Fishes, Family, Learning

There has been a mixture of interesting things going on around here, over the last month or so, with the last couple of weeks being holiday time.  The last couple of weeks of term 3 we had quite a few outings, and Damien had just finished a contract, so he was at home a bit to help out, before starting his new job.

A rare moment of just Irving and I hanging out; so we made a fabuland lego village.  (Willow was at uni, and Gabriel and Arden had gone to basketball class with Damien.)

Gabriel and Arden did another first aid class, and refreshed and built on the skills that they had learnt previously.  I have been meaning to enrol Willow and Gabriel into a first aid certificate, now that they are both older, and especially because we live almost adjacent to red cross.  Hopefully we can get to that next year!

I arranged an education session for Gabriel and some other home educated students with UN Youth, which proved to be quite interesting.  It had been a bit chaotic to organise (as sometimes happens) so it was quite a relief to get there on the day, and have everyone turn up, and it all go to plan.

On the way home after the UN talk, Gabriel and I head to Koko Blacks for a relaxing drink and chat.

We also had a couple of performance outings- everyone but Willow went to see Spare Parts Puppet theatre perform Shaun Tan’s “Rules of Summer” and then Willow, Gabriel and I went to see WA Ballet perform “the Great Gatsby”.  Both of these were my favourite performances by these groups.  “Rules of Summer” was very interactive, and “The Great Gatsby” expressed the interplay of relationships through dance in what I felt was an interesting manner, compared to the very traditional ballets.

Hard waste time was on around here again, so we went for a bit of an explore to see what we could find.  Arden and I came across this vintage sewing machine, seems to need a bit of love, so we’re now taking a look at sewing machine repair.

On the sewing theme, I made Gabriel some trousers recently, and he has almost finished putting the markings on his pieces,so that he can sew himself some corduroy pants.

I added some embellishments to this old skirt, that I had sitting around in the cupboard, after taking in the waist (it was a modern hipster waist).

I am currently working on some bags, with the view to try selling some.

Arden has been really enjoying photography, and I recently saw someone mention that they really enjoyed being in the MOSAIC project, so we all went out and took photos, of what we were doing on Sat 23rd around Perth.  Arden got to share my and Damien’s cameras.  Here are a few of his and my pics.

Arden’s photos

My pics.

Our first week of holidays was very quiet, and we had a few outings over the second week.  Gabriel headed off to basketball training most of the second week, and he and Arden also took a fishing class, down on the Swan River.  Irving and I went exploring around Mosman Park, and visited the toy shop and fabric shop, amongst other things.  I had been hoping to mostly wander along the river with him, but it turned out to be really windy, and far too cold for him, so we stayed away from the river bank. 

This week sees Willow mostly off uni, she had a week off at the beginning of the break, and went back last week, and has this week off again, so that has been interesting.  Arden, Gabriel and I are starting our last term activities tomorrow, we were all feeling a bit under the weather today, so we took the day off basketball training.

I’ve ordered a loom for Arden to do some more weaving projects this term, and we will be doing some more cooking amongst other things…hopefully finish reading “the Never Ending Story”  soon, and the current “Little House” book that we are reading together.

Gabriel has been a little disorganised this past term, and Damien spent a bit of time helping him to come up with a way that he could better keep track of what he’s done and has to do, and it looks like he’s mostly on track now.  We’ve been discussing ideas and plans for him for next year, but he doesn’t have a concrete direction he’d like to go, so I am imagining that next year might be filled with some variety.

A Collection

Ab it of a collection of recent activities.

Arden has been working on some English recently-grammar and poetry, as well as us doing some ink drawings.

Fish by Arden.

Examining phrases, clauses and sentence (in Arden’s usual creative writing style- the more artistic the better LOL!)

My eagle pen and ink drawing.

Irving’s pen and ink drawing.  He seems to love pen and ink.

Some poetry and sketching by Arden, about lions.

My lion sketch.

Fabuland lego village building session with Irving, whilst all the big kids are out.

I’ve been using everyone’s old trousers to make Irving new pants.  These are out of a pair of Willow’s old jeans.

He was so happy, he did lots of posing for me!

Another pair out of Damien’s old trousers.  Irving wanted yellow stitching.

A final pair out of Damien’s old jeans.

Again lots of happiness, but this time couldn’t keep still!

Out for a walk, just to splash in puddles.

Last bit of form drawing for this year, an interesting looking fish, which Arden found to copy.

Arden, planning a flag design for a t-shirt.

An experimental embroidery project.  Arden created a cactus.

And this lead to Irving wanting a cactus patch.

Now Arden is working on some ideas for embroidering into sneakers.

Making pumpkin bread!  Mostly me, with a bit of help.  (We’ve been doing some German cooking.)

Gabriel made us breakfast bagels on father’s day for brunch.

Damien and I decided that Willow and Gabriel need to learn a bit about doing the shopping, so we headed to City Farm, gave them the grocery money, and ordered coffee.  Seems to have been a successful experiment so far, and will be happening fortnightly, in an attempt to encourage them to be aware of what’s in the fridge when they cook dinner.

This Past Week

We all got back into our at home schooling routine this week, and turns out it has been helpful.  Irving has been loving being involved in all of Arden’s activities, and has been really getting into doing maths with Arden in particular.  (He’s so keen that he wanted me to get the JUMP book out for him.)  Arden is also quite please because we received a new lot of Life of Fred books (goldfish, honey, icecream and jellybeans) and he has been getting into them again.

This week Arden and I are back into doing English and we’ve been looking at tenses and sentence structure and reading about Norse Mythology.  To compliment this, we’ve also been doing some pen and ink drawing.  Seem to have missed photographing Arden’s picture this week, but here is mine.

Arden has almost finished his embroidered cushion, and we just need to stuff and sew it now.

We’re planning his next piece which will likely be cross-stitch, and something to do with cacti.  (He’s got a small collection of cacti, and is wanting to get a venus fly trap next.)

Gabriel has moved onto looking at social sciences, and we’re looking at freedom and political systems.  We had been contemplating reading “1984” and also seeing the stage play, but decided to leave it, after reading the reviews, and also because Gabriel was expressing a preference to reading “Fahrenheit 451“.  He also headed to a talk this past week with Damien, on judiciary in WA.  Apparently it was a little dry, but did spark some further conversation.

Gabriel has started on the process of making himself some trousers.  He’s making some out of cord, with floral pockets.  I’m almost finished making him some linen trousers.  I ran out of thread with the belt loops and hems to go.

Cutting out the pattern

The colour is an olive green, and really didn’t come out well in this shot

As Gabriel is focusing his art studies around Games Workshop, we decided that it would be interesting to see other exhibitions that relate to models.  Since the Brickman lego exhibit was in town, and we are all mad lego fans, we all had to go.  We got a bit engrossed, and really didn’t get to see it in as much detail as we would have liked.

Great Barrier Reef

Titanic

Some lego building by Arden

Today, Gabriel and I headed to the Art Gallery of WA, to see the sneakers exhibition, it was an interesting progression through the history of the shoe, and into the more artistic creative aspects of the modern sneaker.  We were intending for us all to go, but Damien was feeling a but unwell, so we will have to go back with the others.  Going just with Gabriel, did mean, that we could take our time and have a thorough look through the exhibition.

Arden has been wondering about his grandfathers (both died before he was born) and so for their birthdays this year we baked them cakes.  My family heritage on my Dad’s side is German, and he often brought home streusel cakes after visiting my Nana, so we decided to make him one.

Dough is waiting topping.

Ready out of the oven!

We had a rather cold middle of the morning recently, and so Willow, Gabriel, Arden and I all headed out for a coffee.  (We were trying to take advantage of the cold, as it is never here very long.)  Arden has been enjoying doing some food photography when we are out ( as well as other things,from time to time) and got a couple of lovely shots of his hot chocolate at duotone.  He’s sharing his photographs @ardenaragorn on instagram.

Winter Break!

Well unsurprisingly the last 5weeks have flown by!  We had a few jobs to do around here, in particular getting the carpet cleaned in all the bedrooms created a little chaos, but it’s nice to have our home feeling refreshed after a thorough clean!  Everyone around here has jobs to do, and in some ways the little ones (Arden and Irving) are easier to direct to tasks, as Damien and I have more realistic expectations of where and how they can help, than we did with the older two, and they are accustomed to the idea that everyone has to help out to make our home feel loved and be liveable.  So we pulled all the furniture out of all the bedrooms, got the carpet cleaned and moved everybody into different rooms!  Was a bit of a job, but satisfying at the end when everything looked and felt so nice!

We headed off the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre’s performance of “The Arrival”, this time at UWA.  We had seen this before, but we love Shaun Tan’s books and figured it would be worth seeing again.  It was the first time for Irving to see it, and he was entranced!  We had a little walk through UWA’s gardens (I do love it there!)

We have an enormous old suitcase filled with lego, and I thought that it was time we started sorting it (we made quite a bit of progress but still have to finish).  The amount of blocks has been making it hard for everyone to rebuild models, so I started putting things into coloured boxes.  We managed to get one of our oldest sets rebuilt…The Knight Bus!

And whilst on the Harry Potter theme, Gabriel decided that he is interested in reading Harry Potter in Latin, and the first book arrived in the post recently!
“Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis”.

We managed to get down to Elizabeth Quay for some iceskating again this year, we had been all intending to go, but we left booking a little late.  Personally I preferred the ice-skating being in the cultural centre, where we could sit and watch the skaters more easily, but the rink is a better size at the Quay.  Also we missed the very early sessions, when we could get up whilst it was still cold and feel like we were somewhere wintery!

Otherwise over the break, I’ve managed to get a little sewing in (working on my first pair of trousers-linen ones for Gabriel), taking in a skirt, learning about pattern drafting, adding embellishments to some pants that I had that are starting to look a bit sad!  So I’ve been pleased to clear out my pile a bit…still some stuff left there and a few days left, so hopefully more will get done!  Plus Gabriel’s trousers aren’t quite finished!  I ran out of thread, just as I got to the hems and sewing the belt loops!    Gabriel and I had hoped to get through the pair he’ll make during the break, but instead we’re only just starting them.  On a positive not I feel like I know the process of making them well enough that it should go fairly smoothly.

Irving and Arden and I have also done a few walks, bike rides, bit of scootering and skateboarding and catching up with friends.  We’d been a bit slack with getting Arden riding a bike, he had a balance bike when small, but we hadn’t got around to him pedalling, so we finally got that sorted, and spent some time alone the river.  Plus of course given the time of year that it is, we got wellies out and went splashing through puddles!

Checking out the water draining.

Puddles at the Park.

Stopping off for a drink!  (Plus had to take wellies off to be comfy!)

Umbrellas in preparation for rain, and heading out for a walk with Willow!

Relaxing in the various seasonal weather!

End of term 2

Amongst Iolanthe performances we managed to get a little bit of school work done, but mostly we spent the time recuperating from the intense performance schedule (9performances in two weeks).  Fortunately there was a long weekend in the middle, and so Damien was at home that day.  During the second week Willow got a cold, with a hoarse voice, so she learnt all about being in the chorus and being unable to sing!

Arden had been working on a block on homes, during Iolanthe, and we had hoped to get out and see some of the local historical buildings during the show, but we decided to leave it til a bit later, since people were run down, and it was a very intense schedule for Arden.  Arden did manage to build a model of our home in lego though, based of floor plans that he drew up.

We’ve had Arden and Irving playing knights and princes around here a little bit recently, and this led into building block castles.  Note the drawbridge.

Arden and I have been working at a book of creation from the Bible this week.  Lots of english and lots of painting.  Working at nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc; writing the story up in cursive and painting an illustration for each section.  

Gabriel has been looking at steam and combustion engines, we have plans for a more practical component during the break, but mostly we focused on theory during Iolanthe.  Some of the steam videos Gabriel watched.  This page was meant to be mostly combustion engines, but ended up a mix of things engine related.  This week Gabriel has moved onto chemistry and distillation.  We’re hoping to distill essential oils after the break, and as a lead up he’s making cold infused frangipani oil (we’re thinking of trying this again later in the year, when the frangipanis are more fragrant) and a lavender water.

Willow has been doing a little sewing again, and made herself a small purse.

 

Gabriel is currently hand sewing his tie, and Arden is making progress on his jammy pants. I’ve been making a new bra out of green gingham;  I’m making the straps much wider this time.  On the whole I’ve been happy with my previous bras, except the width of the straps.

 We found this woodening ironing board in the hard waste.  Was too nice a piece of wood to let it get thrown out.

Arden and Irving being fairies on winter Solstice.

Enjoying my breakfast the day after solstice;taking in the sun, before getting started for the day.

We had our first home education excursion for awhile out to the Supreme Court this week for a hypotheticals session.  Willow and Gabriel found the process quite interesting.  Since Arden and Irving were too young for the session we had a few other errands to do, for Irving’s birthday tomorrow, so we met up with everyone later.

Holiday Happenings

We had a very bustly and very busy holiday this time, but on the whole it was filled with a lot of fun. 

Arden and Irving and I started the break with a walk down to Queen’s Gardens, where we discovered that my favourite Oak tree was gone.  We wondered, if perhaps it had split, and needed to be removed.  All the same I was a bit sad, was one of the reasons I liked going there.

Arden and I also did a bit of wood carving.  I finally finished off this spoon (I started it when Willow and I did a green wood carving workshop.)

Arden and I made him a wand for playing Harry Potter games- from a section of palm (though he’s now imagining something a bit more solid.)

There was quite a bit of lego building happening; with Arden making this ship.  Plus Titanic has been in our minds still; since our copy of the book “A Night to Remember” arrived.  I just finished it, and found the book much more fascinating then the film.  Especially the details in the preface about a book written in 1898 with an almost identical event.

This is one of Gabriel’s geometrical drawing finished just before the holidays.

We had quite a few workshops on this time, largely due to the Kickstart Festival and Innovation month.  Willow and Gabriel both got to an interesting array of sessions.  Willow made a terrarium, went to a film making session, and a special effects make up session (with Gabriel).  Gabriel also did a screen printing workshop; he seems keen to try more printmaking.

This is some of Gabriel’s stage make up.

Willow also did a workshop on Opera with WA Opera, and Gabriel, Willow and I attended the latest opera; “The Riders“.

Whilst Willow and Gabriel were off at a workshop, Arden, Irving and I head for coffee at the Treasury Buildings and met a very lovely dog.  Plus Arden made a tower of coffee cups.

Gabriel and Arden attended the innovation month workshops;  using arduino technology to make a UV sensor, and a moisture sensor.  Arden particularly was interested in using the Arduino, and Gabriel was enjoying doing some coding.

Willow, Gabriel and Arden all head to see “Bambert’s book of Lost Stories” at the Heath Ledger Theatre.  Willow in particular commented that it was the best puppet show that they had seen, and that it was beautifully presented and quite poignant.

We also headed out to see a few films and caught up with friends.  In particular Arden made stout pie for a friend who came for lunch, and we watched “Topsy Turvy” with Willow and Gabriel (continuing with our Gilbert and Sullivan theme.)

Constructions

Some school work from earlier this year. Arden’s first knitting project.  It has since been wet felted, and is awaiting being used for a craft project.

Gabriel’s lego construction of one of Leonardo da Vinci’s contraptions.

 Arden experimenting with tangrams.

We purchased a sewing machine earlier this year, and it has finally come out of the box, so Willow, Gabriel and I have been experimenting with it.  Gabriel and I have just been doing some lines.  Willow has been making little purses.

Happenings

Willow is in Adelaide, so we’re having a quieter homeschool week around here.  Gabriel has been busy working away at maths, and it seems that doing maths at home is just like at school.  If you can draw all over it, why not? 

I really like the mouse with the cheese. (spot the person throwing the cheese.)

I’ve been experimenting with storage solutions for vegies after watching this video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG9xYVyAnuc&feature=youtu.be
We’ve been having quite good success with celery, leeks, carrots and a variety of herbs.

Gabriel has started his own lego blog, partly inspired by Willow’s blogging.  Now Arden is discussing his plans for a cooking and lego blog.  I was quite amused by this, and suggested that it might be about lego people cooking.

Gabriel’s socking knitting is finally progressing- he cast on a few times- and had a variety of annoying little problems.  He now has a nice 1/2dozen or so rows of rib happening.

Willow headed to Adelaide to stay with family last week.  She’s performing in a flute concert there.  It’s been quite an exciting time for her, heading away for her first proper trip without us.  Hopefully she’ll come back feeling rejuvenated.

 This is one of the mosaics that Willow has been working on at City Farm.

Finally there are some models that we made this week.

Building Lego

Gabriel has been busy making robots, controlled by spiders, after watching some Beastie Boy film clips with us last week.  Damien and I were doing a bit of musical reminiscing after reading that one of them had recently died, and Gabriel found them inspiring for lego models.

Evolving into a flying robot.

Willow decided to redraw the Fibonacci curve to make it more flowing.

Amongst other projects in her last block on Ancient history, Willow made a lego model of one of Leonardo’s machines.

Willow will soon be off for a week in Adelaide, to participate in a flute concert, and catch up with family.  Plus we’ve bought tickets to the ballet later in the year, which will also be exciting.

Willow has moved on to reading about Leonardo da Vinci and Gabriel and I have been reading Paraic Colum’s ‘Myths of the World’. 

Both have recently come to the end of their last blocks,  Willow will be moving on to Biology and Gabriel on to maths.  Willow will be using Kovac’s Muscles and Bones as her main text, and we will complement it with Cure Tooth Decay, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and some other interesting articles.  Gabriel and I will continue on with using JUMP maths.

Willow has also been volunteering at City Farm, which has been interesting on many levels.  She has been involved in various mosaic projects around the farm, and is really enjoying being involved in the community there.  However we have been quite amused by their conversations around food- despite being an organic farm, there is still a great interest at lunch time in MacDonalds, Mars Bars and white bread.  Each week Willow comes home with some sort of discussion about popular food culture.

Happy Winter Solstice!

We have had a lovely Winter Solstice day here. Busy with friends, and violin lessons, and celebrating and craft.

Last week for our form drawing, we made up star lanterns. A little complex to make, but simple once you get the folding. These were done in preparation for using tonight.

Then over the course of the day, we had one of Arden’s little friends around, with her mum. A lot of lego building- the kids have seen a competition for lego. A violin lesson for Willow.
And finally our solstice dinner.

We put out our candles, with our yule log- which we haven’t burnt as yet, but placed as a focal point in the table symbolically. We had a pleasant meal by candlelight. And we took some beeswax candles and decorated them with pressed flowers, from last spring.

Folded Candle Holders

And with light!

Before the Yule Log

With the Log

It was a very simple and pleasant evening.

Happy solstice where ever you are!