Holidays and Copperwork

Irving and I had a really lovely extended Winter break.  We  had our regular classes to attend surrounded by a few excursions, and some interesting extended learning at home, and a trip as a family down to SW Western Australia, to visit Willow and her fiance.

We had our Winter solstice celebration with a fire on the balcony, but sadly no ember baked damper this year, as it had been quite wet overnight, and so having a fire was a last minute decision.  We instead had freshly baked home made bread.

We got some last minute tickets to join our home school group, and headed with them to see the Teracotta Warriors at the WA Museum.  The whole exhibition was amazing, and the presence of the larger warriors  was formidable.

Irving turned 12, and we had a lovely family day celebrating with him, and Willow made him a fabulous birthday cake this year.

Blackforest Birthday Cake

Irving and I learnt about harvesting Aloe Vera, and the need to drain the aloin from the freshly picked leaves to make it edible.  It was fascinating finding the sticky yellow substance had drained out after leaving the leaf to strain.

Leaves Draining

We tested and cleaned out this coffee machine, that we found in the hard waste, and discovered that it works, is missing the tamphead, which should be easy enough to replace, and needs a little attention to the finial on the top.  So that's part of our next jobs to get it functioning again.

DeLonghi coffee machine

There were lots of toasted marshmallows eaten during our stay with Willow, as they have a woodfire stove and the weather was adequately cold for our visit.  When we came back to Perth, it seemed to have finally gotten cold here too!  We had a lovely time visiting Manjimup, Busselton, Pemberton, Northcliffe and exploring the SW in general.  Particularly on our way home, when we kept making spontaneous stops into small towns along the way.

Marshmallows

We headed to Busselton, found some great shops for tea, healthfood, jewellery- buying a few too many things probably, and then headed to a local jetty for Irving to do some fishing with Willow's fiance.

Off to do some fishing

Out on the jetty.

We really loved our visit to the Manjimup Electricity Museum.  In fact I think it's the best Museum that I've been to in a while.  Much better than the WA Museum.  The electrical  tech side is well integrated, given it is about electricity they engage with it really well.  And it was an amusing and pleasant surprise to discover that a lot of the tech was from the old East Perth Power station, which is not too far from where we live.

We got to the Southern Forests Chocolate Company near Pemberton, and had the best chocolate that we've had in WA IMO.  They definitely rival our friend, Steven ter Horst in Adelaide (visit to Steven's shop here).

Out front the Southern Forests Chocolate company

Truffle selection

Arden sadly didn't make the trip with us, as he had a surprise last minute event via airforce cadets, and headed off to a camp for the week.  In fact he had quite an eventful lead up to his week away, as he got his learners permit, and he also got a retail job, working for the chain, City Beach.

Irving and I did quite a bit more copper work over the break, and one of Arden's and Irving's friends has joined us in our latest sessions.

Learning to saw copper.

Circular bowls and experimenting with pickling- using vinegar to keep it kitchen friendly!

Irving's left, mine on the right.

My bowl.

Irving's varying square shaped bowls.

We've been watching a lot of youtube videos to expand our copperwork knowledge, and we found this one particularly interesting and inspiring.  We loved that this man had taken up the traditional method of making and repairing old copper pots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTztlpAcips

https://duparquet.com/coppercare

Irving and I have been reading "The Secret Garden".  Such a great book, and it's still fascinating to remember having discovered that people back then learnt cursive first if they were educated, and that printing may have been tricky.

Irving and I spent quite a bit of time having quiet coffee dates, where we took our current reading and headed out for a coffee with our books.  I've been learning about bicarb soda since finishing reading Portal.  Both books are quite fascinating, and I think Portal is a particularly valuable read on birth, as it explores many of the untalked about aspects of bringing life into the world.

Arden finally finished this Guns'n'Roses jigsaw puzzle.  He was finding the black rather challenging!

We found one of our favourite coffee vans down by our stretch of the river, which was a lovely surprise.  They have fabulous Polish pastries.

Cursive

Over the years I've read a number of articles discussing the benefits of learning cursive and its importance in creating synapses and cross brain connections.  All of my children have taken a preference to doing a fancier style of cursive, and generally speaking I have taught cursive around the age of 9, or in around class 4.

This year, however, I am teaching Arden, cursive at the age of 6 in class 1.  Last year, to cover government requirements we did letters and worked on printing and some basic reading.  We also happened to read "The Secret Garden" again.  In the process of reading it, in particular a passage where Mary and Dicken's sister are speaking, it occured to me that Mary could do cursive but *not* print.  In the section that I was reading Martha (Dickon's sister) says that he can read print, but not cursive, and Mary says that she thinks that she may be able to print.  Previously I had always taken it that Mary hadn't learnt to write yet.  Anyway, for some reason I interpreted it the other way this time, that she could write, as in do cursive, but not print.  So I did a bit of research, and found that it was once usual to teach cursive first.

Anyway Arden is loving learning cursive, he says that it's easier than print and it certainly seems to have improved his ability to print.  We did a month of daily cursive, and now we are doing a cursive session once a week, but the aim is to make most written work cursive.

Here is Arden's most recent work.  His sentence was inspired by "The Highway Rat" by Julia Donaldson.



Here is a little bit more interesting reading on cursive.

Week 5

We were all feeling a little worn out after the business of last week, and are looking forward to a quieter day tomorrow.

Gabriel spent a busy week in Adelaide, seeing family, attending Womadelaide and being taken out and about quite a bit: he went to a concert with his Granny, climbed Mt Lofty, caught his cousins in a basketball match, visited our favourite chocolate shop- Steven ter Horst, amongst a few other things.  Thursday morning he was up super early Perth time, to fly back here.

Anyway so far Gabriel is remaining attached to his Womadelaide wrist band.




So generally until Thursday, our homeschool week was a bit quieter, just being Irving, Arden and Willow here. Arden was finishing off his number block; we did the last painting and sewed his number book together.

My painting for the number nine; nine golden apples from the Golden Bird.


Arden's number nine painting and sewing up his number book.





Willow had some extra free time, to catch up on some bits last week: physics, craft and maths mostly.  She's busy finishing her doll's dress.  Here's Nya (Irving was enjoying her!)



This week Arden and I are working together on cursive.  Last time we read "the Secret Garden" I noticed a discussion revolving around whether or not Mary could print, she could certainly write, but wasn't sure about print.  Anyway I looked into it a bit, and it seemed it used to be usual to learn cursive first; so this time I decided to do the two together.  Arden has been enjoying it so far.  Here's today's work.

My examples for Arden to copy from, followed by print, to help him see the word in both forms.

Arden's cursive, and some print.


Gabriel's back to finishing his perspective block this week.  Here's this morning's breathing exercise, and his floor plan drawing.




We also had a pleasant time, off seeing WASO performing Tchaikovsky, over the weekend.  It was the first time I'd been to the Perth Concert Hall, which reminded me of the Concert Hall in Glasgow.  Generally everyone enjoyed it, but it was a bit chaotic- at one point Arden was wriggling all over the place because he was too hot!  Though fortunately that was easily solved by taking off his jacket.  :)