So Much Action

We were consistently busy over term 3.  I was looking forward to the holidays, but they ended up being rather chaotic with Willow here, and house sitting.  And Irving having sailing all during the second week.  I had also intended to write my moderator's report during the first week, but with Willow out and about all week, it got put back til Irving and I were on the river.

Irving sailing at tackers 3.

Enjoying the view, with some tea.

Painting whilst the classes are happening.

We started our term 3 later, and had some fun dismantling some of the electrical items that we had collected for Irving to examine. 

Dismantling a broken scanner.

All the left over pieces.

Our kettle broke, so we pulled that apart too.

 

Off to the art gallery with our homeschool group and did a tour of some of the current exhibitions as well as a drawing session.

Irving's sketch of one of Perth's buildings

We did a lot of poetry this past term, using Stephen Fry's, the Ode Less Travelled- there were a lot of new terms and it was a lot of fun!  I had used it before with Arden, but Irving and I got a little further through the book, and although Irving found some of it challenging, Stephen Fry comes up with some very amusing topics, and puts time limits on the activities so it kept us progressing along nicely.  We got half way through the book and will do the second half next year.  To complement our study of poetry we read Beowulf too.

And we also started a book club with some home school friends, and our first book, was Momo by Michael Ende.

We did some reading about Ancient Rome using Charles Kovac's book, and spent some time watching documentaries on Rome.

We had a home education session at the Constitution centre, and did a tour of Parliament.  Sadly the Constitution centre does not receive as much funding as it once did, and their range of courses is significantly cut back.  We were reading about King Arthur and his knights by Roger Llancellyn Green as a way to complement our civics studies.

The Lion and the Unicorn in WA Parliament

We finally finished the lund stools that we had been making in our Joy of Wood woodwork classes.

Irving's on the left and mine on the right.

He also picked up a sword and shield making kit from them at their moving sale.

We picked up a couple of new books.

Something to our inspire our copperwork

And Irving bought himself this.

 

Tried out braiding some copperwire.  

  

We worked on patterns wtih a range of different objects before trying out making rings, in theory with patterns, but it seem that only really appealed to me!

We moved onto open backed copper rings.  Irving decided not to pickle his rings, and so his came out with these interesting patinas.

Irving's rings

My rings

Pickling a copper bowl in double strength white wine vinegar.

We started making a tool for shaping out copper bowls.

 We happened to see a car show on our way home one day.

Irving's been making Scottish tablet to sell at the homeschool Christmas market.

Me doing some painting, whilst eating my subject.

We happened to be at City Farm for the Watercolour exhibition.  I really liked these paintings.

We also saw a local exhibition at the Perth City Council.

Irving checking out the artworks

Trialling making sauerkraut with nasturtium leaves.

  

Irving and Arden and I are reading Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.

When I was reviewing this blog earlier in the year, I discovered that I had recipes on here- and so I tried one of them, and it turned out that when modified it made very nice chocolate mousse!

Back to School

So our 6 week break is over, and we started school again this week.  It was great to get back into organised activities at home, and so much of the work was interesting.  I've decided next year, that we'll have a 2 1/2 month summer break and start mid February, as having the longer break in the middle has gotten us all rejuvenated for the second half of the year.  So we'll be looking at a 4 week break next winter.

Gabriel was continuing on with his English block we started last term, and this week we were looking at sentence structures, whilst continuing with reading "Beowulf" and Padraic Colum's King Arthur stories. 

We looked at a pictorial proof in geometry this week.

My version.

Gabriel's version.

Gabriel has progressed onto modellling for his craft project, and is currently modelling zebras, before he will eventually move onto planning his project.

Arden and I continued working through the alphabet this week, looking at the letters L and Z.  Next week we'll do a mix of activities, before moving onto the vowels.

Here's our modelling.

 

And our painting for the week.


This is my lamp painting.


Arden's lamp painting.


Willow is onto working on her computing block.  Damien is taking her through the basics of hardware, and she's teaching herself touch typing using Ktype and tux type.  (Damien works in IT and we have linux as our operating system at home.)

I bought a few new books recently: "The Little Prince" and also "Between Form and Freedom" and also "The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby and Child Care."  We've all been enjoying "The Little Prince", and it's been our lunch time read for the week.  Arden is particularly enjoying it.  I wasn't sure how much I'd like "Between Form and Freedom" as I'd come to realise quite some time ago that homeschooled teenagers are different from schooled ones, waldorf or not.  Generally this book is a schooled child's book and not a home educated child's book.  There are bits I'm finding really annoying, but there are a few good bits in there too.  The last book I haven't had much of a chance to look at properly yet, but I cut out all pasteurised dairy, after reading that this can cause some babies discomfort when breastfeeding, and Irving is certainly cheerier now.  I wasn't having a lot of pasteurised dairy (milk and cream at home are raw) but now I'm pretty much sticking to raw.

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2025

The teen situation is definitely different when home educated, and I really would focus on the educated word there, and not home schooled.  I've now met quite a range of people doing both now, and the home schooled ones end up with more of the schooled kids issues.  Feeling controlled, lacking autonomy and intrinsic motivation over their lives is something I have come across a bunch of times.  These things are particularly an issue from what I have seen if they are over scheduled.  Obviously if their schedule allows for flexibility to do other things and to explore in their own time, as well as doing structure, then this won't be an issue.

There are quite a number of people that move to home schooling here in the teen years.  Interestingly in Adelaide, the more experienced home educators, use to almost discourage it, because the way the educating happened there was more of a natural learning approach and that can be difficult to transition into, when all one has ever known is school.  I do like that a lot of people step out, even in high school here, with the support of a programme, because I think learning outside the mainstream schooling system is still an enormous step in the right direction, and TBH it is what we started with, although from the Steiner system, and in the early years.

Socially it can be difficult hanging out with the kids that have had a hard time at school, because they can bring the chaos of their school issues with them.  I've also learnt, over the years, that there are some great schooled teens to mix with, and generally these are the ones that have high parental/multi-generational involvement in their lives.  Hold on to Your Kids is a great read on this topic, and whatever education model one uses, it is an excellent read on how to maintain good family connections with one's children.

New Arrivals

So I've been a bit absent the last few weeks with posting on here, as baby no 4 arrived peacefully on 24th June.  He was born comfortably in our lounge room and has been name Irving.  So far he's been settling into life well, and is getting lots of attention from all the bigger members of the family.

We got through all the homeschool work that I was hoping to do before Irving's arrival, which was nice; though Willow has a couple of written pieces to finish.  Gabriel and I started work on English and looking at "Beowulf" and Padraic Colum's version of King Arthur. 

This is from Gabriel's last bit of geometry before our break.

This is Willow's last star.

The weekend before Irving's birth was very busy as Gabriel was hoping to get to WASO's performance of "Lord of the Rings", and I'd told him we'd have to see about the baby.  Well Friday came along, and we knew that the WASO performance was almost sold out, and it didn't look like the baby  was coming, so Damien and Gabriel got tickets.  Both of them really enjoyed the performance, and even got photographed for the social pages of the Western Australian!

Anyway after that Gabriel said his weekend would be perfect if Damien and I went out Saturday night, and he and Willow could hang out at home.  Irving still wasn't ready to appear Saturday, so off we went rockabilly dancing. 

Since Irving's arrival, we've mostly been taking things easy.  He was born early Monday morning, and Damien took the kids to our dancing lesson, but otherwise we mostly hung out at home and had some guests pop in.  Now that actual school holidays have started Willow and Gabriel are doing a couple of classes, and Willow is also helping out with her circus school.

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2025

Funny reading this, as it was Irving's birthday yesterday!  Willow came up and stayed with us for it, and baked him a blackforest cake, and we had a lovely day out celebrating his 12th birthday.

Reading

Full Moon Feast
I loved this book! So interesting, and beautifully combined fact with story. Absolutely essentially for any WAP eaters out there.

We've also just started Willow's language block reading Beowulf and The Story of King Arthur- we'll be looking at doing some poetry writing and creative writing with this block too.

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2025

Oh this is about where I'm at with Irving at the moment,  we finished reading "Robin Hood" by Roger Llancellyn Green not long ago, and ATM we're taking a winter break, and he's been doing some knitting, and we've also been reading "Pinochio".  The Story of King Arthur is on our list for this year, and Beowulf, is on the plan for the end of the year I think.

Latest activities

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2025/06/we-made-it.html

Class 6 Plan

Happily my class 6 plan is now more or less complete.

So far it looks like we'll be doing geometry, geology, Ancient Rome, the Australian govt, Business Maths, Medieval history, Physics- acoustics, light, optics and heat, english, Asian geography, and Astronomy as our main blocks.

Texts that I'm looking at using include- Beowulf, stories of King Arthur and Robin Hood, the Aeneid, Faerie Queen, Arabian Nights, Boy Apprenticed to An Enchanter and The Story of Rome.

Craft wise will be a project involving making a proportional stuffed animal- a year long project involving drawing and modelling and then creating a stuffed toy. Possibly there will also be an embroidery project, since Gabriel will be doing one for class 4.

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2025

For more on planning.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2011/01/grade-6.html