This Past Week

We all got back into our at home schooling routine this week, and turns out it has been helpful.  Irving has been loving being involved in all of Arden's activities, and has been really getting into doing maths with Arden in particular.  (He's so keen that he wanted me to get the JUMP book out for him.)  Arden is also quite please because we received a new lot of Life of Fred books (goldfish, honey, icecream and jellybeans) and he has been getting into them again.

This week Arden and I are back into doing English and we've been looking at tenses and sentence structure and reading about Norse Mythology.  To compliment this, we've also been doing some pen and ink drawing.  I seem to have missed photographing Arden's picture this week, but here is mine.

Arden has almost finished his embroidered cushion, and we just need to stuff and sew it now.

We're planning his next piece which will likely be cross-stitch, and something to do with cacti.  (He's got a small collection of cacti, and is wanting to get a venus fly trap next.)

Gabriel has moved onto looking at social sciences, and we're looking at freedom and political systems.  We had been contemplating reading "1984" and also seeing the stage play, but decided to leave it, after reading the reviews, and also because Gabriel was expressing a preference to reading "Fahrenheit 451".  He also headed to a talk this past week with Damien, on judiciary in WA.  Apparently it was a little dry, but did spark some further conversation.

Gabriel has started on the process of making himself some trousers.  He's making some out of cord, with floral pockets.  I'm almost finished making him some linen trousers.  I ran out of thread with the belt loops and hems to go.

Cutting out the pattern

The colour is an olive green, and really didn't come out well in this shot

As Gabriel is focusing his art studies around Games Workshop, we decided that it would be interesting to see other exhibitions that relate to models.  Since the Brickman lego exhibit was in town, and we are all mad lego fans, we all had to go.  We got a bit engrossed, and really didn't get to see it in as much detail as we would have liked.

Great Barrier Reef

Titanic

Some lego building by Arden

Today, Gabriel and I headed to the Art Gallery of WA, to see the sneakers exhibition, it was an interesting progression through the history of the shoe, and into the more artistic creative aspects of the modern sneaker.  We were intending for us all to go, but Damien was feeling a but unwell, so we will have to go back with the others.  Going just with Gabriel, did mean, that we could take our time and have a thorough look through the exhibition.

Arden has been wondering about his grandfathers (both died before he was born) and so for their birthdays this year we baked them cakes.  My family heritage on my Dad's side is German, and he often brought home streusel cakes after visiting my Nana, so we decided to make him one.

Dough is waiting topping.

Ready out of the oven!

We had a rather cold middle of the morning recently, and so Willow, Gabriel, Arden and I all headed out for a coffee.  (We were trying to take advantage of the cold, as it is never here very long.)  Arden has been enjoying doing some food photography when we are out ( as well as other things,from time to time) and got a couple of lovely shots of his hot chocolate at duotone.  He's sharing his photographs @ardenaragorn on instagram.

Title-less

Due to some issues with resources (I've been having difficulty finding lodestone/magnetite)- we've stepped away from physics from a few weeks- and Willow is doing a block on medieval history. The block has been very interesting so far- we've been using Charles Kovac's book 'The Age of Discovery' for the basis of the lesson. There's been a progression through the stories of Jesus based off the progression of Rome and monks creating beautiful works telling Jesus' story.

This is Willow's painting of Jesus' birth.


And her illuminated letter.


Gabriel thought he'd have a try too.


A castle design.


This week we progressed onto Islam and Judaism, and did some Islamic patterns.


Willow also did some writing- both creative and factual- she's currently working on a story about viking times, and she also wrote a page about Albert the Great.

Gabriel has just come to the end of a block on ratios and fractions, and will be doing his final block of the year, on the Norse myths. We are planning a play for our final week, which will be fun, as we haven't done a play in quite a while.

Gabriel has also progressed nicely through his cushion and should be finishing the lion soon.


We've been a bit disappointed to find this week that The Herdsman has closed it city shop, due to lack of popularity. It seems good quality food hasn't really taken off here quite that much. Seems like it's a good decade behind Adelaide- I've been quite surprised by how progressive Adelaide's food culture is by comparison. I will have to get out to Organic on Charles more often over the summer.

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2025

LOL Perth food has been a frustration for the whole time we've been here.  We find something that suits us, and it moves or closes down, or they change their philosophy (particularly after covid this happened!)  Although we do now go to Manning Market for most of our shopping, and we don't really have to use Coles or Woolworths anymore!  Which is very pleasing!  

Some New Aquisitions and What I'm Reading

I started reading this when we arrived in Perth, but I must admit I haven't read much of it recently. It is totally fascinating, but incredibly depressing IMO, so I've put it aside at present, and have just been reading bits of it incidentally. Though for anyone that thinks vegetarianism will save the world, I highly recommend reading it. ('The Vegetarian Myth' by Lierre Keith)

This is equally depressing, but I guess I know the outcome, so it's less disturbing. The wisdom of the ancients is quite amazing. ('Eve's Herbs' by John Riddle)

Some recent homeschooling purchases.

('Physics is Fun' by Robert Trostli)

('Sky Phenomena' by Norman Davidson)


I'm finding this last one fabulous for explaining Astronomy, and it's so nice that it has an explanation for the Southern Hemisphere too. We're about to start on some of this next week- and even better for us, there's a planned homeschool excursion to the Perth Observatory in October.

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2025

I still haven't finished "The Vegetarian Myth"!  And with all the things I've ended  up doing with the kids over these last 10years, my book pile has grown horribly.  Now that I only have Irving left, my goal has been to shrink it.  Unfortunately home schooling has expanded my hobbies enormously too, so between children and deciding what to do, the reading sometimes tends to get neglected when we're busy. 

Eve's Herbs' was a fascinating read on how women have managed their fertility, and complements my current  reading, Portal, quite nicely.

Physics is Fun is amazing, and is one of my favourite homeschool resources- we have used it so much over the years!

Some of our physics over the years can be found in these posts.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/05/outings.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/11/physics-maths-parliament.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2016/10/science-arts-craft.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2011/12/loose-ends.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2020/02/2019-close.html

Endings and Beginnings

Gabriel is just coming to the end of his first block on fractions. He's been really enjoying. Initially he was finding it a bit tricky, and I started to wonder if it would suit him better if I introduced the new concept and let him sleep on it, so the ideas had time to settle. It has worked brilliantly, he's gone from being irked to being pushed into new ideas to totally embracing each concept.

In terms of maths I largely use the jump curriculum, but still remain steiner inspired. I've found this really helps me to keep on track with us getting through all the maths work that needs to be done, and also breaks down the concepts well to enable me to explain and teach them better. I generally 'get' maths, without needing the extra steps so this has been very helpful for me in teaching it, and recognising that there are steps that I may not have thought need explaining, but do for some people.

Willow has started the second half of the Ancient Rome block. We've been using Charles Kovacs' book on ancient Rome.

I like the way he presents the book, and the ideas that are brought forth through it. Some of the ideas around Christianity are very conservative IMO, but they have brought forth some useful discussions during our lessons.

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2025

I've used JUMP- Junior Undiscovered Maths Prodigies for all the kids now.  I actually think it is really brilliantly put together and it has helped me with my instructions for almost everything, enabling me to think about the idea that maybe there is a misalignment in concepts between myself and my child, and trying to work out how to remedy that.  

"The Myth of Ability" by John Mighton is the original book that I read on the principles in the JUMP program.  

I actually think that this was one of the books and programs that has really helped me understand better the idea of being a learner, and what learning and progression looks like in children and people, and probably most importantly that everyone can understand maths, with the correct guidance.