Term 1- quite late

 This year has seen a lot of swimming and surprisingly, not really any sailing.  Irving did nippers again, and enjoyed the season to varying levels, and we waited til the heat had mostly subsided to start our home learning again.

Irving and I headed to the Titanic exhibition.  This exhibition was a mixture of historical objects, and recreations of aspects of the ship, as well as giving the cultural context of the time, and the enduring legacy.  We had gone down the Titanic rabbit hole, before with the older kids, and so I read Irving "A Night to Remember" and watched the movie from that book.

 

As usual we started off with some painting, and doing some art.  Since Gabriel is very much interested in art, he joined in with us, and we had a pleasant month or so at the beginning of our school year exploring the colours and painting the rainbow, including trying veil painting.

Our reference books for watercolour painting

 

Towards the end of the term we moved onto Chemistry and this is what we are still doing at the moment this term.  We are again reading "Uncle Tungsten" and Irving is really enjoying it, as he is very much interested in chemistry.

We have also done some gardening, and looked at some woodwork and also knitting as we have flowed into different ideas across the term.

For fiction Arden, Irving and I have been finishing off the Harry Potter series, and we are part way through the Deathly Hallows.  Then Irving and I have also been reading Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn.

Last term for English we had a bit of an exploration of journalism and interviewing people and we also read some of Oriana Fallaci's work- in particular her interview with Hitchcock and Sean Connery, as both people are still quite well known in modern culture and I thought with some context would be interesting to Irving.

I found this book in Paper Bird in Fremantle.  Irving and I both enjoyed reading it, and what it had to say about screen usage in young people.

Irving has also taken an interest in French patisserie, and got into experimenting with choux pastry.  We also found the French version of Masterchef, and used that to practise our French.

So Much Action

We were consistently busy over term 3.  I was looking forward to the holidays, but they ended up being rather chaotic with Willow here, and house sitting.  And Irving having sailing all during the second week.  I had also intended to write my moderator's report during the first week, but with Willow out and about all week, it got put back til Irving and I were on the river.

Irving sailing at tackers 3.

Enjoying the view, with some tea.

Painting whilst the classes are happening.

We started our term 3 later, and had some fun dismantling some of the electrical items that we had collected for Irving to examine. 

Dismantling a broken scanner.

All the left over pieces.

Our kettle broke, so we pulled that apart too.

 

Off to the art gallery with our homeschool group and did a tour of some of the current exhibitions as well as a drawing session.

Irving's sketch of one of Perth's buildings

We did a lot of poetry this past term, using Stephen Fry's, the Ode Less Travelled- there were a lot of new terms and it was a lot of fun!  I had used it before with Arden, but Irving and I got a little further through the book, and although Irving found some of it challenging, Stephen Fry comes up with some very amusing topics, and puts time limits on the activities so it kept us progressing along nicely.  We got half way through the book and will do the second half next year.  To complement our study of poetry we read Beowulf too.

And we also started a book club with some home school friends, and our first book, was Momo by Michael Ende.

We did some reading about Ancient Rome using Charles Kovac's book, and spent some time watching documentaries on Rome.

We had a home education session at the Constitution centre, and did a tour of Parliament.  Sadly the Constitution centre does not receive as much funding as it once did, and their range of courses is significantly cut back.  We were reading about King Arthur and his knights by Roger Llancellyn Green as a way to complement our civics studies.

The Lion and the Unicorn in WA Parliament

We finally finished the lund stools that we had been making in our Joy of Wood woodwork classes.

Irving's on the left and mine on the right.

He also picked up a sword and shield making kit from them at their moving sale.

We picked up a couple of new books.

Something to our inspire our copperwork

And Irving bought himself this.

 

Tried out braiding some copperwire.  

  

We worked on patterns wtih a range of different objects before trying out making rings, in theory with patterns, but it seem that only really appealed to me!

We moved onto open backed copper rings.  Irving decided not to pickle his rings, and so his came out with these interesting patinas.

Irving's rings

My rings

Pickling a copper bowl in double strength white wine vinegar.

We started making a tool for shaping out copper bowls.

 We happened to see a car show on our way home one day.

Irving's been making Scottish tablet to sell at the homeschool Christmas market.

Me doing some painting, whilst eating my subject.

We happened to be at City Farm for the Watercolour exhibition.  I really liked these paintings.

We also saw a local exhibition at the Perth City Council.

Irving checking out the artworks

Trialling making sauerkraut with nasturtium leaves.

  

Irving and Arden and I are reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

When I was reviewing this blog earlier in the year, I discovered that I had recipes on here- and so I tried one of them, and it turned out that when modified it made very nice chocolate mousse!

Winter Break!

Well unsurprisingly the last 5weeks have flown by!  We had a few jobs to do around here, in particular getting the carpet cleaned in all the bedrooms created a little chaos, but it's nice to have our home feeling refreshed after a thorough clean!  Everyone around here has jobs to do, and in some ways the little ones (Arden and Irving) are easier to direct to tasks, as Damien and I have more realistic expectations of where and how they can help, than we did with the older two, and they are accustomed to the idea that everyone has to help out to make our home feel loved and be liveable.  So we pulled all the furniture out of all the bedrooms, got the carpet cleaned and moved everybody into different rooms!  Was a bit of a job, but satisfying at the end when everything looked and felt so nice!

We headed off the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre's performance of "The Arrival", this time at UWA.  We had seen this before, but we love Shaun Tan's books and figured it would be worth seeing again.  It was the first time for Irving to see it, and he was entranced!  We had a little walk through UWA's gardens (I do love it there!)

We have an enormous old suitcase filled with lego, and I thought that it was time we started sorting it (we made quite a bit of progress but still have to finish).  The amount of blocks has been making it hard for everyone to rebuild models, so I started putting things into coloured boxes.  We managed to get one of our oldest sets rebuilt...The Knight Bus!

And whilst on the Harry Potter theme, Gabriel decided that he is interested in reading Harry Potter in Latin, and the first book arrived in the post recently!
"Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis".

We managed to get down to Elizabeth Quay for some iceskating again this year, we had been all intending to go, but we left booking a little late.  Personally I preferred the ice-skating being in the cultural centre, where we could sit and watch the skaters more easily, but the rink is a better size at the Quay.  Also we missed the very early sessions, when we could get up whilst it was still cold and feel like we were somewhere wintery!

Otherwise over the break, I've managed to get a little sewing in (working on my first pair of trousers-linen ones for Gabriel), taking in a skirt, learning about pattern drafting, adding embellishments to some pants that I had that are starting to look a bit sad!  So I've been pleased to clear out my pile a bit...still some stuff left there and a few days left, so hopefully more will get done!  Plus Gabriel's trousers aren't quite finished!  I ran out of thread, just as I got to the hems and sewing the belt loops!  :/  Gabriel and I had hoped to get through the pair he'll make during the break, but instead we're only just starting them.  On a positive not I feel like I know the process of making them well enough that it should go fairly smoothly.

Irving and Arden and I have also done a few walks, bike rides, bit of scootering and skateboarding and catching up with friends.  We'd been a bit slack with getting Arden riding a bike, he had a balance bike when small, but we hadn't got around to him pedalling, so we finally got that sorted, and spent some time alone the river.  Plus of course given the time of year that it is, we got wellies out and went splashing through puddles!

Checking out the water draining.

Puddles at the Park.

Stopping off for a drink!  (Plus had to take wellies off to be comfy!)

Umbrellas in preparation for rain, and heading out for a walk with Willow!

Relaxing in the various seasonal weather!