Thursday, November 1, 2018

Last of the Year and a Graduate


Well we have been quite pleased that Gabriel has been offered a place in tafe next year, studying cert 3 in screen and media, for the first 6months of the year.  He's not done any formal schooling, so we thought starting with a cert 3 for the first half of his year 12 would give him an intro into classroom study, and we could look at the follow on cert 4 class for the second half of the year.

This year he has had quite a few interesting experiences including volunteering at making hot dogs, at Supernova and Heritage Perth recently.  I think the Supernova experience might have set him up for expecting better organising skills from organisations....apparently Heritage Perth were a bit slow in certain areas, but they did provide a much nicer lunch! :)

Recently all the older kids-Willow, Gabriel and Arden did a chocolate making class at Sue Lewis' chocolate shop.



Irving has been working alongside Arden on patterning.  Arden has been doing mental calculations, whilst Irving has been building the patterns.










We went out exploring the Columns in Perth recently as part of our Greek studies.  We have been reading "The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tales of Troy" by Padraic Colum.  We love his writing style and re-telling of the myths, and even Irving is starting to listen for longer stretches.  We also watched a few videos on the Greek alphabet, which Irving, Arden and I can now recite fairly well.  Next week there are plans for Arden to make a Greek meal for dinner.

Corinthian style columns.

Mini-columns on the Treasury building.

The only example of Doric columns that we found- on the old court house.

As part of Perth Heritage days we visited the Bon Marche building.  Strangely it has a mini-prison gate on the top floor.  We're hoping someone will spend some time and money restoring it to it's former beauty.

My pile of paper-work for writing up my notes for our home education review.  Our moderator visited last week, and we are all done for another year.

Finally my sewing.  The dragon in my last post, made it onto this vintage pattern dressing gown.

Which has some left-over star fabric for its lining.



Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Term 3

Term 3 saw us complete some interesting projects from over the year.
We finally got the skateboard deck put together.
Our two broken rotary phones were pulled apart to get one working rotary phone.  (These are a lot of fun to examine....how the dialer works, how the bell works,etc).



We mad a new colour-blended version, just because we could, and the front of the green had broken a bit.


We worked on means in maths.  Arden understands them pretty well these days (and usually like to complain about them..."How useful are these things?..."  I must admit I agree. )  But it was fun helping Irving work them out together.


We now have a pokemon gaming obsession happening around here.

Plus we did some botanical studies. 

Including growing our own mushrooms.





Also a bit of sprouting.

Enjoying the view from King's Park.

Down to river level.

River beach front


Arden's sketches from our nature walk.

Arden working on a pattern.

Irving trying out compass and protractor.

Some scrabble fun and a bit of teamwork, since Irving's still just learning to read.

A night at the Opera with the older kids.  Our view into the Orchestra pit at Dracula. 

Irving and I working on sewing the letter 'Q'.

Plus some things I've been doing.  A velvet dragon pocket.

Pyjama pants for summer.

Trying machine corded embroidery, as directed from my ebay win, singer illustrated dressmaking guide.