A Collection

A bit of a collection of recent activities.

Arden has been working on some English recently-grammar and poetry, as well as us doing some ink drawings.

Fish by Arden.

Examining phrases, clauses and sentence (in Arden's usual creative writing style- the more artistic the better LOL!)

My eagle pen and ink drawing.

Irving's pen and ink drawing.  He seems to love pen and ink.

Some poetry and sketching by Arden, about lions.

My lion sketch.

Fabuland lego village building session with Irving, whilst all the big kids are out.

I've been using everyone's old trousers to make Irving new pants.  These are out of a pair of Willow's old jeans.

He was so happy, he did lots of posing for me!

Another pair out of Damien's old trousers.  Irving wanted yellow stitching.

A final pair out of Damien's old jeans.

Again lots of happiness, but this time couldn't keep still!

Out for a walk, just to splash in puddles.

Last bit of form drawing for this year, an interesting looking fish, which Arden found to copy.

Arden, planning a flag design for a t-shirt.

An experimental embroidery project.  Arden created a cactus.

And this lead to Irving wanting a cactus patch.

Now Arden is working on some ideas for embroidering into sneakers.

Making pumpkin bread!  Mostly me, with a bit of help.  (We've been doing some German cooking.)

Gabriel made us breakfast bagels on father's day for brunch.

Damien and I decided that Willow and Gabriel need to learn a bit about doing the shopping, so we headed to City Farm, gave them the grocery money, and ordered coffee.  Seems to have been a successful experiment so far, and will be happening fortnightly, in an attempt to encourage them to be aware of what's in the fridge when they cook dinner.

English, Instruments and Floral Appreciation

Other than reflecting over today, I have sat down and wondered what we have been doing.  It's been an odd sort of week, but we have managed to get through a few interesting things.  Arden has been doing a mixture of pen and ink as well as grammar for his current new learning.  We are reading Charles Kovacs' "Norse Mythology" which I am not a huge fan of, but I like that it looks at some different versions of the myths from my preferred book by Padraic Colum, and Arden has been interested in hearing this version too.  Today was a bit interesting, as usually Irving will listen or do something nearby whilst we read these days, today however our reading was interspersed with playmobile games, of knights and pirates.

Charles Kovacs "Norse Myths".

Arden's sketch of miolnir.

My pen and ink of Frey's sword.

Sigurd's sword, Gram by Arden.

For Arden's English we've been looking at perfect tenses, continuous tenses, verbs and consistency (plural, singular, etc) and passive and active voice (including object and subject in this discussion obviously).  Arden had started asking some questions to Damien and I recently about this, so it was nice to explore it further.  We tend to do a little writing, and lots of talking out examples to let the idea really settle.  With Willow and Gabriel, when we did this, I mostly used websites that I found online, and my understanding of it, was pretty average ( we started doing this in yr 7, and then never did any more grammar in high school).  Last year we picked up a DK book on English, and generally I like DK books, so this year we used it as our guide.  To be honest I think if your child loves writing and reading, that is 3/4 of what it takes to be good at English, and of course reading quality books.  I'm happy for the kids to read almost whatever, from the library in their own time, but when we read together, I rarely read something to them post 1950,as the quality of language decays significantly the more modern the book.

DK English book

Arden's sketch and writing.  Arden has a tendency to turn *everything* into art, so sometimes the writing is interesting, as he explores an idea for how he can write.  (Sometimes I request regular writing, sometimes I ask what *on earth* he is doing....such as in one of the examples here where he was trying to write his sentence in the shape of a triangle!)

Arden's and my form drawing for the week.

Arden and I are messing about with a bit of embroidery on old clothing.

There is a plan for some sort of cactus embroidery, after we've experimented.  At the idea stage.

Some moments during the week.

 

Candlelight on a thundery morning.  Just because we can.

 

Arden has been busy cooking recipes from around the world recently for dinner (using Jamie Oliver's cook book Jamie Does...) and I've been trying out German baking, to re-experience my childhood of Australian German baking.  I picked up this book from the library and will have to buy a copy, there are so many things in here that I remember from my Nanna's house growing up.....plus it made me realise where my love of poppy seed cake is from.

Hazelnut macarons (haselnuss-himbeer makronen) before the addition of jam.

 

Gabriel received a kit from Pitbull Guitars this week, for him to put together his own guitar. Willow made her own harp via a workshop, at a similar age, and since Gabriel is interested in guitar we thought that this seemed like an interesting project, that gives some insight into instrument construction.

And some flowers because the bunch was made just for me!  Can't help but feel good about that!  As a customer it's lovely to shop local and get treated by the shopkeeper.

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2025

Sadly Arden doesn't remember his artistic writing, that used to drive me a little crazy!  

Week One

We started our at home learning this week, sadly not missing the worst of the heat (might have to re-evaluate this for other years, where the Jan/ Feb season is mild...) and so far have had a pleasant start, though none of us are keen on humidity so yesterday was a bit ordinary.

Arden and I are reading Norse myths by Padraic Collum and doing a study of runes and some celtic knots right now.  We' re continuing to use a dip pen for writing, and Irving has been loving trying out the dip pen too.

We've also started onto some embroidery for craft.  Arden enjoyed hand sewing last year, and although he's quite good at knitting, he isn't very keen on it so far.  (We still have a cushion decoration pattern to finish from our wool spinning last year.  :/ )  We've watched a few youtube videos on embroidery, and have made a start on making him a cushion for his bed.  His plan is to embroider snakes, stars and his name on it.  He has drawn his design onto his pillow and sewn his name so far using Holbein stitch (an up and back running stitch).

This weeks sewing; Arden's embroidery, pink and spider bag for Irving, green bag for me.

Start of Irving's embroidery up close.

Received a pile of vintage ricrac off ebay!  Love that it's all cotton, and almost none is synthetic!

We have a very eclectic taste in clothes around  here...dating back to DH and my days in the alternative scene in Adelaide, and this has continued as a family trait now that we home educate.  So on that theme Arden was very pleased to receive these floral sneakers (we bought online, and they use Korean sizing, which turns out is not the same as the EU sizing it appears to use) which were for Willow, but were far too small for her.

We tend to think that it's important for young people to be able to wear the things that they like without judgement.  It seems to DH and I that many kids feel that they are "wrong" as boys or girls, because they've been told (from a very young age) what girls and boys are "allowed" to be (by parents, teachers, advertising, television, film, computer games,etc) and then this confuses them about who they are.  "I must be a girl if I like dresses...",  "I must be a boy if I hate dresses and I hate pink....".  This is social conditioning in its worst form IMO.  Parents need to defer judgement, and support their kids to try things, without passing judgement on what their child likes or dislikes.  The child's likes or dislikes are not what makes them a boy or a girl, it just makes them human, and a person needing acceptance and love.  If we could all choose to accept each others tastes in superficial aspects such as appearance, I think we would find many more creative and happy people and children in the world.

Gabriel has been getting into managing his own timetable this year, and without Willow around, as she started at WAAPA this week (the earlier two weeks were orientation) it has been quite quiet whilst we are working, and I feel a little like I have a bit too much time to be aware of what he's doing!  So I'm attempting to make a concerted effort to be disinterested.  We've written him a vague outline, and I really want to get in the habit of having a weekly discussion of where he's at.  Probably at this stage, I will head towards a daily review building towards weekly.

Willow has been finding institutional learning interesting after a decade out of the system.  There's aspects of it that she is loving, and aspects that are a bit challenging (mostly social related so far).  I think she's enjoy the out and about aspect of it, despite the social challenges (giggly girls, immature behaviour,etc).

A few highlights from the end of our break!

Tower of books by Arden!

Irving doing some photography through the screen door.

Reading together.

We also got to a couple of shows in PIAF, and PIAF's opening.  Damien took the older three to see the Wintergarden, and I took them to see O A Lang Pho.  Everyone particularly loved the second one, which was a Vietnamese circus, and Willow came out saying that, that is the sort of circus that she would prefer to do.  The Wintergarden got mixed reviews from the family, but was generally considered acceptable.