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.)

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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!

Steiner Curriculum

 

As I've been review my blog, I came across the link to this, which was no longer working.  Fortunately I was aware that it may still be accessable on the Wayback machine, which it was.  It's such a nice handy reference chart for following Steiner curriculum at home, that I thought I'd share it directly here.  I'm not sure who the original author is (Who compiled it) but Thanks to them for this very useful guide.

Gradually getting into the swing of things.....

 So we began some structure learning at home in mid February, when the weather cooled off a bit.  I have been quite slack about making a full plan, but given we're part way through our "year 6" plan and I've been doing this so long, I  knew what I wanted to start with this year, and that was Greek Mythology.  So so far that has been Irving's and my main focus.  We started with a review of the Ancient Greek we were learning at the end of last year, and Irving has progressed onto lower case, and we've also been writing up some names of the Gods and Goddesses.  Last week we moved onto a bit of copper work, making some square shaped bowls (next time I'm hoping to do round ones) and this week I'm thinking we'll do some watercolour painting.  We've also been reading Padraic Colum's books on Greek Myth. (The Golden Fleece and The Adventures of Odyseus)

Gabriel turned 23 at the beginning of this year!

Funny to think that I started this blog back when he was 6!

Working on some watercolour painting inspired by reading Greek Mythology

Padraic Colum's "The Golden Fleece"

Copper work- Irving's on the left, mine on the right.

Irving working on his bowl.

We have also started onto some geometric drawing, which Irving is finding quite easy.  TBH I was not at all surprised by this, as he was always keen to get involved with compass and protractor when Arden was doing geometric drawing, and every now and then since he was about 5, he would go and get the tools out to draw up some circles.

After Ancient Greek studies we moved onto some physics, using Robert Trostli's physics is fun.  I still really like this book- the experiments are easily achievable at home, and we get good results from most of them.  The one below involved currents being created by different pigments so that it was possible to see how they flowed through the water.



We also started up some maths and grammar, but not a lot, as with it still being Summer time, I prefer to ease into that sort of work.  We have however been doing a lot of swimming, and enjoying spending plenty of time in our pool.

Arden has been at TAFE now since the beginning of Feb- studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, which he is enjoying.  Technically this is his year 12 year and thus he is at the end of his home education journey.  And so unless something very odd happens, I feel I am definitely down to just home educating one child.  Arden disagrees, on some version of this, and claims that he is not finished til the end of the year!

Irving and I have also been out and about for some excursions.  Last week was the maritime museum, and this week was Samson house in Fremantle.  We're onto a set of history excursions with the national trust- last time we did these as family weekend outings, so I'm looking forward to doing more in this manner.

Samson House in Freo

Pirates of Penzance is a family favourite around here- especially post Willow, Damien and Gabriel performing in it with the Gilbert and Sullivan society.(https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/05/pirates-of-penzance.html)  At the time Arden was quite small- maybe 7, and Irving was about 18months old.  We've listened to the music regularly over the years, but Irving certainly didn't remember the performance, so most of the family headed off to see the Western Australia Opera perform it, with our homeschooling group.  Overall it was excellent.

Now that I'm a little less time poor, I've gotten back into the habit of making fermented foods regularly.  Mostly beet kvass and sauerkraut, but a few others too from time to time.  This one was combined with paprika, and the current one is with apple.  So delicious!

Hard waste time was in March again this year, and we came across a few interesting things along the way.  We did bring home the two coffee machines- apparently there's often not a lot wrong with them, and since Irving is interested in repairs they're on our list of things to do.  I'm hoping we might get to them in the next few weeks, as well as cleaning out a coffee grinder and dismantling some scanners.  Irving has already become our printer technician, when Damien's out at work.

Arden has taken quite an interest in Formula one racing over the past year or so, so we had to get out to grill'd for an Oscar Piastri burger.

Thornton's eggs took me back to living in Glasgow, and particularly reminded my of a little Willow, who loved all things unicorn, and who is part of the reason that our blog is Unicorn Education.  :)

A few of Willow's unicorn crafts can be found at these links.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2011/08/at-home-in-perth.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/08/change.html

Summertime

 I seem to begin every year meaning to post our activities more regularly, and this year seems to have ended up the same.  Partly because, we have been very busy, and partly because now that I only have Irving left to home educate, I am trying to take advantage of having some small amount of time to myself again.  Amusingly Arden is very insistant that he is *still* home educated, but he isn't in that system any longer, but is busy off at TAFE, studying for his Diploma in Aviation Management.

We started off the year with a week of sailing, with Irving doing tackers 2, and he got a last minute offer to do Vacswim too, and so we also did a week of that.  It was lovely being out on the beach daily again.

We headed out to a lovely local Italian restaurant, Maruzella's for my birthday, where I got a complimentary birthday drink.  :)

We headed out to Northbridge to watch the 2025 Ausroad Cycling Nationals.

Trying out the new train line- heading out to Whiteman park.

Walking back to catch the train.

Irving doing some lego building, basing his design off a model in a recently purchased book.

Some of my recent paintings.  I haven't done a lot of painting this year- I've been busy doing some crafts again, and doing a bit more reading.