This Past Week

We all got back into our at home schooling routine this week, and turns out it has been helpful.  Irving has been loving being involved in all of Arden's activities, and has been really getting into doing maths with Arden in particular.  (He's so keen that he wanted me to get the JUMP book out for him.)  Arden is also quite please because we received a new lot of Life of Fred books (goldfish, honey, icecream and jellybeans) and he has been getting into them again.

This week Arden and I are back into doing English and we've been looking at tenses and sentence structure and reading about Norse Mythology.  To compliment this, we've also been doing some pen and ink drawing.  I seem to have missed photographing Arden's picture this week, but here is mine.

Arden has almost finished his embroidered cushion, and we just need to stuff and sew it now.

We're planning his next piece which will likely be cross-stitch, and something to do with cacti.  (He's got a small collection of cacti, and is wanting to get a venus fly trap next.)

Gabriel has moved onto looking at social sciences, and we're looking at freedom and political systems.  We had been contemplating reading "1984" and also seeing the stage play, but decided to leave it, after reading the reviews, and also because Gabriel was expressing a preference to reading "Fahrenheit 451".  He also headed to a talk this past week with Damien, on judiciary in WA.  Apparently it was a little dry, but did spark some further conversation.

Gabriel has started on the process of making himself some trousers.  He's making some out of cord, with floral pockets.  I'm almost finished making him some linen trousers.  I ran out of thread with the belt loops and hems to go.

Cutting out the pattern

The colour is an olive green, and really didn't come out well in this shot

As Gabriel is focusing his art studies around Games Workshop, we decided that it would be interesting to see other exhibitions that relate to models.  Since the Brickman lego exhibit was in town, and we are all mad lego fans, we all had to go.  We got a bit engrossed, and really didn't get to see it in as much detail as we would have liked.

Great Barrier Reef

Titanic

Some lego building by Arden

Today, Gabriel and I headed to the Art Gallery of WA, to see the sneakers exhibition, it was an interesting progression through the history of the shoe, and into the more artistic creative aspects of the modern sneaker.  We were intending for us all to go, but Damien was feeling a but unwell, so we will have to go back with the others.  Going just with Gabriel, did mean, that we could take our time and have a thorough look through the exhibition.

Arden has been wondering about his grandfathers (both died before he was born) and so for their birthdays this year we baked them cakes.  My family heritage on my Dad's side is German, and he often brought home streusel cakes after visiting my Nana, so we decided to make him one.

Dough is waiting topping.

Ready out of the oven!

We had a rather cold middle of the morning recently, and so Willow, Gabriel, Arden and I all headed out for a coffee.  (We were trying to take advantage of the cold, as it is never here very long.)  Arden has been enjoying doing some food photography when we are out ( as well as other things,from time to time) and got a couple of lovely shots of his hot chocolate at duotone.  He's sharing his photographs @ardenaragorn on instagram.

Etc, etc, etc.

We have had such a fabulous holiday break- getting out and seeing more of Perth. We finally visited the Art Gallery and museum- we'd been around the cultural precinct a few times, but not to any of the galleries. We wandered around all the museum displays but the crystal and historic displays were the ones that were most appreciated. I also loved the section that used to be part of the library, it was very beautiful with it's spiral staircases up to the bookcases.

The art gallery has a visiting exhibit from the Victoria and Albert museum (which is closed til 2014 apparently). There was some stunning pieces in there, and I particularly liked the guitar on display, which was covered in engraved mother of purl, tortoiseshell and ivory. There were some amazing religious items too, like a tiny prayer book covered in emeralds. The art gallery was also holding a lego building session, in white lego blocks, to promote the exhibit. The kids really enjoyed that, and there were some fabulous models.

We also headed to the Royal show, which we found quite similar to Adelaide's but different too. There was significantly less in the craft entries, which we found interesting, since we usually enter that Adelaide show, and will likely put entries in the Perth show next year. We loved the way that there is a ferris wheel right in the arena, and the way the arena felt much more prominent- we felt this was due to it's central placing. There were some great historic displays, and we all enjoyed watching a telegram being sent and received, and the blacksmiths hard at work. We finished the evening with the fireworks, which were the best I'd seen in quite a while.

The kid's circus teacher had a show on during the holidays too, so we attended that, as well as hanging round for a circus class. We also got to Northbridge Piazza a couple of times,for the movie sessions there. We really enjoyed watching the movie, but felt it was better on a weekday, when there was less people heading out to the pubs and clubs in Northbridge. Other than that we headed out to another Organic shop, which was a fun outing, but in terms of servicing our needs for food, its selection was rather limited. And finally over this last weekend Willow and Gabriel and Damien got out to a talk about Wedge-tail Eagles- which they all enjoyed, and Arden and I discovered that there was an aeroplane show on whilst we were there, so we all went back for a look the following day. It was a great break, and I felt really refreshed for getting back into some more structured work today- particularly after making some yummy food yesterday, such as scotch eggs.

The kids also did lots of playing and creating, with Willow designing and knitting me a purse, Gabriel making lots of maps, and Arden getting involved with lots of cooking, but I suspect one of the highlights for them would have been discovering some really good toy shops!


Plus I almost forgot we visited the beach finally- Cottesloe- and found these cute tiles to lead us there from the train.

-

2025

Interesting to see that Arden and I were off watching an aeroplane show back then.  His interest in Aviation has grown and grown over the years.  When he was 11 and he used to go to an aviation history club once a month, I would tell people that he really like planes.  This was too strong in his opinion- but I think it would be fair to say that it is completely true now!

Some posts on Arden's aviation experience to date.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/07/2023.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/08/term-1.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2017/03/beach-weather.html

Arden and Aviation at TAFE.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/10/first-day-of-school.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/11/first-half-of-year.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2025/06/summertime.html