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.

Term 2

 I've been meaning to post this for a few weeks, but our term was hectic and our holidays have involved doing a bunch of catch up work at home! Normally I like to keep our at home life and our out of home life nicely balanced, and this year there is a lot more out of home activity than usual.

Waiting for "The Mousetrap" to begin.

The whole family in various groups made it out to see Agatha Christie's, Mouse Trap, at His Majesty's theatre. One of the best performances that we've been to in years!

Irving was doing local history this past term, and we did a bunch of local walks and excursions, including heading to the roundhouse in Fremantle. We also did some watercolour painting to create a map of WA.

Watching Bluegrass Parkway perform in the mall.

There's been a lot of gardening happening here, as Irving has taken an interest in plants, and in particular herbs. He's even taken up writing about them! Not something I expected, but a pleasant surprise. Arden got a new pot for his lemon tree, and Irving's herb collection continues to grow.

We spent a lovely day at Penguin Island with some homeschool friends- doing the Penguin tour, and the sealion cruise, and taking a walk around the Island. The rain had really settled in the walk before, and we were *very* lucky and got a perfect day! Everyone was so tired on the way home, that there was dozing on the public transport!

In the discover centre

On the sealion cruise

View on the island.

Irving and I also ended up at Araluen helping to plant for their Tulip festival. Arden was busy doing a two day TAFE taster course, learning about tiling and bricklaying.

Planting

Arluen

Irving got one of his t-shirt designs printed off Red Bubble.

Jumping Rabbit

Arden did some chemistry and we focused on salts. There was collecting river and ocean water to make sea salt, soap making, and electrolysis. Overall it was a very interesting block. The soap was made using ghee, as Arden was interested to see how that would come out- it very quickly changed from a rich yellowy colour to a creamy colour. We are yet to try this batch, as it finishes maturing- probably we will try it later this week. (For those that don't know- soap is a salt- the combination of lye and fat). In our first electrolysis experiment we separated hydrogen and oxygen, and in our second we used a copper cathode and anode, and displaced the copper.

Evaporating our sea water

Sea Salt collection

Making Soap from ghee

Displacing copper

We all did our first Joy of Wood class with Greg Miller again, after quite a few years. This time the focus was on whittling birds.

It was our turn to host book club, as Irving's book- "Nancy Drew" was chosen for the term. Since the focus was mysteries, we found some mazes of varying levels for the kids to try out. We also had a turn hosting a week of our steam group- this time we made nib pens. There was a little bit of chaos, when we couldn't get the council's oven to work, but once we got over that hurdle, it was a fun session, with the kids getting to try nib pens and feather pens, and then creating their own pen from a feather. We got a lot of inspiration for how to make the nib pen, from the How to Make Everything Youtube channel, which we love!

To finish the term we moved onto the human body, and we watched quite a few Operation Ouch episodes, but mostly we focused on reading Bill Bryson's "The Body". We haven't yet finished, though as usual he has all sorts of fascinating stories about the development of our understanding of the body.

This week we get back into term time, with classes on again. Other than having to be out and about more, we're still taking it slowly at home, as I find taking a longer mid-year break helps us to be motivated for the rest of the year.