Saturday, April 9, 2016

Autumn Festivals

We are back into holidays already here; though I think after the holidays I might be in need of a break!  There are loads of interesting things happening and Willow and Gabriel are off to a few workshops again for the kickstart festival.  Simultaneously there is an Innovation festival, which also has some activities for kids, and Gabriel and Arden attended a moisture sensor workshop yesterday using Arduino technology.

Arden and I took this week, to step into a nature/cooking block starting with seasonality and looking at the cycle of the moon and the sun.  We had an interesting few days  examining the progress of the new moon, and looking at the similarity of rising/setting times for the sun and moon over the days near the new moon.  We will continue with some of this when we get back into school work after the break.

We are reading "Little House in the Big Woods" for this block for him.  With the older two, I read "Wind in the Willows" which is also a lovely nature based book, with a very different lean, but I had never read the Little House series, despite being a huge fan of the TV show as a child, so it seemed this time through grade 3 it might be the thing to read.  So far Arden is loving it, and Irving is very taken by the illustrations, which is also quite helpful, so he's also sitting and listening whilst I read.  I think though we might be finished it quite quickly and be looking for "Little House in the Prairie" very soon, given how much it is being enjoyed.


I'm hoping to do some cheese-making with Arden for this block, and have to get myself a kit, so I really need to spend a bit of time doing some research into this.  I've been keen to try some cheese-making for awhile, and I imagine everyone here will be interested.  Arden has totally taken to cooking with very little input from my direction, so I know he'll be enthused (I'm seeing this as being one of the biggest benefits of a multi-aged family- the desire to be grown up!)  Anyhow here's a picture of his chopped potato for chips this week-  I'm amazed by his detail;I'm an appalling veggie chopper!


Gabriel has been continuing on his geometry block, and will be onto a block of biology next term.  Looking at skeletal structures in humans and animals I think ( we need to sit down together and plan the block still.)  We were hoping for him to attend one of the teenager zoo workshops at the same time, but finances are still tight here, so I'm hoping to book for next holidays instead.

We finally sat down and had Willow's overview for the last little while.  I really prefer having a focused chat regularly, obviously we chat about other stuff during the week, but to have a time when it's just Damien, Willow and I ensures that I'm focused and not getting distracted by the needs of the littler people here.  Anyhow she's feeling satisfied with her progress on her mythological related essays, but was having some difficulty with resources for one of them, so we had a chat about that and how she could create solutions to what appeared to be a lack of references.

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