End of Term 1

Our first term was very full, and filled with lots of interesting outings and activities- this term is looking to be similar so far!

Irving’s pottery class has been going well, and we even started watching “The Great Pottery Throw Down” to compliment all the learning in the class that he’s been attending in Guildford. It’s also become a bit of a thing, to stop and look at interesting pottery shops.

Picking up a cute pot after pottery class.

And cute fish.

We continued on with Norse myths learning to write in Runes, drawing and painting some of the Gods and characters and reading Padraic Colum’s version, and also reciting “The Poetic Edda- Voluspo”, as well as reading some of “The Viking Tales” (we’re big fans of Norse Mythology here!)

Irving’s and my paintings.

Irving’s,my and Arden’s work.

Norse Reading.

Arden has been reading “The Greek Treasure” by Irving Stone, because we really enjoyed his book on Michaelangelo, this one took us awhile to get into, and Arden is still finishing it. It became much more interesting to read when Henry Schliemann discovered Troy. It’s possible to virtually view some of the Schliemann’s discoveries on this Russian Museum’s site.


Arden finished the term looking at the way different aspects of the world are integrated together, doing some reading,writing and watching “Brian Cox’s Forces of Nature” series. We finished off with looking at the Gaia theory, and the idea that the Earth is a living complete organism.

Irving looked at local Aboriginal culture, and we learnt about how the aboriginal people cultivated the land, and how that knowledge had been suppressed in our culture, We listend to Bruce Pascoe’s tedtalk on this topic. We also read February Dragon, by Colin Thiele. A fabulous book the illustrates so well, the ever present danger of bushfires in Australia.

Hard waste collection happened again, and this time we found a vintage coffee table- it appears to be one of a set of nesting coffee tables originally. Irving and I are hoping to spend some time on it, repairing it.

Irving enjoyed our steam group this term and there were lots of interesting lessons on anatomy, and was complimented at home with watching “Operation Ouch” on some of the topics we covered- including the hand and it’s joints, the brain, the heart, the bladder, the kidneys.

One of the completed activities from our Steam group.

Towards the end of term, we attended our first home school sport’s day for the family. Arden was too old to participate, but acted as assitant coach with the Team captain, and joined the parent’s races for some of the activities. Though the kids were keen to have him join in the parents versus kids, tug of war. Irving had a great time doing all the activities- three legged races, egg and spoon, relays. The only down side was it was the last very hot day of Summer and the first very hot day, we’d had for a week or so, so we were all struggling in the heat a little. Much fun was had at the end, with water fights, to cool off!

Damien, Arden and I headed to ECU Joondalup to find out about their aviation course, and to see their open day generally. We had a good chat with a couple of the lecturers there, and saw the flight simulators in action. Arden used one, and very nicely took off, flew and landed. It was interesting for me to see, because I had only ever seen his first home education session on a simulator, some years ago, where he needed a lot of help. After his years in the flying club at Bull Creek, he really knows what he’s doing.

Arden’s lemon tree is doing very well.

Okonomiyaki by Arden.

New shorts for Irving.

Black and white sesame balls.

2023

So far this year has been busier than I prefer but quite enjoyable. Irving and I have just started our at home learning routine for the year at the beginning of March, and Arden started in February. Though we had rather a busy summer- with Irving and I both starting red bubble businesses.You can find Irving’s shop here. And my shop here. Irving also did swimming lesson at the beach this year, and is now feeling inspired to get his swimming at the level it needs to be to join nippers next summer.

Lots of beautiful beach days in January.


We finished reading Bill Bryson’s “Down Under” over the summer, whilst sitting at cafes, after our beach lessons. 🙂 (Though this book has some IMO bizarre comments at times- that I particularly felt the need to edit for DS9).


Arden is up to year 10 and is keen to continue with aviation related studies, and he is continuing with the youth flying club at Bullcreek Aviation museum, and recently signed up for Aviation cadets. He is still doing jujutsu and is almost at the adults belts for grading now. We are thinking that this will probably be his last year doing music classes at Cottage Insititute, as he will have a solid grounding in music should he wish to pursue it later in life. He is also doing sailing classes this year, at Hillary’s Yacht club.

To start off the year, he’s been largely working on music theory using the ABRSM books grade 1 to 5, in a similar style to how his sister, Willow, did. (She studied a range of instruments and voice, did Kodaly style lessons at Cottage insititute and only worked on the grade 1 through 5 books from year 10). Arden’s interest in music however is quite different to Willow’s and at one stage he was interested in musical composition and was watching Hans Zimmer’s masterclass on composing. He is very particular about being able to hear movie tracks due to this interest in music soundtracks and their relationship to the film. He is a self-taught pianist from watching youtube “piano hands” channels as I like to call them, and atm he plays for about an hour and a half a day.

Irving is up to year 5, though in my opinion is only really year 4 and a half, and so that’s where he’s at, at home. He is born right at the cut off date for registration and since we do Steiner inspired education, I slowed down our stories and themes over the last year, to line up to mid- year since that is better for him. So at the moment we are reading the Norse Myths by Padraic Collum and learning about runes. We’ve also joined a small STEAM group for a bit of a hang out- there’s an activity and play, he’s doing music classes at Cottage, and he’s doing pottery classes too. Plus there’s been *lots* of swimming! We’ve been down swimming in our pool at least three times a week, trying to get him up to nippers qualifying level.

We had a few event outing’s during February. When we had kids really into performance, we used to attend a lot of Fringe and Festival events, though these days we have been doing this very little. Irving and I did go to the Perth Festival Opening at Lake Joondalup- which we enjoyed to varying degrees, but the location was beautiful!

On the same night Arden and Gabriel both went to their first big stadium gig- off to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. DH, Damien and I had gone out Friday evening and stopped in to see a friend’s band, and just happened to be there when Chad Smith, the chilli peppers drummer approached the band and asked if he could drum. Since we had our mini brush with them, Damien shook hands with him on our way out, it started a bit of a thing here, which culminated with buying last minute tickets Sunday afternoon, and both of them heading out to see the Chilli Peppers.

Our first formal home educating outing for the year, was a fun hang out session of roller skating, and it’s now looking like we’ll be doing iceskating lessons again in term 3, if everything falls into place. Both the boys loved iceskating when we did lesson pre-covid.

Irving also did first aid classes again this year, Arden decided not to- since it hasn’t been that long since the last ones he did.

We also headed out to A Night on Bayview- WASO’s performance in Claremont. We all really miss their performances on the Swan River, and the Claremont location is lovely, but we miss the preview of the coming year’s orchestral performances. I’ve been a bit slack checking out the program this year, Arden is particularly keen to go to a few, and WASO do very reasonably priced education tickets.

Irving has really taken to pottery classes and it looks like we’ll be doing them all year. He’s also been borrowing books on pottery, and we’ve been watching “The Great Pottery Throwdown“, since he’s loving it so much. He’s had about three classes, so far, but they are only having their first firing, so he’s excited to see how his work comes out this week.

Arden and I are back into reading “Tragedy and Hope” for our part 2 on it’s take on the history of ww2. And Irving, Arden and I are just finished reading “I Can Jump Puddles” as our family reading. I am looking to find the second and third sequels, so that we can get more insight into Australia at that time, from more of a first hand account. I am particularly interested in his take on the depression, as he has such a unique view on growing up in the bush, as someone living with polio. Irving has also been reading “Charlotte’s Web”, as a part of our friend’s book club, and he’s been loving it.

Arden is also doing some study on the idea of earth as GAIA- a living complex in itself, and the forces that affect it. We’ve started watching Brain Cox’s “Forces of Nature” as part of his background research, as well as doing a range of reading.

As an update the older kids are busy with more grown up life- Willow is just being made team leader at work. She’s been working in fintech since she was almost 19, initially more admin related work for the merchant operations area, and gradually with increasing responsibility doing online fraud analysis. She loves her work, and it suits her, since one of her hobbies as a home educated student was moderating online message boards.

Gabriel finished TAFE, in 2019, and was hoping to get a job in a cafe, when all of the covid stuff happened. He decided that he wasn’t interested in doing more in the digital screen and media area, and instead he was interested in drawing and art- off screen, and also learning Japanese. As well as working part- time in a juice bar, he had been doing this at home, until this year, when he decided he is interested in studying at uni and he took a place in Curtin’s uni ready course.

English, Instruments and Floral Appreciation

Other than reflecting over today, I have sat down and wondered what we have been doing.  It’s been an odd sort of week, but we have managed to get through a few interesting things.  Arden has been doing a mixture of pen and ink as well as grammar for his current new learning.  We are reading Charles Kovacs’ “Norse Mythology” which I am not a huge fan of, but I like that it looks at some different versions of the myths from my preferred book by Padraic Colum, and Arden has been interested in hearing this version too.  Today was a bit interesting, as usually Irving will listen or do something nearby whilst we read these days, today however our reading was interspersed with playmobile games, of knights and pirates.

Charles Kovacs “Norse Myths”.

Arden’s sketch of miolnir.

My pen and ink of Frey’s sword.

Sigurd’s sword, Gram by Arden.

For Arden’s English we’ve been looking at perfect tenses, continuous tenses, verbs and consistency (plural, singular, etc) and passive and active voice (including object and subject in this discussion obviously).  Arden had started asking some questions to Damien and I recently about this, so it was nice to explore it further.  We tend to do a little writing, and lots of talking out examples to let the idea really settle.  With Willow and Gabriel, when we did this, I mostly used websites that I found online, and my understanding of it, was pretty average ( we started doing this in yr 7, and then never did any more grammar in high school).  Last year we picked up a DK book on English, and generally I like DK books, so this year we used it as our guide.  To be honest I think if your child loves writing and reading, that is 3/4 of what it takes to be good at English, and of course reading quality books.  I’m happy for the kids to read almost whatever, from the library in their own time, but when we read together, I rarely read something to them post 1950,as the quality of language decays significantly the more modern the book.

DK English book

Arden’s sketch and writing.  Arden has a tendency to turn *everything* into art, so sometimes the writing is interesting, as he explores an idea for how he can write.  (Sometimes I request regular writing, sometimes I ask what *on earth* he is doing….such as in one of the examples here where he was trying to write his sentence in the shape of a triangle!)

Arden’s and my form drawing for the week.

Arden and I are messing about with a bit of embroidery on old clothing.

There is a plan for some sort of cactus embroidery, after we’ve experimented.  At the idea stage.

Some moments during the week.

 

Candlelight on a thundery morning.  Just because we can.

 

Arden has been busy cooking recipes from around the world recently for dinner (using Jamie Oliver’s cook book Jamie Does…) and I’ve been trying out German baking, to re-experience my childhood of Australian German baking.  I picked up this book from the library and will have to buy a copy, there are so many things in here that I remember from my Nanna’s house growing up…..plus it made me realise where my love of poppy seed cake is from.

Hazelnut macarons (haselnuss-himbeer makronen) before the addition of jam.

 

Gabriel received a kit from Pitbull Guitars this week, for him to put together his own guitar. Willow made her own harp via a workshop, at a similar age, and since Gabriel is interested in guitar we thought that this seemed like an interesting project, that gives some insight into instrument construction.

And some flowers because the bunch was made just for me!  Can’t help but feel good about that!  As a customer it’s lovely to shop local and get treated by the shopkeeper.

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.

Week One

We started our at home learning this week, sadly not missing the worst of the heat (might have to re-evaluate this for other years, where the Jan/ Feb season is mild…) and so far have had a pleasant start, though none of us are keen on humidity so yesterday was a bit ordinary.

Arden and I are reading Norse myths by Padraic Collum and doing a study of runes and some celtic knots right now.  We’ re continuing to use a dip pen for writing, and Irving has been loving trying out the dip pen too.

We’ve also started onto some embroidery for craft.  Arden enjoyed hand sewing last year, and although he’s quite good at knitting, he isn’t very keen on it so far.  (We still have a cushion decoration pattern to finish from our wool spinning last year.  )  We’ve watched a few youtube videos on embroidery, and have made a start on making him a cushion for his bed.  His plan is to embroider snakes, stars and his name on it.  He has drawn his design onto his pillow and sewn his name so far using Holbein stitch (an up and back running stitch).

This weeks sewing; Arden’s embroidery, pink and spider bag for Irving, green bag for me.

Start of Irving’s embroidery up close.

Received a pile of vintage ricrac off ebay!  Love that it’s all cotton, and almost none is synthetic!

We have a very eclectic taste in clothes around  here…dating back to DH and my days in the alternative scene in Adelaide, and this has continued as a family trait now that we home educate.  So on that theme Arden was very pleased to receive these floral sneakers (we bought online, and they use Korean sizing, which turns out is not the same as the EU sizing it appears to use) which were for Willow, but were far too small for her.

We tend to think that it’s important for young people to be able to wear the things that they like without judgement.  It seems to DH and I that many kids feel that they are “wrong” as boys or girls, because they’ve been told (from a very young age) what girls and boys are “allowed” to be (by parents, teachers, advertising, television, film, computer games,etc) and then this confuses them about who they are.  “I must be a girl if I like dresses…”,  “I must be a boy if I hate dresses and I hate pink….”.  This is social conditioning in its worst form IMO.  Parents need to defer judgement, and support their kids to try things, without passing judgement on what their child likes or dislikes.  The child’s likes or dislikes are not what makes them a boy or a girl, it just makes them human, and a person needing acceptance and love.  If we could all choose to accept each others tastes in superficial aspects such as appearance, I think we would find many more creative and happy people and children in the world.

Gabriel has been getting into managing his own timetable this year, and without Willow around, as she started at WAAPA this week (the earlier two weeks were orientation) it has been quite quiet whilst we are working, and I feel a little like I have a bit too much time to be aware of what he’s doing!  So I’m attempting to make a concerted effort to be disinterested.  We’ve written him a vague outline, and I really want to get in the habit of having a weekly discussion of where he’s at.  Probably at this stage, I will head towards a daily review building towards weekly.

Willow has been finding institutional learning interesting after a decade out of the system.  There’s aspects of it that she is loving, and aspects that are a bit challenging (mostly social related so far).  I think she’s enjoy the out and about aspect of it, despite the social challenges (giggly girls, immature behaviour,etc).

A few highlights from the end of our break!

Tower of books by Arden!

Irving doing some photography through the screen door.

Reading together.

We also got to a couple of shows in PIAF, and PIAF’s opening.  Damien took the older three to see the Wintergarden, and I took them to see O A Lang Pho.  Everyone particularly loved the second one, which was a Vietnamese circus, and Willow came out saying that, that is the sort of circus that she would prefer to do.  The Wintergarden got mixed reviews from the family, but was generally considered acceptable.