January

 So far our January has been rather quiet and fairly relaxing.  New Years saw us playing board games and hanging out as a family. And since then we've had a bunch of catch up with friends, sailing and nippers as well as reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" together- Arden, Irving and myself.  We've also been doing the Jim Kwik memory course on Mind Valley- with Gabriel too, and Irving and I have been trying the Quantum Jumping course. Next week will be quite a bit busier since Irving will be doing sailing lessons- tackers 2, and the following week we will be doing half the vacswim classes.  It turns out it's not possible to cancel a place!

There's been a bunch of planning and organising the last week or so.  Arden got offered a place at TAFE last week, which he accepted on Monday.  So this year he'll be studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, and so that's his year 12 and his last year  home schooling sorted!

  I thought we would be doing archery again this year, but Irving told me yesterday that he's not interested in doing more archery, and tbh we're doing enough physical activity ATM.  Sailing and swimming make life quite busy.  I've booked us into doing more woodworking classes from March.  If you've read much of my blog you'll know that we like to take the Summer easy, til things cool off more!  And another home ed friend has arranged a bunch of outings, so we've signed up for National trust history excursions, as well as the Literature centre.

Willow turned 25 this past week and it's funny to reminisce on all the changes that life has brought both because of her and our travels.  She inspired us to look at alternative education, and that as well as some other influences brought us here to home education.  We have tried so many different activities because home education and encouraging the kids pushed us outside of our comfort zone, and I'm incredibly grateful for this journey.  Being a parent and home educating has been the best thing that I have ever done, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes  us this year.

Willow with her teddy collection in 2001, when I was working part time and pregnant with Gabriel.

Beginnings and Endings and thoughts on Childhood

 Coming into 2025 I'm inclined to reflect on the past years homeschooling as I come to an end of the home ed journey, most likely, with my third child.  There have been so many changes over the years and so many things staying the same, in some ways.  When I became a parent this was the last thing on my mind, and I really thought that there would be some good alternative schools to meet my kids needs.  I feel this has only gotten worse in the last, approx 12years with the implementation of the national curriculum.  There are more teachers under strain, more students being failed, too many unnecessary labels because people no longer seem to understand basic childhood or human development and that these things happen over a curve, and then of course there are the people who actually require the labels, and the extra assistance but are likely lost in the noise of the misundertanding of childhood and a natural education.

As a long term Steiner inspired home educator, I have really liked Steiner's philosophy on giving children time to play and grow via imagination.  I find the Steiner school attitude too dogmatic generally, and interestingly that in reading Steiner himself,  he said that his way of doing would eventually become a dogma as we get further and further from his time.  Some of my main takeaways from reading and learning various aspects of Steiner are: stages of development- birth to 7 is all about imitation, kids copy everything and that is how they learn.  If you don't like how they are doing something, try to work out where it is coming from.  7-14 is about imagination, engaging in storying telling, play, creativity.  14-21 is about inspiration and this is the time when kids recognise their own inner shadows, and it is worth finding inspiring people and characters and mentors to guide them through darkness and into light.  21-28 is about ego and working out who one is as an individual.

Another aspect that I really appreciate in a Steiner inspired education is engaging head, heart and hands.  The head being the thinking intellectual side, the heart being the feeling, spiritual, emotional side, and the hands being the action oriented side.  A well rounded education should offer all of these things, and this is where a modern schooled education currently fails- the curriculum is stuffed too full and gives the impression that it caters to the arts and to movement, but allows the teacher very little flexibility to cater to her students as individuals within their group.

When we moved back to Australia and began permanently home educating in 2007, there were whispers of a national curriculum.  I was not impressed, living in the UK, we had chosen a Steiner school for DD24 because the papers were reporting all over the place that the national curriculum was failing our children.  When we settled into home ed, in Adelaide, and I had to understand the learning outcome style of reporting on education, it was challenging.  I had to take the idea of what was required in the outcomes and work out how what we were doing was meeting those outcomes.  As a basic idea of what this was like to navigate, an outcome could be that children learn to balance. From there it was up to the teacher to work out how their class would learn that skill- it could be skating, cycling, gym,etc.  As a newbie home education parent this was a challenge, and it must also have been a challenge for a newbie teacher.  The national curriculum told teachers what to do and when to do it, and sadly it removed the teachers ability to cater on a more individual level to their class, to garner how to meet the individual's within the class' needs.

As this has gone on the pigeonholing of students has become ever more ridiculous.  Are there any normal children left?  I find I hardly meet a person these days who has a child that is just a child.  I am intrigued by how disconnected we have become to children.  In the last few years I've come to understand children's brainwaves better, and the idea that Steiner put forth that children are in a dream like state.  Until seeing some of the recent research on this, I did not understand just how true this is.  Up til approximately 7 children are in a sleeping awake state.  The older and older they get, the more they grow out of this, their brainwaves change until they are in an adult waking state.  The under 7 stage is perfect for programming their minds and creating life long healthful habits if we treat our children well, but at least in Australia, we are not doing that.  We are asking them to be still, when they need to move and to learn proprioception, we are complaining that they are reading too late- when reading is actively connected to this awakening process,  we are forgetting the power that is in our children's readiness and trying to speed them up to suit school, instead of realising that school should be addressing our children's uniqueness and trying to identify their readiness.  It is interesting to me that instead of copying many of the Scandanavian countries styles of education, which dissuade from academic education before 7 we decided to copy a system that was reported on as failing.  One can only ask, why?

Some links on brainwaves and children (not my original reading, just a few from a brief search for this blog post)-

https://www.psypost.org/new-study-finds-theta-brainwave-activity-in-childhood-predicts-iq-at-age-18/

https://www.amandaleebrady.com/understanding-the-brainwaves-of-your-children/

https://boldscience.org/measuring-brainwaves-to-understand-how-children-learn/

https://startingblocks.gov.au/resources/parenting-and-home/your-childs-development/brain-development-in-children

https://silvamethodgb.com/why-children-learn-so-fast/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4354864/Brainwaves-predict-children-s-reading-ability.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29863816/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5593855/

Closing on another year

 This past term seems to have flown by and also to have been filled with a wide range of entertaining activities both at home and out and about.  What at first impression seemed to be going to be a quiet term ended up very busy.

We started off the term doing some geography- in particular looking at the areas extending out from Australia- Asia and New Zealand.  Our corresponding reading was "1421- The Year China Discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies.  Since Irving had taken to sailing, he was very interested in this book, because although it is a mixture of geography and history, it is written from Gavin Menzies viewpoint of being a submarine Captain.  As part of our geography studies we headed to Cottesloe and  checked out the sundial again.

The Cottesloe Sundial

Instructions for reading the Cottesloe sundial.

We managed to get to sailing a few weeks this term, despite the fact that sailing collided with Nippers.  After a chat with nippers, a decision was made to go sailing whenever a comp was happening with nippers, as Irving was happy to miss them.

Boats waiting for competition time.

My sketch of a catamaran.

With this new found love of boats, Irving got into building a boat from lego, machine sewing the sail and working out the ballast to get it floating.

Pirate ship with sails.

In the sink working out the ballast.

After nippers one day I made may way up the coast to our fishmonger, and had oysters.  Such a beautiful spot to stop.

At the beach for our nippers session.

Irving loves all sorts of old things, and he loves the idea of repairing them, and he had become captivated by the quill set below in a local shop in the city, so with some birthday money and some savings he saved up and bought himself this set.  He's been working on his handwriting with it fairly regularly.

Irving's homeschool market stall this year  included a few things left from last year- pottery items, a treasure bag, the plants he was preparing, and after a visit to the gem exhibition, and some handiwork with my old jewelry tools, some pendants.  We also had a very busy kitchen the day before, as he was busy making brownies.  The brownies were definitely the most popular product.

An example of one of Irving's pendants.

Practising his stall set up.

Our last main topic for the term, was Ancient Greece.  Irving had recently gotten into reading Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan had written the intro to the Greek Myth's book we had so I figured he'd find that a bit interesting too.  We read Roger Llancelyn Green's Greek Myth's first this time (we're going to read Padraic Colum in the beginning of next year.)  Since it was coming to the end of year, I took it as an opportunity to watch a couple of old movies- Jason and the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titans.  We also watched the Channel 4 series, "Home Greek Home", so he could see a bit more of what Greece is like.  Plus because he's interested in languages we did a short youtube course in Ancient Greek, where we focused on learning the alphabet.

Irving's Ancient Greek

My Ancient Greek Alphabet

Our woodwork term  had a delayed beginning and so we only ended up  with four classes this term.  We were  working on making bread boards and butter knives.  I just finished my board before the end of term, and Irving was still progressing on his.  He is doing an interesting design of a little mouse popping out of the board, that he came across in a woodwork book, that was bought for his birthday one year.

My rustic cheeseboard.

We had some excitement last week at sailing with our first experience of a lithium battery fire.  A rentable scooter was pulled out of the river, and the water caused the battery to catch alight.  Given that this is a hazard of lithium batteries, I was glad to have the experience during the day, with lots of helpful people about.  It was interesting to see how the powder extinguisher only partly quelled it.  Eventually it was taken onto the sand where it waited for the fire brigade.

Scooter on the sand.

We had a bunch of fun one off outings this term too.  One of our friends organised an end of year movie session- so we headed off to see "Wicked".  I wasn't expecting much, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  The cinema had been upgraded too, so we all had excellent comfy reclining seats.  Then another friend arranged two educational sessions- one at the Perth Mint, and a Zookeeper 101 day, at the Perth zoo.  We had done the mint tour a bunch of times before, but Irving really enjoys the melting and setting gold session, so it was worth it.  The zookeeper 101 had a bunch of interesting behind the scenes activities- including cleaning out the kangaroo enclosure, feeding the lizards, and getting to see the storage areas for some of the animals meals.

Arden finished his tafe course this term, and also turned 17.  We headed out to ifly to do indoor skydiving for his birthday.  Just the five of us, as Willow had things to do in Manjimup, and couldn't get up here for the day.  I was a bit nervous about trying, but I was prepared to have a go.  Irving was also nervous.  Arden did a high flyer, but the rest of us stayed low- unsurprisingly he loved it, everyone else enjoyed it, and I was amazed to discover that I really enjoyed it too.  It has got to be one of my favourite aspects of home ed-trying things that I'm not usually interested in, and then being surprised at how my expectations vary from the reality of doing them.

Icecream cake and icecream for Arden.

I've been plodding away on my redbubble store, aiming to get a significant amount of designs on, after doing some research into how to get my site profitable and self sustaining.  So I achieved that goal after a very busy few months, and for now I've given myself a bit of a break from it.  It certainly has helped with how many views my shop is now getting.

I have bought my range of Irish Myth's myth mugs now.

My Irish Myth's Mug set

I bought a few of Irving's design's as gifts for family members for Christmas, after buying this one for our family, and really loving the simplicity of the design and how lovely the love heart looks at the end of the mug.  Irving's mug is here on his red bubble shop.

Irving's love heart mug

Since I've spent a lot of this year at Something French, in the city here, having a coffee and painting their patisseries, I decided to let them pick a picture and frame it as a gift.  They picked this one. I was so happy with how it looked in the black frame.  I also have it on my red bubble store.

My strawberry tart painting framed.

Term 3

With Arden back at TAFE, and with only Irving to home educate I decided it was time to slow right down.  Irving's whole life had been chasing around older kids, and trying to keep up with both what they were doing, and their time schedules, so we dropped iceskating, and decided just to stick with woodwork and music.  Unfortunately there were not enough kids for the woodwork class, so with another friend, we decided to do private classes so that we could continue.  This gave us 5 weeks of woodwork, and we decided to try archery classes for the last couple of weeks of term.

Irving's treasure box

My treasure box.

 

We did some more watercolour painting together.  Mine is the turtle on the left, and Irving's is the full moon.

We looked at platonic solids and built a bunch of them with toothpicks and modelling wax.

Tetrahedron and cube.

More shapes.

A merkaba and our copy of Quadrivium.

Wandering around our local area, and admiring this house since it has been restored.

One of Irving's favourite times of year- the hard waste treasure hunt!

For this years Homeschool Christmas market, Irving decided that he would add plants to his collection of things to sell (he had a few things left over from last year, and some golf clubs he found in the hard waste.)  So we got onto learning about taking cuttings and and grew a few things from seed.  He ended up with some succulents, some herbs and a rubber tree, which he was very pleased with!

Taking cuttings of Rosemary

Irving's prepared plants on the metal shelves.

Archery classes were a little different to previous versions that we had tried.  This version is called archery tag, and the bows have soft padding on the ends so that the kids can shoot at or towards each other.  It was very dynamic and a lot of fun.

During the holidays he did Tacker 1 sailing classes at Nedland's Yacht club, and absolutely loved them.  We discovered during the weeks lessons, that he received complementary membership with the club, and so he's been along for the Sunday sailing sessions a few times too.

Getting ready to try sailing

Out in the dinghys.

I've been continuing to learn about redbubble and ordering a few products here and there, to see what the quality is like.  I ordered a couple of my cat sketches as cards, and  a few other styles too.  I really liked how my turtle painting, that is pictured above came out.

I've also been continuing on my theme of painting pastries for my shop.

Irving really liked my painting of the Frasier at Something French, from earlier in the year, so I framed that for him.

First Half of the Year!

Well I didn't mean to be so neglectful of this blog this year, but it turns out that I have.  We've had a very full year.  So I'll give a bit of an update starting with term 2.  Arden and Irving both continued with iceskating and music classes.  Arden was also busy with fencing, airforce cadets, and youth flying club whilst Irving and I took up the homeschool classes with Joy of Wood.

Arden continued to work independantly on a range of topics- including aviation studies, maths, science, and english, as well as joining in with activities that Irving and I were doing as it suited him.  Irving and I spent some time reading "Legends of Hawaii" by Padraic Colum and doing some painting, as well as doing various cultural studies.

Irving working on some handwriting styles.

Owl paintings -Arden's, Irving's and mine.

Irving and my toolbox, made during our woodwork classes.

My spoon partly made in our classes and finished at home.

Our spoons

Elastic band gun- our last item made in class.

Irving and I have done a lot of gardening this year,  He has been very interested in herbs, and is interested in any sort of gardening generally.  He decided that he wanted to make his own herb book, so we found a journal and cut out alphabetical tabs and  he's  been making notes as we grow different herbs.

Irving's herbal book.

As usual we celebrated winter solstic with an early morning fire and a cooked breakfast on the flames, including damper cooked in the embers- everyone's favourite part.

A good friend - The Whole Cake made this lovely cake for Irving's 11th birthday.  She is a naturopath and has a lovely herbal garden and knew that Irving was interested in herbs, and so she came up with this fabulous cake.  He was very pleased.

I have been continuing to work on various designs for my redbubble store  and French cakes and pastries have been a big theme.  I've been taking a painting and coffee break most weekends, and partly painting what I see and trying to do so quickly, so that my coffee is still somewhat warm by the end.  It has been an interesting experience!  There's also a bunch of my paintings inspired by Padraic Colum's "Hawaiian Myths" here.

 

Our mid year holidays were pleasantly refreshing and in Arden's case quite short, because he applied to TAFE again. He was accepted into a cert 3 in Ground Operations at Jandakot TAFE adjacent to the airport.  Irving and I had our usually 6week or so break, in which I was expecting to have to do lots of activities with him, but it seems he has finally developed enough interests that he enjoys indepedently, and so we had a bustly and relaxing break.