The Artisan Homeschoolers

 I've started a new instagram account to share all of Irving's and my interesting ventures into more artisan and old fashioned style skills.  We can be found @theartisanhomeschoolers.

https://www.instagram.com/theartisanhomeschoolers/

Holidays and Copperwork

Irving and I had a really lovely extended Winter break.  We  had our regular classes to attend surrounded by a few excursions, and some interesting extended learning at home, and a trip as a family down to SW Western Australia, to visit Willow and her fiance.

We had our Winter solstice celebration with a fire on the balcony, but sadly no ember baked damper this year, as it had been quite wet overnight, and so having a fire was a last minute decision.  We instead had freshly baked home made bread.

We got some last minute tickets to join our home school group, and headed with them to see the Teracotta Warriors at the WA Museum.  The whole exhibition was amazing, and the presence of the larger warriors  was formidable.

Irving turned 12, and we had a lovely family day celebrating with him, and Willow made him a fabulous birthday cake this year.

Blackforest Birthday Cake

Irving and I learnt about harvesting Aloe Vera, and the need to drain the aloin from the freshly picked leaves to make it edible.  It was fascinating finding the sticky yellow substance had drained out after leaving the leaf to strain.

Leaves Draining

We tested and cleaned out this coffee machine, that we found in the hard waste, and discovered that it works, is missing the tamphead, which should be easy enough to replace, and needs a little attention to the finial on the top.  So that's part of our next jobs to get it functioning again.

DeLonghi coffee machine

There were lots of toasted marshmallows eaten during our stay with Willow, as they have a woodfire stove and the weather was adequately cold for our visit.  When we came back to Perth, it seemed to have finally gotten cold here too!  We had a lovely time visiting Manjimup, Busselton, Pemberton, Northcliffe and exploring the SW in general.  Particularly on our way home, when we kept making spontaneous stops into small towns along the way.

Marshmallows

We headed to Busselton, found some great shops for tea, healthfood, jewellery- buying a few too many things probably, and then headed to a local jetty for Irving to do some fishing with Willow's fiance.

Off to do some fishing

Out on the jetty.

We really loved our visit to the Manjimup Electricity Museum.  In fact I think it's the best Museum that I've been to in a while.  Much better than the WA Museum.  The electrical  tech side is well integrated, given it is about electricity they engage with it really well.  And it was an amusing and pleasant surprise to discover that a lot of the tech was from the old East Perth Power station, which is not too far from where we live.

We got to the Southern Forests Chocolate Company near Pemberton, and had the best chocolate that we've had in WA IMO.  They definitely rival our friend, Steven ter Horst in Adelaide (visit to Steven's shop here).

Out front the Southern Forests Chocolate company

Truffle selection

Arden sadly didn't make the trip with us, as he had a surprise last minute event via airforce cadets, and headed off to a camp for the week.  In fact he had quite an eventful lead up to his week away, as he got his learners permit, and he also got a retail job, working for the chain, City Beach.

Irving and I did quite a bit more copper work over the break, and one of Arden's and Irving's friends has joined us in our latest sessions.

Learning to saw copper.

Circular bowls and experimenting with pickling- using vinegar to keep it kitchen friendly!

Irving's left, mine on the right.

My bowl.

Irving's varying square shaped bowls.

We've been watching a lot of youtube videos to expand our copperwork knowledge, and we found this one particularly interesting and inspiring.  We loved that this man had taken up the traditional method of making and repairing old copper pots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTztlpAcips

https://duparquet.com/coppercare

Irving and I have been reading "The Secret Garden".  Such a great book, and it's still fascinating to remember having discovered that people back then learnt cursive first if they were educated, and that printing may have been tricky.

Irving and I spent quite a bit of time having quiet coffee dates, where we took our current reading and headed out for a coffee with our books.  I've been learning about bicarb soda since finishing reading Portal.  Both books are quite fascinating, and I think Portal is a particularly valuable read on birth, as it explores many of the untalked about aspects of bringing life into the world.

Arden finally finished this Guns'n'Roses jigsaw puzzle.  He was finding the black rather challenging!

We found one of our favourite coffee vans down by our stretch of the river, which was a lovely surprise.  They have fabulous Polish pastries.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTztlpAcips

Consulting

 If you are a homeschooler and wanting some advice on getting started and ideas on how to manage aspects of your home schooling/ home education experience I am offering consultations.  At this stage I am still busy home educating myself, and I am in GMT +8 time zone, so any sort of online meeting will need to work within my schedule.  Also payment would be based off the idea of gifting, so payment will be according to the value you receive from our conversation.

Please use the contact form to reach out for a discussion.  This is still a new idea in the making so please be understanding of any hiccups!  :)

*first hiccup- my contact form was sending to an old email, please reach out again if you messaged me today.

Learning to Read

During our homeschool journey, I have taught my four children to read, although I would use the term taught rather loosely.  As anyone who has taught a child to read should know, a significant amount of being able to read is exposure to language, conversation about what is being read, the child being  ready and interested in learning to read, and then the child actively engaging in the decoding process that is reading.

With my children I have basically taken the philosophy of reading to them more or less from birth, with the exception of Willow, who as the oldest, probably had stories read to her from 2ish.  The others, all being younger, simply got to join in when there was a story.  I distinctly remember reading all sorts of kids classics to the older two kids, whilst breastfeeding Arden in bed, or sitting on the floor with him, and then again doing similar sorts of things later on when Irving was born.

Willow was gradually getting the idea of reading, via our Steiner approach to exposure to letters, drawing and modelling them, and making shapes with our bodies, when we had our first moderator meeting in Adelaide.  The moderator came and told Willow about the MS Readathon.  Willow was very keen to get involved, and in about 6 weeks time she had completely worked out how to read and was onto reading things like Enid Blyton and Rainbow Magic.  She was 7 and 1/2 when she got it.

Willow reading Harry Potter

Gabriel was much dreamier, and he wasn't in a hurry to read.  He kinda looked like he was reading much of the time, if you didn't know him, but he was particularly engaged with the pictures in the books that he was interested in.  So it became a natural transition for him to go from reading the pictures of comics like Asterix, and TinTin, to one day reading them.  He was 9 and 1/2.

Gabriel reading Games Workshop

Arden was keen to read in a similar manner to Willow. I had learnt a bit more about the process of learning to read by the time I was assisting his development in understand, and I noticed just how much he was memorising what we were reading.  I had discovered by this point, that one of the developmental steps in learning to read, was to memorise what was being read.  With the older two, I suspected that I hadn't really noticed this process, because I was also memorising some of their picture books, because they liked to read a few specific ones over and over. (I can still partly recite "The Gruffalo"!)  Arden had a different selection of preferred books, and a wider rotation, perhaps because we had more books by the time he was born, and so I really noticed him passing through this stage, and then I noticed that he had particular words that he knew.  I remembered this from the older kids, and from my own journey learning to read.  And then one day, also at 7 and 1/2 like Willow, he worked it out.  He used to spend a lot of time reading these kids Encyclopedia books that we had that the kids called "The Question Mark Boy" books, because of a picture on them all.

Arden and Irving with some worksheets.

Irving has always been interested in physical objects, and constructions and how things go together much more than the others, and possibly because of them he was also interested in non-fiction books from the beginning.  Similarly to Gabriel he would look through comic books regularly, and also non-Fiction books with picture instructions, and he liked to read the kids encyclopedias  regularly too.  He followed a journey somewhat similar to Arden's, and worked out how to decode the alphabet by 8 1/2.

Irving and Willow reading together.

I always found it curious that all of them were half way through a year, when they worked out how to read, I kinda wondered about that.  I myself remember working it out about 6 and a half.  I remember the slow, strained feeling of trying to understand, and then one day feeling like a light had gone on, and I simply had it.  From there I seem to remember devouring picture books for about 6months, before graduating to things like Enid Blyton, and later Roald Dahl.

I think the lightbulb moment is in itself something so important for adults to remember when "teaching" reading.  That it is the child's journey of processing, and that when they are ready, it will simply happen and be easy.  I learnt from a homeschooling friend, around when Willow had first learn to read, that the normal age range for kids to begin reading was 2yrs old to 13yrs old, with most kids being in the middle, at about 7yrs.  With the education model  being so strongly driven towards learning via reading, being at the late end of that curve would be traumatising.  Our homeschool friend, whose older 2 children attended school, were at the late end of the curve, and it was only her youngest, who was homeschooled the whole way through, who developed a more constructive relationship to reading.  

I tend to wonder if the children who learn to read later, have tended to be later speakers, but I haven't had the inclination to investigate further.  I know that has been the case in my family.  I also know that because we value more modes of learning, that we haven't hurried people to read.  But we haven't taken a completely natural learning approach either.  There are so many other ways to learn, and school only really focuses on the intellect.  I remember my Mum telling me, that aged 3, she would get me to select casettes for her,  I couldn't read, but I could correctly identify all the cassettes.  I've always been interested in geometric patterns and art, and I came to the conclusion, that I must have been recognising the patterns of the shapes and colours too.

Chaos (Mar 2017)

I was thinking about the idea of the terrible home ed day when everyone and everything seems to go wrong, and generally as a parent one feels ill or out of sorts.  Largely this came up, because yesterday was a mini-disaster, that fortunately I was able to laugh at by the end of.  And just that I think we need to know that to be human and to be feeling creatures means that sometimes it all goes up end, but that is by no means a reflection on who we are.  We are a work in progress just as are our children, and if we feel like a failure, it is likely because we ourselves are still caught up in the schooling external evaluation system and indoctrination that we received.

So on that theme I thought I'd run through one day last week.  First of all I awoke feeling grumpy and out of sorts, and couldn't shake the feeling easily.  I came into the living room, to find that Willow and Gabriel had just left for the opening of H&M (they were hoping for free breakfast LOL!) and that they hadn't finished their jobs from the night before.  Instantly felt grumpier, but straightened kitchen anyway, and asked Arden to help finish off putting the vacuum away.  Decided I better have a shower and a quiet meditation of the feeling to see if I could shake the uneasy feeling that I had.  Irving wanted a shower, so I did this with him.  Felt surprisingly better (currently I'm using a technique from a book that I love called "Compassionate Touch") decided that we should go out for coffee. 

Everyone gets ready, we do times tables on walk/skateboard to the cafe.  We order a croissant, brownie and biscuit to share and a hot chocolate for Arden and Irving each, and a matcha latte for myself.  The Perth mint has a fire alarm, and we watch the evacuation from the cafe, later we see the police leave.  Both the boys try the matcha latte.  We contemplate the flavour of the biscuit (choc and almond) and try to guess the ingredients.  Arden photographs his drink to put online.  We walk/skateboard home.  (This involves Arden skateboarding properly and Irving sitting on his kicking along.)

-

2025

Oh that seems tame to how I ended up in a few years time....I discovered around 2020 that I had sleep apnea, after I had a tooth break, I had it extracted, my teeth shifted, my bite would no longer meet, and I ended up with heart palpitations and my balance completely off!  (I was really glad to have read a lot about dental health, so that I knew that's what caused it)  I found a new dentist who helped to fix my bite, and within the day, my balance was completely resolved....however I wondered about the apnea, and after some research I found a dentist that said it  could be cause by an iodine deficiency.  Well in my case he was right, and very quickly the apnea cleared up.

So my disturbed sleep for quite a number of years, made our home ed experience quite a bit more chaotic, as I just struggled to stay awake during the day.  I was also regularly experiencing neck pain, and this was causing problems with my sleep too.  And combined with taking on too many things to do during the coming years, approx 2018- 2023, much of that time is a bit of a blur, similar to when I had two toddlers, too much to do, and irregular sleeping patterns.

That said, we've always had a great, learning experience, with lots of interesting things to do and learn, so it didn't change that.  It just meant I was taking naps pretty regularly during the day, weirdly I seemed to sleep better then, and if I'd had a dreadful nights sleep we'd take the day off, or one of the older kids would help the younger kids with their learning.

We Made It

 At the beginning of the year, Irving decided that he would like a super long Winter break, I wasn't sure how we'd manage without the regular April holidays, but I agreed to go along with him.  I also suspected that the moment Arden was off TAFE, it might become a bit more challenging to keep focused.   Well, I was right, but Irving and I persevered, and we did our first half of the year as a single semester, and now we have a seven week winter break!  Which I am feeling really appreciative of.

We started on Ancient Rome and the story of Aeneas.  Normally we'd do some Latin this year, but Irving is keen to continue the Ancient Greek lessons that we're doing for now, so the plan ATM, is  to do Latin next year.  We used "The Writing Revolution" to complement our writing for this block, with the goal being to develop more refined sentences.  By then end of the term, we were moving on to the section on How, What, Where, When, Why and Who.  It reminded me, very much of my year 7 teacher, and how he taught us English.

We did some more copperwork, Irving decided to try another square bowl, and that he wasn't interested in trying to saw yet.

He is still a huge fan of Rubik's cube, and so this one was his new addition to his collection.  The book, underneath,  "The Invisible Rainbow- A History of Electricity and Life" we were reading as part of our physics study, we just read the first half for now, which was largely a historical background.  I have read it before, and I spent quite a bit of time checking his references, as it was really unlike anything I had ever heard about electricity before.

We continued with home school excursions with the National Trust.  This time to Mundaring Weir.  Other than it was a quite a hot day, this one was excellent and we really enjoyed the walk around the Weir, and the tour of the historic building which is now a museum for it.

The final excursion in this series was to Woodbridge house in Midland.

More sailing on the Swan River.

We moved on to some civics for a few weeks, and used "Robin Hood" by Roger Llancellyn Green as our accompanying text.  As well as an overview of the Australian Political system, we took a look at the Magna Carta and read through the original conditions that it required King John must maintain.


We also did a series of excursions to the Literature Centre in Fremantle, with our homeschool group.  The focus was on Shaun Tan's art works and books.  The classes were engaging and interesting, albeit a little short, there wasn't quite enough time to really settle into developing ideas  properly in our hour and a half length classes.

We also got to do a tour of the Alcoa Bauxite mine.  It's the third mine tour that I've ever done.  The first one was of a copper mine in Burra when I was 12, and we also  visited the Kalgoorlie superpit when we were on our way to Perth, and TBH I found that pretty horrifying.  This seemed better overall, in the way that it was managed and regenerated, but apparently it devastates the local animal population, and TBH for all their good media propoganda, it was easy to see that that was the case.

Irving was doing some weaving on the vintage weave it loom.

A kookaburra guest came and stole some food!

The local Catholic Cathedral had its front door open, which is highly unusual!  We walk past it regularly and have been told that this is because it's a jubilee year.

Willow, Irving and I had a day out to New Norcia.  We decided to walk around the town ourselves, rather than do the tour.  It was very odd.  It's apparently the only Monastic Town in Australia, but it is now largely a ghost town, and is filled with these large magnificent buildings that used to be schools or associated with them.

We had a surprise visit from my brother, on his way to Adelaide after a holiday in Bali.  So we seemed to  spend a couple of days just hanging out and visiting cafes with him!  

Irving and I were working on building truncated solids out of toothpicks.  This was highly challenging as some of them were very large!

We found this chocolate from down south, near our dentist.  This is the best chocolate I've found in WA.

We all headed out to see WASO perform John William's music over the past weekend.  So many great songs!  Everyone really enjoyed it, and it was lovely to run into some friends too.

I've started making tallow again, since the brand we were buying has stopped producing smaller quantities.  And some purple sauerkraut this time.  I loive the colour that it comes out!

One of my watercolours- I wasn't too sure about how this one came out!