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 4 2022

 Term four disappeared rather quickly - we had our annual moderator visit- which has become fairly routine after home educating so long, and we did a bunch of lovely out and about activities

We learnt a little about herbs and weaving- learning the difference between sow thistles and dandelions as we went to collection dandelion stems for weaving these lavender bunches.

Dandelion Stems

Lavender Bunches

Irving learnt about a few different animals and spent some time drawing them- this is his kookaburra.

Irving finally finished his cushion- doing all the sewing with the exception of the zip, and Arden made himself a t-shirt.

With non-seasonal Halloween both Arden and Irving wanted to make some creepy food- so we made some pizza dough and some home made lemonade with add activated charcoal for some creepy colouring!

Our final portion of the year saw us doing quite a few history walks around the city. The city of Perth has some great history guides and we got out and about and looked around our city as tourists for a few weeks. Looking at the architecture, and old stories of our local area. We also had a surprise visitor for about a month- as my brother stopped with us, on his way home from Malaysia, whilst heading back to Adelaide. So there was lots of other things going on during that time- we hadn't seen him since pre-covid, when we last visit Adelaide, and there were many interesting conversations during that time.

Arden had been wanting to do sailing earlier in the year- but with all the covid things going on here that didn't eventuate, until finally in term 4 an opportunity do a home school class appeared at Hillary's yacht club. There were a bunch of delays- with our start to summer being slow- and classes being cancelled and rescheduled though eventually sailing did happen!

Arden was also lucky to get the chance to try a rather unique home education class- herbalism- another home schooling Mum had arranged for a herbalist to run a class. There was a mix of looking at plants, studying the actions, learning how herbs treat illness. Arden found it quite interesting, and useful.

He also got an opportunity to try a one on one parkour class with Isaac from Make Parkour- another thing he had been wanting to do for some time, but seemed much easier post all the covid drama. He had an amazing lesson with Isaac, who was very attentive, and pushed Arden to try some new ways of moving.

In a continuing theme of opportunities suddenly appearing Arden was invited by his flying club to have his first attempt flying a plane. Over the years Arden started at the Aviation kids club and learnt about planes and flying, his interest has grown until he got to join the Youth Flying Club and was able to start flying on the simulator most weeks. He and another home educated friend got to share their first flying experience, his friend taxiing and flying part of the leg to Murray Field, and Arden getting to try taxiing and partial flying back to Perth. It was a very satisfying experience for him, and now he's looking forward to trying more!