Term 2

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few weeks, but our term was hectic and our holidays have involved doing a bunch of catch up work at home! Normally I like to keep our at home life and our out of home life nicely balanced, and this year there is a lot more out of home activity than usual.

The whole family in various groups made it out to see Agatha Christie’s, Mouse Trap, at His Majesty’s theatre. One of the best performances that we’ve been to in years!

Irving was doing local history this past term, and we did a bunch of local walks and excursions, including heading to the roundhouse in Fremantle. We also did some watercolour painting to create a map of WA.

Watching Bluegrass Parkway perform in the mall.

There’s been a lot of gardening happening here, as Irving has taken an interest in plants, and in particular herbs. He’s even taken up writing about them! Not something I expected, but a pleasant surprise. Arden got a new pot for his lemon tree, and Irving’s herb collection continues to grow.

We spent a lovely day at Penguin Island with some homeschool friends- doing the Penguin tour, and the sealion cruise, and taking a walk around the Island. The rain had really settled in the walk before, and we were *very* lucky and got a perfect day! Everyone was so tired on the way home, that there was dozing on the public transport!

Irving and I also ended up at Araluen helping to plant for their Tulip festival. Arden was busy doing a two day TAFE taster course, learning about tiling and bricklaying.

Irving got one of his t-shirt designs printed off Red Bubble.

Arden did some chemistry and we focused on salts. There was collecting river and ocean water to make sea salt, soap making, and electrolysis. Overall it was a very interesting block. The soap was made using ghee, as Arden was interested to see how that would come out- it very quickly changed from a rich yellowy colour to a creamy colour. We are yet to try this batch, as it finishes maturing- probably we will try it later this week. (For those that don’t know- soap is a salt- the combination of lye and fat). In our first electrolysis experiment we separated hydrogen and oxygen, and in our second we used a copper cathode and anode, and displaced the copper.

We all did our first Joy of Wood class with Greg Miller again, after quite a few years. This time the focus was on whittling birds.

It was our turn to host book club, as Irving’s book- “Nancy Drew” was chosen for the term. Since the focus was mysteries, we found some mazes of varying levels for the kids to try out. We also had a turn hosting a week of our steam group- this time we made nib pens. There was a little bit of chaos, when we couldn’t get the council’s oven to work, but once we got over that hurdle, it was a fun session, with the kids getting to try nib pens and feather pens, and then creating their own pen from a feather. We got a lot of inspiration for how to make the nib pen, from the How to Make Everything Youtube channel, which we love!

To finish the term we moved onto the human body, and we watched quite a few Operation Ouch episodes, but mostly we focused on reading Bill Bryson’s “The Body”. We haven’t yet finished, though as usual he has all sorts of fascinating stories about the development of our understanding of the body.

This week we get back into term time, with classes on again. Other than having to be out and about more, we’re still taking it slowly at home, as I find taking a longer mid-year break helps us to be motivated for the rest of the year.

Winter Term 3

 As co-vid lockdown receded and we thought about our coming year, we decided to try to continue with a slower pace of life for at least the short term.  Sadly Arden’s favourite activity- iceskating – came to an end as our preferred iceskating rink closed during lockdown.  We decided to go and trial an ice hockey session; just after having enrolled to do ten pin bowling.  The ice hockey went down well.  As did the ten pin bowling.  We had enrolled in the teenage class- Irving had said he wasn’t interested  in doing ten pin, but by mid term he was part of the teenage class and loving it.

For quite some time we have attended plenty of arts events- Fringe, Festival, Ballets and Operas.  Due to co-vid we decided to slow down on this and take the year more slowly.  We did still get to a few local gigs, but much fewer classical performances.  Historically it was Willow who had expressed a particular interest in these, and as she had not been home educated for about 3yrs, it seemed to make sense to redirect our time.

Enjoying a piano concert in Government House’s gardens.

We had a lot of fun doing chemistry in our kitchen using  “The Wonders of Waldorf Chemistry” as our guide.  It was interesting to try some of the experiments that I didn’t get to with the older kids- such as burning sulphur, and also to have some trouble with experiments I expected to work, because we had done them before.
 

Making charcoal.

Attempting to burn charcoal.

Burning some different items-including sulphur, which has the blue flame.

Acids and Bases.

Our reading- King Arthur and the Knights of the Round table by Llancelyn Green, and The King of Ireland’s Son by Colum– which we did a series of paintings about.

Paintings by Irving. (All paintings are inspired by the King of Ireland’s Son.)

Paintings by Arden.

Arden’s painting on the left, and mine on the right.

My paintings.

Our first carrot from our balcony garden.

Cable socks for me.

Repairing Gabriel’s satchel with berry coloured velvet.

A new quilted blanket for Gabriel; made from an old cotton blanket, his old comforter and cotton and cotton flannel.

 

Willow's Chemistry and Craft

Epsom salt crystalisation, on glass.  The second version has been backlit.

Experiment with salt that got neglected and crystalised quite impressively.

Progress on Willow’s rag doll.  she’s really coming along now- but would probably like some arms!

Closer

Time is progressing along, and I’m starting to feel quite pregnant.  So it was nice over the holidays to take it very quiet this time.  Willow spent the second week volunteering at City Farm, as she often does, and really enjoyed it again this time.  Gabriel, Arden and I had a fairly quiet time, and we managed to also catch up with some friends.

Some of the classes we’ve been doing ran over the holidays, so we still had a few of those outings happening.  Willow’s flute classes were still happening, and we all kept up with our dancing lessons with Cool Cats– rockabilly and kick step.  We managed to also get out and see a demonstration of Swing Dancing at Northbridge piazza on Anzac day, and Damien was asking them about swing dancing at the Mustang Bar.  Willow and Gabriel also got out to use their second surfing lesson, and both found it a little more familiar this time; I’m thinking it might be worth organising surfing lessons for them both over next summer, and finally getting Arden onto swimming lessons.

So we all started back into school routine for the next little bit, before the baby is due this week.  Willow is finishing off some chemistry with Damien, Gabriel and I have been doing physics and Arden and I are doing some more stories, and letters.  This week saw Gabriel and I working on sound, with a selection of experiments out of Physics is Fun by Robert Trostli.  We looked at instruments, and objects that would create and allow sound to travel.  Arden listened to ‘Rapunzel’, and we focused on the letters, ‘f’, ‘t’ and ‘p’ this week.

Books for science and other things

Picked up a couple of science books that will hopefully be helpful for this year.

The first one is a pictured guide to the elements.
http://www.bookdepository.com/Elements-Theodore-Gray/9781579128142
I reckon it would’ve been great when I was learning about the periodic table, to get a better sense of some of it’s items.

Then there’s a general science book by DK.
http://www.bookdepository.com/Help-Your-Kids-with-Science-DK-Publishing/9780756692681

Plus we’ve picked up a copy of Antony and Cleopatra, as part of Gabriel’s Ancient Rome studies.

Finally a book to help with Willow’s grammar- The Art of Styling Sentences.

Recent Activities

Well we’ve mostly finished our organised school work for the year, which is just lovely, though Willow has a couple of things to finish off with Damien.

This week has seen us doing another woodworking project, making a stool, with Greg Miller.  It was a lot of fun, though rather a long day.  Our teacher, hadn’t done the project with a larger group before and we ran a lot over time……I ended up spending almost 7hrs on mine, and Gabriel and Willow spent less time.

This is Gabriel’s bench/ foot stall.   His is designed to use whilst practising his guitar.

Normally Gabriel loves doing woodwork, and certainly by the end of the end of the project he was doing very well with it, but he got overwhelmed initially with some of Greg’s explanations about angles and measuring during his demonstration, and it took him a little while to recover from getting confused.  (Gabriel hasn’t yet done that sort of geometry.)

Willow’s bench will be used in her bedroom.  Both Willow’s and mine involved legs on 10degree angles, which made them slightly trickier to put together.

My bench is currently being used for my laptop.

And finally whilst we were out today, Arden got to do some woodwork with Damien.  He did lots of hammering to make a mini wooden boat.  The nails sticking out sideways are apparently jets of water.

Willow has finished off all her chemistry experiments this week, and she seems to have generally enjoyed it.  These pictures are from making solutions of salt and sugar, and leaving them to crystallise.

Sugar crystals

 

Salt Crystals

Gabriel got an introduction to Pythagoras this week, with some sketching of his thereom.

This week also saw us having homeschool review, so that’s done for another 12months.  It’s always interesting to look back over the year, and see what we’ve done, but it’s also nice just to get through the process and know that we’re all good for next year.

Counting Down

Another busy week has drawn to a close, before our last week of planned school work.  Basketball training finished on Friday, but we’ve planned an outing for Gabriel and Arden to go and see the Perth Wildcats, so they’re quite excited about that.

Some of our homeschool friends from basketball, were in a drama group this year, so we went to see their production tonight.  There were two groups, up to 10 performed in ‘Tiddalick the Frog’, and over 10s performed a play called ‘Backstage’.  Both were well performed, and it was lovely to see a homeschool play so well put together.

Willow has been continuing to work on chemistry, finishing off with combustion last week, and moving onto acids and bases and the limecycle this week.  Acids and bases has involved doing quite a bit of litmus testing and seeing what items are acid or alkali using a cabbage litmus.

This week also saw Willow achieve stilt- walking.  One of her friends was holding her hand and said ‘I reckon you can do this’ and just let go- and so Willow found herself standing and walking and doing ok!

Gabriel has been progressing nicely through his socks- almost halfway through the first one now- and whilst I would have liked him to be finished by now, I can see an improvement in his focus and dexterity in knitting so we’ll just keep plodding along at it.  I’ve been continuing on making a doll for Arden, and she just needs to have her head sewn on now.

Gabriel has also been keeping some silk worms, thanks to our friends at City Farm.  The moths all made their way out of their cocoons last week.

So looking forward to being done with our organised work next week- there have just been a few too many things happening recently, and it will be nice to spend a quieter week come December.

Chemistry and Dolls

Feel like we’ve been run off our feet recently.  Activities and stuff happening everywhere, particularly as Willow is doing her chemistry practical work over the weekend, so that I can take Arden out whilst it’s happening.  We’re using ‘The Wonders of Waldorf Chemistry’ for our experiments, and most of them have worked well.  Highlights of the first week, were watery fire and making charcoal. (Willow is looking at combustion)

Here’s the charcoal making underway.

The fresh wood was placed in side the tin, and after being heated and having the gas that was released from the tin set alight, made a beautiful dry charcoal.

Gabriel has just finished a block on human reproduction and will be finishing the year with some Australian geography.

Gabriel is progressing nicely through his socks, and Willow and I making dolls.  Willow is copying an old doll of mine, which is rag doll style and I’m making a waldorf style doll for Arden.  This is her head so far.  Arden wanted her to have green eyes like me, but didn’t really like the green thread we had, so we blended some green, white and black for them.

Classes are ending soon (two more weeks of basketball) and there’s a few performances coming up, as well as our homeschool review, before we start holidays and celebrate Arden’s 5th birthday.  Amazing to realise that we’ll be onto class 1 with him before long.