1 week In

We started this years new learning with some painting and reading.  We continued where we left off with this “Colour Dynamics” book.  Last year we worked through the individual primary and secondary colours as the start of the year.  This year we worked through the colour combinations- through working with red, blue and yellow, and the rainbow colours.

Colour dynamics book

Painting in the primary colours

Version two with the primary colours

Rainbow paintings…..by Irving

By Arden

Mine

All our paintings from last week.

Our current reading, “String, Straight-edge and Shadow”, one of my favourite books for understanding the development of geometry.

Heading out to ice-skating again.

I received this excellent vintage slipper pattern in the post.  I am thinking with starting off by making Arden some moccasins for the winter, since the pattern is about his size.

 We’ve been making bean bags for juggling and counting games.  Irving is enjoying improving his sewing.

The finished results…Arden made his out of an old pair of green cords he had worn to death, and I made one out of one of Damien’s old ties, so I could work on sewing in silk.

 

 We had a very small but appreciate potato harvest, which were boiled and covered in butter!

So far we have had a lovely start to doing more structured stuff together again this year.  Arden has been also learning mandolin, after receiving one for his birthday.  We haven’t been doing a lot of music yet this year, but we have gotten to quite a few musical performances and this will be continuing.  Irving seems to finally be enjoying counting, and we are starting off doing some number work this week.

Week 1 2013

So we started our schooling this first week of Feb- so unusual for us- but necessary this year, and have had a good start so far.

Willow has only done one day of stuff at home, so she has two more days to do this week.  She’s working on English at the moment, studying Romeo and Juliet.  She’s also working on a small business project, as a project for class 8.  Currently she’s doing lots of knitting for it.

Gabriel and I are reading ‘String, Straightedge and Shadow‘ for his geometry block.  It’s a nicely put together  historical story of how people learnt about geometry.  This is the second time that we’ve read it; last time was for Willow’s geometry block.

Here is some of Gabriel’s work.

Arden was also getting involved quite a bit this week- so I helped him by doing the shapes for his picture, and he did the decorating.  He says that it is a flower opening up.

A lot of our classes have also restarted for the year- musicianship is back on, as is basketball.  Plus we’ve found a new flute teacher for Willow, who she will start with next week.

We’ve not done school Mon- Wed for awhile, so it will be interesting to see how it works for us. (In recent years, we’ve done Tues- Thurs).  Though since Willow is largely working independantly, she intends after this week, to have Tuesdays and Fridays off.