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.

At home in Perth

Perth, from the South side of the River



So we're settled into our new apartment in Perth. It's been a few weeks, but the ADSL only arrived recently, so it makes it easier to 'connect' with the rest of the world. The apartment is comfortable, and the space suits our needs, plus we have two balconies overlooking a park, which is great. My only minor concerns, is our storage space is a little small (hopefully we'll be able to sort a way to balance things) and we're on the second floor- even with airconditioning I'm not sure that's going to be great come summer.

Otherwise we've been getting out and exploring the city, as well as doing some schoolwork. Our trip across the Nullabor took almost two days by train, and it was quite relaxing on the whole, plus the view of the stars at night was spectacular.

The first few weeks here, Damien had lots happening at work, so we were only getting to the farmer's market together. We've been heading to the Subiaco market every Saturday so far, and have found the selection quite good, though it's much smaller than the Adelaide market and has a different feel. This week we're planning to head to the City Farm, to check out their weekend market.

We've also been out to meet some homeschoolers, both times at a playground, and so far the playgrounds here have been amazing. They seem to have retained more playgrounds with equipment for older kids. The pirate ship at Applecross really went down well, and it was in such a beautiful location, overlooking the Swan River.

A black swan with her cygnets.


During all this we've been doing maths and English around here. Willow has been looking at the structure of sentences, and doing some writing. I also took her to her first performance of Shakespeare- Julius Caesar. Gabriel has finished his writing block on the Norse Myths, and has moved back onto fractions. We've also been getting into some more complex celtic knots, and drawing the King's crown for geometry. Craft has seen Gabriel finish the first picture on his cushion, and Willow move onto designing her pattern, for a toy horse.

Willow's picture of Kilhuch and King Arthur, to complement her writing for the week.



Willow's model unicorn


My cross stitch is finally nearly finished!