Thursday, September 29, 2011

Holiday Time

Well our first term in Perth has finished, and we are now on holidays. The Royal Perth show starts this weekend, and so we have plans to head off to that. I'm looking forward to exploring Perth further, over the next two weeks.

Last weekend Parklife was happening across from our place, so we headed out for the day. The Onwilliam festival was happening as part of Perth Fashion week, so we spent most of the day wandering around Northbridge. We all really enjoyed it, the kids particularly liked going around to collect the badges and get their passports stamped. It was also nice to see so many interesting craftspeople, selling their stuff. Afterwards we headed to South Perth for dinner, and a small work along the river before catching the last ferry back across.

Willow has just finished a two week block on astronomy, which has worked out quite nicely. Hopefully we can get out for a walk tomorrow night and do a bit of star gazing too. We're better a spotting the southern cross now that we know to look out for alpha and beta centaurus, and we spotted venus setting last week which was nice too. We haven't really added any further constellations that we can spot, so I'd like to try and see if we can do that tomorrow night too. But the block has certainly improved our understanding of the movement of the stars and planets, and we've been fortunate to have a homeschool outing to the Observatory in the next few weeks.

Willow's painting of the Southern Cross with it's pointers.


Arden's star painting. He's become very focused when painting.


Willow is also getting quite experimental with her poetry writing. She decided to try some older english for this.
Venus
Oh, Venus, thou lovely one, the evening star,
the goddess of love and beauty,
how brightly thou doth shine in the sunset,
kissing us goodnight every so often,
thou art like the Dove, bringing peace and beauty to Earth,
like the rainbow I doth see,
never more beauteous I hath seen, than the Evening Star.


Gabriel has been getting through the animal block, and we have the last week to finish, after the break, where we look at man. Again we've been fortunate in that over the holidays there are some great kids workshops run, at various centres, and so Willow and Gabriel will be off to an afternoon with raptors. Gabriel has also just finished his zebra on his cross-stitch cushion. It's coming along very beautifully.



Willow has just has a trial sew up of her horse toy. A few adjustments are needed but hopefully she will be finished it quite soon. She has also been doing some crocheting recently, as part of the yarn bombing of Subiaco, for Christmas.

A few more pictures.
Willow's painting of Venus rising.


My painting of Venus setting.


Homeschooler's tile around the Bell Tower.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Some New Aquisitions and What I'm Reading

I started reading this when we arrived in Perth, but I must admit I haven't read much of it recently. It is totally fascinating, but incredibly depressing IMO, so I've put it aside at present, and have just been reading bits of it incidentally. Though for anyone that thinks vegetarianism will save the world, I highly recommend reading it. ('The Vegetarian Myth' by Lierre Keith)

This is equally depressing, but I guess I know the outcome, so it's less disturbing. The wisdom of the ancients is quite amazing. ('Eve's Herbs' by John Riddle)

Some recent homeschooling purchases.

('Physics is Fun' by Robert Trostli)

('Sky Phenomena' by Norman Davidson)


I'm finding this last one fabulous for explaining Astronomy, and it's so nice that it has an explanation for the Southern Hemisphere too. We're about to start on some of this next week- and even better for us, there's a planned homeschool excursion to the Perth Observatory in October.

Some Recent Work

Willow's swan poem.



Gabriel's Eagle poem.



Gabriel's celtic knot sword picture.



Gabriel is progressing through his cushion.



My pin cushion is finally finished!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Over the last few weeks, we've been out and about around Perth, done some research in terms of classes and been sick. So generally times have been busy.

Last week Willow went off to try a new choir - Cottage Children's Choir. She had a great time, and overall their teaching technique appealed to me. It was very active, and fun and made the singing look much less like work. I've also been looking into music teachers, and sport classes, but unfortunately this has all been slowed down a bit by Damien and I being unwell.

We've now been to City Farm, and although we love the feel of the market, it is very small and really won't be suitable as a place to do our food shopping every week. So at this stage we're thinking of alternating between it and Subiaco. City Farm has a fabulous cafe, and also has a circus skills class happening there on the weekends, so overall there's lots of great stuff on there that really appealled to us. Yesterday we went back to Subiaco, and Willow did some finger knitting, to help with creating some knitted pieces to yarn bomb Subiaco for Christmas. Over the course of the coming months, a local artist is working at the market to get the community involved in the project.

We've been getting out to a few homeschool meet ups too, and meeting lots of foreigners that have moved here. It seems Perth is very international- I had no idea prior to moving here, and I do like the way that makes for a more diverse city. We've met homeschoolers from Portugal, South Africa, Ireland, Queensland, NSW- it even amused me that most of the Aussies we've met here, have been from other parts of Australia. The last homeschooling outing we got to was at Scitech, the kids really enjoyed it there, and they certainly had a diverse range of activities happening. Last week we missed an excursion to Whiteman Park, which I was sorry about, but hopefully we'll get out there one weekend ourselves. In the coming weeks we'll be getting to the Observatory, the Bell Tower and the Mint- so it seems there are lots of interesting activities being planned by people.

Just to finish off, we've found a french cafe here- Jean Pierre Sancho, which I'm very happy about. Real French bread is so good.