Work

I'd been hoping to get to an art/craft open day last weekend, but unfortunately it didn't happen as I had a sore neck.  Instead we did our usual thing, which was hang out in the cultural centre, whilst Damien busks.

We're almost at the end of our planned work now, which is lovely.  Currently we're reading Peter Pan and Ivanhoe.  Peter Pan, as the kids will be going to the ballet in December, and Ivanhoe, as Gabriel is doing a block on medieval history.

Medieval history has been filled with some interesting activities,as well as some written pieces.  Arden's been getting a bit involved too.

This is Gabriel's castle plan.


Then our attempts at illuminated letters.
Gabriel's "T"


Arden's mixture of letters.


My "P"


Then Gabriel's final activity for the week, was a diagram of a Viking Longship.  He was given the choice of learning about Caliphs, Viking boats, Germanic tribes, or the Templars.


Arden and I have come to the end of his alphabet work.  He can read a few words here and there, and has been experimenting with writing words quite a bit. Tomorrow he's off to a class about making a book.

These are our recent paintings of letters.

Arden's "O" painting of a pot, followed by mine.

Arden's "U" painting followed by mine, of a tub.

Willow's currently working on physics, so far she's progressed through sounds and light.  She's done some interesting experiments involving waves in water and seeing how they move, and also some experiments with lenses, and how they focus light.

Journeys

Officially it's school holidays here, but we're working on this time, since Damien was made redundant a while ago, and whilst having started a new job, has not received his first pay.  It didn't seem worth having holidays yet, so we'll be starting ours mid- Nov which will make for a nice long Summer.

Last week saw us head down to Fremantle for a puppet show at Spare Parts Puppet theatre.  This time they were doing Shaun Tan's book "Tales From Outer Suburbia".  We own and love this book, and it was well worth seeing.  They cleverly made a model size suburbia, which they would zoom into, to tell us the various stories of suburbia.  We had a bit of a wander around Freo, whilst we were there, visiting our favourite book shop and getting fish and chips.  Arden was excited about buying his own fish and chips, as he recently started busking the harmonica, and has been doing quite well at it.

It also happened to be the weekend before the AFL grand final, and Fremantle happened to be in it, so it was covered with purple and white in spots.  This was one of our favourites.

 

This is Gabriel's geometry drawing from last week- an octagon spiral.

 This was from Willow experimenting during geometry.  This week she's moved on to loci.

A previous picture from geometry, beautifully finished.

This weeks painting with Arden.  We were working on "I", and making the fillings for our words using it.  Mill was our word for our painting.
This one is mine.

This is Arden's.

Willow headed down to the show with some friends this week, and had a fabulous time.  Apparently she only spent $3.50, as they had a lot of vouchers for rides, etc.  Mostly she'd really wanted to see the horses.  The weather was beautiful for it, but will be back to rainy tomorrow (I like the rain, but it's been nice to have some warm days again!).  Finally Damien and I took a class in four beat blues, which we are now teaching Gabriel, Willow can already do it quite well.

We've also booked Willow flights to Adelaide- she's saved enough for the first leg of her trip to a homeschool camp at the end of the year.  Now she just needs the second half!  Gabriel's also keen to visit Adelaide, and is saving for a trip to visit family next year.