Recent Activities

Well we've mostly finished our organised school work for the year, which is just lovely, though Willow has a couple of things to finish off with Damien.

This week has seen us doing another woodworking project, making a stool, with Greg Miller.  It was a lot of fun, though rather a long day.  Our teacher, hadn't done the project with a larger group before and we ran a lot over time......I ended up spending almost 7hrs on mine, and Gabriel and Willow spent less time.

This is Gabriel's bench/ foot stall.   His is designed to use whilst practising his guitar.

Normally Gabriel loves doing woodwork, and certainly by the end of the end of the project he was doing very well with it, but he got overwhelmed initially with some of Greg's explanations about angles and measuring during his demonstration, and it took him a little while to recover from getting confused.  (Gabriel hasn't yet done that sort of geometry.)

Willow's bench will be used in her bedroom.  Both Willow's and mine involved legs on 10degree angles, which made them slightly trickier to put together.

My bench is currently being used for my laptop.

And finally whilst we were out today, Arden got to do some woodwork with Damien.  He did lots of hammering to make a mini wooden boat.  The nails sticking out sideways are apparently jets of water.

Willow has finished off all her chemistry experiments this week, and she seems to have generally enjoyed it.  These pictures are from making solutions of salt and sugar, and leaving them to crystallise.

Sugar crystals

 

Salt Crystals

Gabriel got an introduction to Pythagoras this week, with some sketching of his thereom.

This week also saw us having our homeschool review, so that's done for another 12months.  It's always interesting to look back over the year, and see what we've done, but it's also nice just to get through the process and know that we're all good for next year.

Counting Down

Another busy week has drawn to a close, before our last week of planned school work.  Basketball training finished on Friday, but we've planned an outing for Gabriel and Arden to go and see the Perth Wildcats, so they're quite excited about that.

Some of our homeschool friends from basketball, were in a drama group this year, so we went to see their production tonight.  There were two groups, up to 10 performed in 'Tiddalick the Frog', and over 10s performed a play called 'Backstage'.  Both were well performed, and it was lovely to see a homeschool play so well put together.

Willow has been continuing to work on chemistry, finishing off with combustion last week, and moving onto acids and bases and the limecycle this week.  Acids and bases has involved doing quite a bit of litmus testing and seeing what items are acid or alkali using a cabbage litmus.

This week also saw Willow achieve stilt- walking.  One of her friends was holding her hand and said 'I reckon you can do this' and just let go- and so Willow found herself standing and walking and doing ok!

Gabriel has been progressing nicely through his socks- almost halfway through the first one now- and whilst I would have liked him to be finished by now, I can see an improvement in his focus and dexterity in knitting so we'll just keep plodding along at it.  I've been continuing on making a doll for Arden, and she just needs to have her head sewn on now.

Gabriel has also been keeping some silk worms, thanks to our friends at City Farm.  The moths all made their way out of their cocoons last week.

So looking forward to being done with our organised work next week- there have just been a few too many things happening recently, and it will be nice to spend a quieter week come December.

Reading

There's a few different books being read around here at the moment.

For Gabriel's coming block we've started reading 'Playing Beatie Bow', by Ruth Park.  It's set in Sydney between the 1980s and 1870s, and lines up quite well with our Geography block.

Gabriel has also started a section of a new epic to recite.  He finished Voluspo from the Edda earlier in the year, and we had a bit of a break from reciting, whilst we read the rest of the Poetic Edda.  Now we're onto Arthurian legend, and learning part of the Idylls of the King, by Tennyson.

Willow is reading two books, one is more of history and discussion of chemistry- The Bedside Book of Chemistry.  The other is the story of Oliver Sacks childhood, Uncle Tungsten.  It's quite an entertaining narrative of his life growing up surrounded by science.  We've been really enjoying reading it.

Otherwise, independently Gabriel is reading the Asterix comics and Willow is re-reading Harry Potter again. 

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2025  

Asterix and Harry Potter continue to be favourites around here.  As is TinTin, The Narnia Series, and a new one for Irving is the Howl's Moving Castle series.  It is totally entertaining- particularly the first book, and I've been wanting to reread it myself.

Chemistry and Dolls

Feel like we've been run off our feet recently.  Activities and stuff happening everywhere, particularly as Willow is doing her chemistry practical work over the weekend, so that I can take Arden out whilst it's happening.  We're using 'The Wonders of Waldorf Chemistry' for our experiments, and most of them have worked well.  Highlights of the first week, were watery fire and making charcoal. (Willow is looking at combustion)

Here's the charcoal making underway.

The fresh wood was placed in side the tin, and after being heated and having the gas that was released from the tin set alight, made a beautiful dry charcoal.

Gabriel has just finished a block on human reproduction and will be finishing the year with some Australian geography.

Gabriel is progressing nicely through his socks, and Willow and I making dolls.  Willow is copying an old doll of mine, which is rag doll style and I'm making a waldorf style doll for Arden.  This is her head so far.  Arden wanted her to have green eyes like me, but didn't really like the green thread we had, so we blended some green, white and black for them.

Classes are ending soon (two more weeks of basketball) and there's a few performances coming up, as well as our homeschool review, before we start holidays and celebrate Arden's 5th birthday.  Amazing to realise that we'll be onto class 1 with him before long.

Recent Work

After experimenting with hexaflexagons, Willow moved on to cut out puzzles of Pythagoras' theorem.  Took a little bit of moving around, but eventually a solution was found!

Arden took his lego man out adventuring in the Cultural Centre.

Willow spent some time making rose windows this week, as part of her ancient history block.  She's studying the Catholic churches and the changes that came to it during the Renaissance via the Lutherans, Church of England and Calvinists.

And I finally finished knitting Arden's penguin socks.  He's very happy with them.

Tidbits

We're back into school work, after a couple of weeks break, and so far we're all quite enjoying it.  Particularly given that we only have a short term again this time. 

Willow has been working on finishing her slippers- here's her first one.

 She's also just finished off some geography and is now onto her last block of history for the year.  Part of the block involves making paper rose windows, so it will be interesting to see how they come out.

Gabriel is working through his block on ancient Greece- we're almost at the end now.  As usual Class 5 history has been lots of fun- there are so many great stories and activities that can be done.  We're currently reading the Golden Fleece by Padraic Colum.

Over the break, Gabriel and Willow spent some time at City Farm.  Willow was a leader for the week, helping assist the younger children with activities, as well as doing some- she brought home some lovely spearmint soap and Gabriel went along for a day.  This time he focused on doing woodwork.  Here's some of his work.

We were also out and about quite a bit during the break, catching up with friends and attending a puppet show in Fremantle. Just before the break, we also went to a ballet performance of Pinocchio, so of course we are now reading it too.  It's quite different to the Disney version, but a great story all the same.

A friend recently shared a mathemetician's you tube page with us, and we've all been quite engaged with it.  Recently she's been demonstrating hexaflexagons, and so we've been busy making them.

Here's her page.

https://vimeo.com/vihart

Botany 2nd time around, plus more

Gabriel and I have come to the end of another block- Botany is done, and I've got ancient Greece planned starting next week.  So here are some pictures.

Drawing in Queen's Garden

Fungi in King's Park

Painting a gum tree, colour mixing on paper

Fungus diagram

Drawings from nature

We had a lot of fun doing the botany- lots of outings and interesting activities, so Gabriel was a bit sorry when I said we're onto ancient Greece next week.  Over the last month, we've spent a bit of time exploring different areas quite local to us, but probably King's Park and Heirisson Island we're our favourite outings.  King's Park was great because all the Spring time flowers are in bloom, and Heirisson Island is quiet and secluded despite sort of being in the middle of the city- plus we got to pat and feed the Kangaroos, as well as see the giant flock of Pelicans that live there.

Willow is coming towards the end of  her physics block and will be moving onto world geography.  Her experiments have been working nicely and she's been doing the more complex one's with the help of her dad (Damien).  Currently she's working through mechanics, with a week of electricity to finish on next.

Gabriel's form from last week

Willow's geometry- she's been working on surds.

Finally for craft, Gabriel has been busy knitting his socks, which are coming along nicely.  Willow has been improving her crocheting skills, doing lots of mini-projects before she starts to crochet herself some slippers.

Gabriel's socks