171:

Children make large demands upon us. We owe it to them to initiate an immense number of interests. Thou hast set my feet in a large room; should be the glad cry of every intelligent soul. Life should be all living, and not merely a tedious passing of time; not all doing or all feeling or all thinking––the strain would be too great––but, all living; that is to say, we should be in touch wherever we go, whatever we hear, whatever we see, with some manner of vital interest. We cannot give the children these interests; we prefer that they should never say they have learned botany or conchology, geology or astronomy. The question is not,––how much does the youth know? when he has finished his education––but how much does he care? and about how many orders of things does he care? In fact, how large is the room in which he finds his feet set? and, therefore, how full is the life he has before him?

"How much does she care? and about how many orders of things does she care?" Well, she cares about Tecumseh. And that is saying something!

Her recitations were stellar, as always. She had some trouble with Shakespeare. She was unable to tell me anything about Much Ado About Nothing. Well, hardly nothing. She knew that there was some sort of love commotion, but that's about it.

I've told you before, it's always interesting.

And we started term 2 yesterday. I've got a few things I want to change this term, so we will see how that goes.

Skiing, hunting tracks and lots of poetry

Fina went skiing for the first time for the season on Monday. There wasn't much snow, but it was good enough. Later on that evening, she said that her muscles hurt. After having skied for maybe 45 minutes. It is funny, but I don't remember her complaining about sore muscles last year. Her old bones must be getting tired!

On Tuesday, we had a lovely outdoor playgroup. We built a lovely fire and then the kids built two more. Fina built this one with her little friend. Ski goggles really help keep the smoke out of your eyes!

And we were all so nice and toasty warm. It was just lovely!

We've got one more week of lessons, and then we'll do our term 1 exams. This term has flown by (albeit very slowly at times!) Exams are always fun. I'll have to think of something special to do to celebrate. I read about people who do something special every afternoon of exam week. But I think we'll keep it a bit more low key than that!

Our composer for the term is Chopin and Fina is really enjoying his pieces. I'm not a huge Chopin fan myself, but I "get" why she likes the piano pieces we have been studying. They are utterly danceable. We get many a fairy ballet dance happening while we listen to them. It's great to see her so excited about it. (Some of our previous composer studies fell kind of flat for her, in my opinion.)

Fina continues her love of poetry and of recitation. We finished reading Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and just for fun, I asked if she could recite (from memory) some of it. She already knows the first seven stanzas. And she loves it. She even does the voices. It is great to listen to her!

He holds him with his skinny hand,
'There was a ship,' quoth he.
'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!'
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

Then, she was reciting "The Battle of New Orleans" by John Donne English, and as she got to the last few lines, she started singing it to the melody of "Blessed Be The God of Israel" which is Merle's Tune (for those of you in the know about hymn tunes). So we counted out syllables and saw that the metre of the poem is 7676, and the lines of 6 syllables rhyme in pairs. Such fun! This kid is really too much sometimes.

Another fun experience happened while we were reading our historical fiction read. We were reading Jeremy's War and who should we come sauntering in to meet General Brock, but Tecumseh! After he had gathered the first nations tribes together in an alliance, he comes to General Brock. We just read about that alliance Tecumseh had put together in our biography read, The Story of the Shawnee Chief: Tecumseh from the series The Great Stories of Canada. (Thanks to our friend L who loaned it to us) It is so cool to be reading about your biography study in your historical fiction! We had read about Tecumseh meeting General Brock in our history spine weeks ago, but now to read about him meeting Brock in Jeremy's War was very exciting for Fina and for me! Especially how the story was told in Jeremy's War. I'm reading along, and there is a first nation warrior who is coming and he is described and then Fina looks at me, with anticipation in her eyes, and says "it can't be who I think it is, can it?" and then, the great reveal. It was a priceless moment!

We had a nice walk in a lovely nearby spot (our friend H has a woodsy spot in behind her property. It is the old creek bed here in town) on Thursday and we came upon so many animal tracks. We hunted them for a while. Rabbits, squirrels, mice, cats and dogs.

And then we found these wing prints! It looks like there was a scuffle with a rabbit. We had fun imagining that it could have been a hawk or an eagle or something. We could see the prey scurrying about and finally succumbing to the predator. The wing prints are kind of small, but it could have just been the tip of the wing that printed in the snow. Or it could have been some smaller bird. Very interesting, either way!

Fina was able to capture, on camera, this Downy Woodpecker pecking at our bonfire logs. What a cute little guy. As if there aren't trees right there, though!

Blue jays, knitting, piano, free reads and more

Fina was sewing some pages together with a felt cover, to make a little booklet) and she sewed the whole thing onto the table cloth. We laughed and laughed as we ripped out the stitches and she started over again!

She has been working hard on some knitting. She wanted this fancy, luxurious velvet yarn and she is really enjoying working on it with some thick knitting needles that we picked up at our local thrift store.

We've got some new snow over here and Fina is quite pleased about that.

We started reading Susan Tan's Cilla Lee-Jenkins: Future Author Extraordinare and are enjoying it so far. It is a funny story about a little girl growing up in a family with a Chinese dad and a Caucasian American mom. The author, having grown up herself in that same kind of family, incorporates many of her own life-stories, as she explained on this episode of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast.

We also started another Edith Nesbit book, Five Children and It. There are already some similarities with The Enchanted Castle. It is a page turner, for sure!

We really are having a fun time with our free reads this term. We just need to find more time in our day to sit down and read!

I don't know why it took me years to come around to this idea. A little basket with our free reads and historical fiction and biography. The rest of our school books are on the shelf. But these are what we pull from when we are just doing some extra reading. Perfect!

For the first part of the term, alongside reading from our poetry anthology year round, we read some poems by William Wordsworth. And in the second part of the term, we are reading some poetry by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I was able to sign out the Coleridge book from the Poetry for Young People series from our provincial education library (if you homeschool in MB and don't know about that library, please ask me! It is a great resource. And if you don't know about that PfYP series, ask me about that too!) We are in the middle of their selection from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." And we are loving it. So much to talk about. Such lovely language. We are really getting into it. We read only 5 or 6 stanzas a day. I knew of that poem, but had never read it. This is a trope with our poetry. What a blessing to be exposed to so many wonderful things through our children. Moms are persons too. And moms also deserve the feast!

There are a couple of blue jays that spend a good part of their day in the crabapple tree behind our house. They keep coming to our tiny window feeder. They are much bigger than our feeder! Along with a dozen chickadees, a handful of white-breasted nuthatches, and some cool reddish thing we've yet to identify. We could sit on our couch for hours and watch them flit back and forth. Last year, we thought the chickadees were afraid of the blue jays, but these ones seem to take turns alighting on our bird feeder.

I hope he doesn't pull our feeder down. We are firmly entrenched in the below-freezing temperature range, and I don't know when I'd next be able to attach those suction cups. They need a warm-ish window to start. Then they will hold for a very long time!

And if anyone can help us identify this little guy with reddish on his back under his wings, that would be great! Zoom in to see some details.

Fina caught this picture of one flying away.

That band of red is on its lower back, usually hidden under its wings.

Please ignore the pyjamas. And the vibrato French. And the poor hand posture! Fina wanted to play it four times in a row with her eyes closed. And she did it! After much practice. We are having wonderful piano lessons right now.

This kid (aka "person") has a real knack of driving me 'round the bend at times. But I love her dearly and am so greatly enjoying the beauty of the everyday. Not all day, I'll be the first to admit. I have constant struggles. But every day. This is Charlotte Mason IRL, my friends.

Mosses and lichens and fun with a skipping rope

On Monday morning we had a disastrous lesson time. Just disastrous. I'm not sure why. The weekend was extremely busy and Fina was just in a state. If I'm being honest, I was in a bit of a state myself. At any rate, we packed up to go to the forest for our nature study just the same. On our way out Fina said "mom, can I bring the long skipping rope to tie to trees and stuff?" Sure, Fina, bring whatever will get us out of the door right now!

Well, give a girl a good, sturdy rope and wait and see what you get!

She tied the rope around her waist and was "mountaineering" on the trees.

And then she somehow decided to make herself a swing. I was working on my nature study and didn't help her at all. She tied this knot.

And then swung and swung, sitting and standing. For like an hour. She was so proud of herself

I looked at this cutest mushroom, that was growing on a felled tree.

And we read about our cute red-topped moss from last week. It is actually a Cladonia, a lichen with fungi spores! We are reading Dorothy Sterling's The Story of Mosses, Ferns and Mushrooms.
Dorothy Sterling says "The prettiest of all the lichens are the Cladonias. Many of them are so tiny that you have passed them by without noticing. Once you meet them, you won't forget them, however." Too true!

It is called the Scarlet-Crested Cladonia. This one is nicknamed the "British Soldier" because there are bright red knobs on top of the stalks, "as bright a red as the uniforms worn by British soldiers during the American Revolution." Fungi spores are formed in those scarlet knobs.

This pic is from last week. Zoom in and you will see our brush drawing of the "British Soldier." We knew it was special, we just didn't know what it was! It was our dear friend Linda who first noticed them last week while we were walking together and Fina and I went back for further investigation.

On Monday, we searched high and low elsewhere in the forest to see if we could find more of them, and we did not. Only on this original tree stump! We are so thankful to have spent some time observing it and learning about it!

We finished reading E. Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle. I fear Fina has a bit of me when she said, at the end of the book, "I didn't love the ending. I feel like something else should have happened." I know, my dear one, I know! Sometimes it is hard when books end because you don't want them to end, or sometimes the ending just feels unsatisfactory. I get it.

We're reading some great historical fiction right now. We're really getting "into" the 1800s. We are reading Jeremy's War 1812, The Broken Blade, and now we started The Incident at Hawk's Hill. I thought of it as our new free read, but after the first chapter realized that it is set in the 1870s and talks a lot about the same things we're reading about in history - the Red River Valley, the settlers coming north of Winnipeg and more. It is so wonderful to make connections between things and to make connections with things. What a blessing!

Fina is really enjoying our Spanish lessons. Today we started a new little poem and I continue to marvel at how much she understands. She can translate into English with great facility. I can hardly believe my eyes (well, my ears) sometimes.

We have our struggles, do not delude yourselves about that, my dear readers. But the blessings far outnumber the heartache!

Early morning sunrise and more!

Fina woke up really early on Monday morning (though the sun is also rising later!) and she saw a lovely sunrise. She ran downstairs to tell us about it. So her and I put on our boots and our coats and ran outside in the chilly air to marvel at God's beauty. We ran out to the north edge of town (which is about 350 metres from our front door!), where we could watch the spectacle from the field, unhindered by any buildings or trees. Fina said "I wish I was quick enough to paint this, but by the time I get out my paints, it will be gone!"

On Monday afternoon, we started our special study on moss (and lichen) at the forest. We're wondering why moss seems to grow on the upper side of the trees. Even with the slightest incline, the moss is on the upper part. It is so interesting!!! There is a lot of moss in our forest, and every day we get to observe and make notes on different types in different spots.

On Thursday, we hit 1000 hours outside. I've mentioned this challenge before. It is to encourage families to spend more time outside (and less time watching tv!). We started counting on April 1. The lovely weather of this last week has really helped! We are getting a proper fall, after the snow of the beginning of the month. I think this is the fastest we've hit our 1000 hours. It is really great for us to keep track of Fina's time outside. It actually encourages me to see those numbers grow.

We've been enjoying brush drawing outside without frozen hands!

It took all of her will not to jump into that lovely rushing water of the creek!

We are enjoying Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It is fun for the three of us to take parts and do a read through. So much fun.

Fina is really enjoying our historical fiction selection, Jeremy's War 1812. Jeremy becomes a "batboy" for General Brock. It's a great story that really captures one's imagination. We are both enjoying it.

We are also enjoying our biography about Tecumseh. He was a fascinating man. The book is well written, moving between very technical and historical parts, as well as some more "human" stories from his life.

History is really coming together for us this term, for which I am very grateful.

a little glimpse of summer

On Thursday, we had a high of 24 degrees! Fina was thrilled to be outside (from noon til 9 pm!), with shorts, a t-shirt and barefooted. Skipping rope through the park. Squishing her toes in the mud. Doing nature study with its brush drawing while outside! And playing, playing, and playing with her little friends. It was glorious. A break from winter! (You will remember my pics from last week. One week exactly!)

We know it won't last, so we enjoyed it while we had it! We don't have the Chinook in MB, but that is what it seems like. Maybe it was our "Indian Summer." We don't always have it that strongly either.

It is so nice to sit outside and paint. I did three entries myself. I could have sat there all day!
It is true that, in winter, you can observe a lot of things that get "crowded out" in the other seasons. So many things are bare, which brings to the fore the things that aren't bare, or the details you miss when they are overshadowed by vibrant foliage. We've been enjoying that in our nature studies this week. We tend to be pulled in by plant life in all of its forms. We see the birds, but they are harder to paint.

I studied this little tree. There were two of them along the path in our park. It still had full green leaves. I'm not sure what it is, but it is certainly beautiful!

The juncos are busily doing their thing right now. We're not sure what their story is, exactly, but they are flitting around, pecking at the grass, eating in large flocks. They are beautiful!

We are in the final stretch of our current free read, Nesbit's The Enchanted Castle. Fina really enjoys it. For some strange (unknown to me) reason, I find it weird, awkward, and sort of uneven. But I'm really not sure why I am having trouble with this classic! Chacun son goût, I suppose!