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.

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.

Term 3 2022

During our winter break, we started, and finished this 3,000 piece "Where's Wally?" jigsaw puzzle.

Arden and Irving finished their weaving. Arden's was done on an inklette loom, and Irving's a lap loom.

Since Arden has done quite a bit on biology before and is also inclined to doing lots of physical activity, we pulled out my massage books from when I was studying, and learnt a little about massage, reflexology and essential oils.

The Directory of Essential Oils

The Complete Book of Massage

Irving designed and hand sewed, embroidered, and appliqued a cushion cover for himself. This project last a little while as he built up the patience to keep going, and he developed more speed as he got better at it.

Damien took Arden and Irving off to Wild movement to learn about making spoons using fire.

As part of our chemistry block last year, Arden made soap from a base of lard and lye.
Just finished.

And curing.

There was some experimenting with bending glass, and copper wire.

Since Arden is interested in aviation for his WW1 studies we read "The Red Baron", unfortunately we watched the movie too! We do not recommend it at all- the story veered far too much from the truth for both Arden and I. We also watched the movie "Fly Boys"- which was about the first American aviation pilots who flew with the French, before the US joined WW1. Some of this movie was also apparently inaccurate, however we used it as a starting point for further research.

"Joyeux Noel" has been a favourite around here for our WW1 studies. It is the history, of the Christmas Armistices, where the Germans, French and Scotts, decided to lay down their weapons and celebrate together. It's also worth watching the research they did to make the film- they were very attentive to detail, and brought in some very interesting facts- such as the execution of a cat, who was seen to be a spy!

We also bought a double distiller to experiment with making our own essential oils.  Trying out making Pine.

The result....

And a bit of sewing....Floral shirt for Irving

Winter Term 3

 As covid lockdown receded and we thought about our coming year, we decided to try to continue with a slower pace of life for at least the short term.  Sadly Arden's favourite activity- iceskating - came to an end as our preferred iceskating rink closed during lockdown.  We decided to go and trial an ice hockey session; just after having enrolled to do ten pin bowling.  The ice hockey went down well.  As did the ten pin bowling.  We had enrolled in the teenage class- Irving had said he wasn't interested  in doing ten pin, but by mid term he was part of the teenage class and loving it.

For quite some time we have attended plenty of arts events- Fringe, Festival, Ballets and Operas.  Due to covid we decided to slow down on this and take the year more slowly.  We did still get to a few local gigs, but much fewer classical performances.  Historically it was Willow who had expressed a particular interest in these, and as she had not been home educated for about 3yrs, it seemed to make sense to redirect our time.

Enjoying a piano concert in Government House's gardens.

We had a lot of fun doing chemistry in our kitchen using  "The Wonders of Waldorf Chemistry" as our guide.  It was interesting to try some of the experiments that I didn't get to with the older kids- such as burning sulphur, and also to have some trouble with experiments I expected to work, because we had done them before.
 

Making charcoal.

Attempting to burn charcoal.

Burning some different items-including sulphur, which has the blue flame.

Acids and Bases.

Our reading- King Arthur and the Knights of the Round table by Llancelyn Green, and The King of Ireland's Son by Colum- which we did a series of paintings about.

Paintings by Irving. (All paintings are inspired by the King of Ireland's Son.)

Paintings by Arden.

Arden's painting on the left, and mine on the right.

My paintings.

Our first carrot from our balcony garden.

Cable socks for me.

Repairing Gabriel's satchel with berry coloured velvet.

A new quilted blanket for Gabriel; made from an old cotton blanket, his old comforter and cotton and cotton flannel.

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2025

My socks!  I just finished repairing them to hopefully get them to last  longer.  They look quite pilled now, but they are super warm and comfy.  I also just recently got my leather boots repaired, and we were realising that with inflation to buy an equivalent quality pair, I would now be paying double what I paid in maybe around 2010 to get them.  So with the repairs I had done to them- new zips and soles and a good polish they felt like new and looked amazing.  

I have also been doing some mending repairs on the pillow case cover that went with Gabriel's comforter that had the wizard and dragon.  It is starting to look rejuvenated.