Last of the Year and a Graduate

Well we have been quite pleased that Gabriel has been offered a place in tafe next year, studying cert 3 in screen and media, for the first 6months of the year.  He's not done any formal schooling, so we thought starting with a cert 3 for the first half of his year 12 would give him an intro into classroom study, and we could look at the follow on cert 4 class for the second half of the year.

This year he has had quite a few interesting experiences including volunteering at making hot dogs, at Supernova and Heritage Perth recently.  I think the Supernova experience might have set him up for expecting better organising skills from organisations....apparently Heritage Perth were a bit slow in certain areas, but they did provide a much nicer lunch! :)

Recently all the older kids-Willow, Gabriel and Arden did a chocolate making class at Sue Lewis' chocolate shop.

Irving has been working alongside Arden on patterning.  Arden has been doing mental calculations, whilst Irving has been building the patterns.

We went out exploring the Columns in Perth recently as part of our Greek studies.  We have been reading "The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tales of Troy" by Padraic Colum.  We love his writing style and re-telling of the myths, and even Irving is starting to listen for longer stretches.  We also watched a few videos on the Greek alphabet, which Irving, Arden and I can now recite fairly well.  Next week there are plans for Arden to make a Greek meal for dinner.

Corinthian style columns.

Mini-columns on the Treasury building.

The only example of Doric columns that we found- on the old court house.

As part of Perth Heritage days we visited the Bon Marche building.  Strangely it has a mini-prison gate on the top floor.  We're hoping someone will spend some time and money restoring it to it's former beauty.

My pile of paper-work for writing up my notes for our home education review.  Our moderator visited last week, and we are all done for another year.

Finally my sewing.  The dragon in my last post, made it onto this vintage pattern dressing gown.

Which has some left-over star fabric for its lining.

Change

It's been a time of change around here, so hopefully it will all lead to somewhere good.  Damien  was made redundant and has also  started a new job. Plus Willow's volunteering at City Farm has come to an end, but it does look as if there may be alternative opportunities for her in that realm. 

Damien took Arden to see "Room on the Broom" at the Heath Ledger Centre.  Arden was a bit worried about the dragon in it being too scary, but he was pleasantly surprised when he went to see it.  When Willow and Gabriel were about Arden's age, I used to almost be able to recite the book off by heart, everyone loved it so much.  Arden though prefers some of the other Julia Donaldson books, like Tiddler, Tabby MacTat and Monkey Puzzle. 

Waiting for the performance to start.

Gabriel has been working on his next block this week- part two of ancient Rome, Willow is on to geography and Arden has been working on vowels, and how they are the fillings that help us make words.  We've also started reading 'The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter'.

Gabriel also did a little more drawing of zebras this week, after having a solid few weeks of modelling them- we will be looking at pattern planning in the next week or so.

Willow has been back on to doing some beautiful geometric drawings, which I've forgotten to photograph this week (and being stuck under Irving I can't do it now) and Gabriel has been working on the King's and Queen's crowns and cardiodes.  Arden's been getting involved in geometry as usual too.

 

And cardiodes- Gabriel's followed by Arden's.

Arden was the recipient of some left overs from a local cafe last week- which he was very happy about - here are some of the bits he received.

And finally this is one of the mosaics that Willow had been working on during her time volunteering.