Term 3

 During the break Arden had an opportunity to do a barista course and a half day of work experience.  He headed to the course with one of his home schooling friends and they both enjoyed the day.  

Irving having hot chocolate at the cafe.

When the term came around again it was my turn to host our STEAM group and this time we were hand-sewing treasure bags.  I practised a few versions at home, and tried to approximate time, but my doubling time for the kids was woefully inadequate, though at the end everyone did get the bag finished.

Variation 1

Variation 2

Last term was very busy as we took up a term of iceskating with some home school friends.  There was a lesson followed by social time, and just like before covid times, when we did iceskating, this quickly became one of my favourite activities for the week.  Pre-covid we went to a rink north of the river, and we spent the afternoon there before heading to music lessons.  This time we were at a rink south of the river, and the classes were much more focused on getting all the kids skating well, rather than doing the individual levels.  Both Arden and Irving could already skate well, so really it was a chance to have a review, and hang out with  old friends, and make some new ones too!

After iceskating one wee, we  headed out to Jandakot TAFE and had a chat with one of the lecturers there, who was very generous with his time, and gave lots of interesting advice and ideas regarding Arden's first steps into tertiary education, and his goal of being a pilot.

At Jandakot

Aeroplanes at Jandakot

Arden headed off to King's Park for an orienteering session, and Irving spent quite a bit of time sitting in a tree reading. 

Irving's steam group, were also lucky enough to do a tour of Browne's dairy, including getting to milk a cow!  The dairy was very interesting, and the farmer who spoke to us was very informative on the processes of the plant, and the care of the animals.

Milking time

Irving started to hand sew his pyjamas.

And got most of the way through his top.

Irving started to make snails at pottery class.

Arden did one pottery class and made a very cute duck. (Although its eyes ran, and it came out a little horror movieish in the end!)

I started knitting a "Weasley jumper" for Irving, and finished it by the end of term!

    

We had a few movie sessions.  Willow, Arden and I went to see "Barbie",  Damien, Gabriel and Arden went to see "Oppenheimer",  Damien and I went to see "Sound of Freedom", and Damien, Arden and Irving went  to see "Across the Spiderverse".  We hadn't been to the movies so often in years! 

We took up swimming again to make sure that Irving would qualify for nippers, since it was winter-time our pool was closed, so we went to a few different pools around the city and practised doing laps.  Just when we thought we had everything prepped, Damien took Irving and registered him, and we discovered that he might have to do 100m freestyle, and so we went in did more practise! Freestyle was not his preferred stroke, he loves to breaststroke!

We also went to the Ancient Egyptian exhibition that came to Western Australia.

We finally got to Araluen's tulip festival, where we could appreciate our volunteering and everyone else's too, that helped to contribute to the festival.

We grew a few potatoes.

Irving also did some work on gardening, and got a few more plants for our balcony.  He learnt a little about monocots and dicots, and planting according to the moon and astrology.  Arden's main focus for the term was physics and history.  He decided to review "Life of Fred physics", and also to do Khan academy's physics course.  History involved us doing a lot of reading of "Tragedy and Hope" and we are not far from the end now.  There was quite a bit on the development of nuclear weapons, so the timing of "Oppenheimer" at the movies was quite nice, as we had been reading about him quite a lot.

Gabriel

We finished off Gabriel's geometry block, and are now onto ancient Rome.  Story wise we are reading Padraic Colum's, "Adventure's of Odysseus and Tales of Troy".  We're using this as a connecting book between learning about Ancient Greece last year, and progressing onto Rome this year.  We are also using Charles Kovacs book on Ancient Rome.

Gabriel has also almost finished his first sock!  And has started his main craft project for this year.  He's decided that he would like to make a zebra, so he's onto the early stages of the project; lots of drawing.


Geometry

 Some book work on Ancient Rome.

Drawing a zebra

We also headed out to the Museum last week, for a class on Ancient Egypt.  Gabriel really enjoyed it, the focus was on burials and mummification.  Plus I think he was pleased to be one of the only people that knew about the Rosetta stone.

Holiday Recovery

We're back into our usual routine this week, after lots of interesting activities and outings over the holidays- the first week was really relaxing and the second week was exhausting!

Willow and Gabriel spent varying amounts of time at City Farm helping out and doing activities for the school holiday program there.  Both had a fabulous time participating in woodwork, gardening, soap making, woodwork, amongst other things. 

This week saw Willow finishing her apron finally -it looks amazing, and is just in need of an iron to finish it off nicely. (She hand sewed this).

She's now on her way to planning some slippers to make.

We finally received our JUMP workbooks, which I'm quite pleased about as it will simplify doing maths- no more copying questions out for me!  We ordered a trial pack from grade 1-8, which offered one of each workbook.  Perfect for us really, and I've been really happy with the way they arrange maths.  Just need to pair it with the online teacher guides and we're all set.

Gabriel is still working on a block on ancient Egypt and we're reading Roger Lancellyn Green's book on Egyptian Myth.  Willow is doing a musical block, looking at different regions of the world and progressing into medieval music, it ties in quite nicely with her musicianship classes, where they are looking at studying different musical pieces and learning about composers and notation.

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2025

Willow changed from doing choral classes after our first year in Perth ( at this stage she was doing choral classes and suzuki flute), and shifted over the doing the Musicianship lessons which use the Kodaly method.  We started off with a local flute teacher, but that wasn't working well for us, so we starting doing remote lessons with the teacher we had in Adelaide, then we had communication issues based off the distance, so we returned to local lessons with another teacher.  We didn't have much success with local teachers TBH- this next one was rather temperamental, and so after a break, we moved onto private singing lessons- first with a jazz singer, and later with an Opera singer.  This was all over the course of about 5 years.  

Crafts

Well today I finally finished knitting my socks.



They are warm and comfy and my favourite pair already I think. And now next I need to do a pair for my brother, Justin.

Also I finishen my marionette this week.



I am also pretty happy with her. And Arden has fallen in love with her- so I think I may need to make him his own doll soon. We called my doll Ruby, due to the colour of her hair. Arden has been giving her lots of hugs and kisses, and spending time tucking her into bed and clipping her in the pram. Willow and Gabriel have also started their marionettes. Both have done the heads, and are onto the gowns- Willow has already decided to name hers Emerald. Gabriel, meanwhile, hasn't decided if his is a boy or girl.

As Willow pointed out, we also went to the woodwork expo yesterday. Very good value and very interesting- I'll soon be getting a lovely simple woodwork book from one of the stalls there. It's called Woodwork for Women but it's just really for anyone that knows very little about woodwork. We also watched quite a bit of woodturning.

We'll be starting Willow's Egyptian block this week- should be fun and interesting, and continuing on Gabriel's Bible block.

Ancient Egypt

One of our next blocks, for Willow, is going to be Ancient Egypt, and so I decided that we would visit the museum today, and have a look at the exhibit there. Last time I went to look at the Egyptian exhibit, I was nine. The whole thing upset me immensely- people wrapped in cloth, etc, and I left crying.

Fortunately no-one did that today. Everyone thought the mummification was weird. But once they got over that, just enjoyed looking around at the artefacts. The details about the Rosetta stone was interesting, and both Willow and Gabriel enjoyed it.