We Made It

 At the beginning of the year, Irving decided that he would like a super long Winter break, I wasn't sure how we'd manage without the regular April holidays, but I agreed to go along with him.  I also suspected that the moment Arden was off TAFE, it might become a bit more challenging to keep focused.   Well, I was right, but Irving and I persevered, and we did our first half of the year as a single semester, and now we have a seven week winter break!  Which I am feeling really appreciative of.

We started on Ancient Rome and the story of Aeneas.  Normally we'd do some Latin this year, but Irving is keen to continue the Ancient Greek lessons that we're doing for now, so the plan ATM, is  to do Latin next year.  We used "The Writing Revolution" to complement our writing for this block, with the goal being to develop more refined sentences.  By then end of the term, we were moving on to the section on How, What, Where, When, Why and Who.  It reminded me, very much of my year 7 teacher, and how he taught us English.

We did some more copperwork, Irving decided to try another square bowl, and that he wasn't interested in trying to saw yet.

He is still a huge fan of Rubik's cube, and so this one was his new addition to his collection.  The book, underneath,  "The Invisible Rainbow- A History of Electricity and Life" we were reading as part of our physics study, we just read the first half for now, which was largely a historical background.  I have read it before, and I spent quite a bit of time checking his references, as it was really unlike anything I had ever heard about electricity before.

We continued with home school excursions with the National Trust.  This time to Mundaring Weir.  Other than it was a quite a hot day, this one was excellent and we really enjoyed the walk around the Weir, and the tour of the historic building which is now a museum for it.

The final excursion in this series was to Woodbridge house in Midland.

More sailing on the Swan River.

We moved on to some civics for a few weeks, and used "Robin Hood" by Roger Llancellyn Green as our accompanying text.  As well as an overview of the Australian Political system, we took a look at the Magna Carta and read through the original conditions that it required King John must maintain.


We also did a series of excursions to the Literature Centre in Fremantle, with our homeschool group.  The focus was on Shaun Tan's art works and books.  The classes were engaging and interesting, albeit a little short, there wasn't quite enough time to really settle into developing ideas  properly in our hour and a half length classes.

We also got to do a tour of the Alcoa Bauxite mine.  It's the third mine tour that I've ever done.  The first one was of a copper mine in Burra when I was 12, and we also  visited the Kalgoorlie superpit when we were on our way to Perth, and TBH I found that pretty horrifying.  This seemed better overall, in the way that it was managed and regenerated, but apparently it devastates the local animal population, and TBH for all their good media propaganda, it was easy to see that that was the case.

Irving was doing some weaving on the vintage weave it loom.

A kookaburra guest came and stole some food!

The local Catholic Cathedral had its front door open, which is highly unusual!  We walk past it regularly and have been told that this is because it's a jubilee year.

Willow, Irving and I had a day out to New Norcia.  We decided to walk around the town ourselves, rather than do the tour.  It was very odd.  It's apparently the only Monastic Town in Australia, but it is now largely a ghost town, and is filled with these large magnificent buildings that used to be schools or associated with them.

We had a surprise visit from my brother, on his way to Adelaide after a holiday in Bali.  So we seemed to  spend a couple of days just hanging out and visiting cafes with him!  

Irving and I were working on building truncated solids out of toothpicks.  This was highly challenging as some of them were very large!

We found this chocolate from down south, near our dentist.  This is the best chocolate I've found in WA.

We all headed out to see WASO perform John William's music over the past weekend.  So many great songs!  Everyone really enjoyed it, and it was lovely to run into some friends too.

I've started making tallow again, since the brand we were buying has stopped producing smaller quantities.  And some purple sauerkraut this time.  I love the colour that it comes out!

One of my watercolours- I wasn't too sure about how this one came out!

Arden was participating in the Dawn vigil with the airforce cadets again this year.  Damien, Gabriel, Irving and I went  along too.  It was my first time attending and reminded me of going to church with my cousins, who were Lutheran.  It was a funny experience as a German Australian, as I had generally been made aware when I was at school that I was the "enemy" with "Heil Hitlers" being directed my way from time to time.  So none of my family  ever attended despite being multi-generational Australians.  

Standing vigil

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!  

5 Years in Perth

Since arriving here in 2011, Willow has been counting the years and reminding us, of the anniversary of our arrival every year.  This year, since it was "half a decade" as she put it, she was keen for us to have breakfast at Dome, as we did the year we arrived here.  So Tuesday morning we headed out early, so that Damien could arrive at work on time, and went for breakfast.  Only thing was, that pretty much everything went wrong!  Or at least on my and Damien's end of it.  Damien ended up mostly coated in milk and had to go home and get changed. Since Dome's service had been so average this time, we headed to a coffee shop in the Treasury Building, had a drink, and I picked up a rose, for Damien to cheer him up a bit, after the chaos of the morning!

 Arden and I have been reading the Bible, and creating a story book about God creating the world.

Arden's painting

My painting

I wasn't feeling the best yesterday, so to help me out, Gabriel painted with Arden.

Arden's painting

Gabriel's painting

 Arden has been working on modelling pyramids and prisms in his maths this week.

Gabriel's tie is getting closer to completion.

Arden and I planted some linseeds earlier in the year; these are the seed pods and a dried stalk.  The stalk would be used to make linen. 

Seeds removed from seed pods.

Enjoying homemade pumpkin pie over the weekend.

Gabriel has been working on finishing his essay comparing "Romeo and Juliet" and "Iolanthe" and is currently reading "Swiss Family Robinson".  He is moving on to history this semester (though we still have a few bits of science to finish off).  He is researching and writing about the history of transport, communities and communication.

Willow is back at musicianship classes this week, and has a welcome party for her next performance, which is a youtube series this weekend.   She has recently started using a music theory website to help her fine tune some of her aural music skills.