Coming to a Close and New Beginnings

 We had quite a busy finish to the year, and a very exciting start to 2026  From our very full holidays we had a fairly full term- with incidental events appearing and classes to get to.  We started off with our moderator in the first week,which went well, and that was us again til next  October. 

We finished off some English studies using Beowulf and Stephen Fry's "The Ode Less Travelled".  Interestingly Irving really got into doing the poetry, and it was really helpful that Stephen Fry had time limits for all the exercises.  It seemed to help him from getting overwhelmed, as he put all his attention into being quick!  He enjoyed finally getting to hear Beowulf, as the older kids have all talked about the story, and we have a boardgame version of it.

We moved on to the end of the Roman Empire, and interestingly Irving didn't find it as interesting as the older kids.  He was much more interested in Ancient Greece.  We also started reading 1434 to complement the topic, which worked nicely as it has a lot of discussion about where did various knowledge come from, and encouraged us to look more deeply into history.

We also read "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" this term, and Irving really enjoyed Jules Verne's writing style and his creativity with science, and how he explored and expanded on the ideas of his era.

We put in some artwork into the Darlington Arts Festival.  Irving, Gabriel and I put a piece in each, with Irving deciding to submit one of his copperwork pieces from this year.

Irving's bowl up close.

Irving's bowl on exhibition.

We had continued to make open back rings in various styles during the remainder of the last term including using rouge to polish them by hand.  We had not done this with any of our earlier pieces and Irving decided that he was going to prioritise that for his exhibition piece.

                                  

Gabriel's butterfly- above the
 exhibition sign

His piece up close

This reminded me of the first time we did an art exhibition.  We had homeschool friends in Adelaide, who ran a cafe, and they invited all the kids in the community to exhibit their work in their cafe.  That was Gabriel's first time exhibiting.  He was probably about 8.

My turtle

My abstract watercolour piece.

Since then I've been working on boats, whilst Irving has been learning to sail.

We finished our coppermaking off for the year with some engraving.  Including engraving rings....I seem to have neglected to photograph Irving's engraving.

in the vinegar pickle

  


We head to the Perth Gem and Mineral show- Irving was very interested in the Rubies.

We bought a guitar making kit a few years ago for Damien to work on with Gabriel, but for various reasons he never got around to it.  One of the things he wanted done was a pattern on the neck of the guitar- since Irving and I have done a bunch of woodwork in recent years I have made a start on it.

We've been working on Perspective drawing.  This book is really fabulous for explaining how to.

Working on perspective drawing together.

The homeschool Christmas market was a great success again, and Irving was starting to get the hang of running a stall and thinking about what sells and how he needed to manage it.  This year he was selling plants, and pendants (left over stock from last year) and his new addition was home made Scottish Tablet (it's like a crumbly fudge).  

We're back at nippers for another Summer season.

We cleaned up and unwanted delonghi kettle- it was starting to look rusted inside and we suspected it was scale build up from Perth's iron heavy water.  Turned out we were right, after a lot of descaling- it cleaned up nicely and we now have a lovely new kettle.

Just because I really liked the latte art, and I think I've found my new favourite drink- hot black sesame latte.

Our final home ed excursion for the year was to the fisheries department.  We learnt a lot and Irving had an interesting time doing his first dissection.

Working on lego models.

Finishing off the year and beginning eventually too we had a couple of birthday highlights.  First of all Arden turned 18......and around the same week finished his Diploma in Aviation Management and finished off airforce cadets.  It was a very eventful week or so for him!  So he had an eventful 18th by starting the day with skydiving.

Here he is landing after his dive

Whilst we were off at Jurien Bay we stopped at the beach for a swim.

the water was lovely

Final stop for the day was Lancelin, where we all went sandboarding.  We'd meant to do this before, and it kept getting delayed.  We had a lot of fun and I'd definitely go again!

And the final birthday news is that there is a new member of our family!  Willow and her fiance, have welcomed their first child....she was meant to arrive in December, but made us all wait out for almost the very end of New Year's day.  Her name is Aurelia, and everyone is very excited about her arrival!  Although there might be some people feeling that they are a bit young to be uncles!

Learning to Read

During our homeschool journey, I have taught my four children to read, although I would use the term taught rather loosely.  As anyone who has taught a child to read should know, a significant amount of being able to read is exposure to language, conversation about what is being read, the child being  ready and interested in learning to read, and then the child actively engaging in the decoding process that is reading.

With my children I have basically taken the philosophy of reading to them more or less from birth, with the exception of Willow, who as the oldest, probably had stories read to her from 2ish.  The others, all being younger, simply got to join in when there was a story.  I distinctly remember reading all sorts of kids classics to the older two kids, whilst breastfeeding Arden in bed, or sitting on the floor with him, and then again doing similar sorts of things later on when Irving was born.

Willow was gradually getting the idea of reading, via our Steiner approach to exposure to letters, drawing and modelling them, and making shapes with our bodies, when we had our first moderator meeting in Adelaide.  The moderator came and told Willow about the MS Readathon.  Willow was very keen to get involved, and in about 6 weeks time she had completely worked out how to read and was onto reading things like Enid Blyton and Rainbow Magic.  She was 7 and 1/2 when she got it.

Willow reading Harry Potter

Gabriel was much dreamier, and he wasn't in a hurry to read.  He kinda looked like he was reading much of the time, if you didn't know him, but he was particularly engaged with the pictures in the books that he was interested in.  So it became a natural transition for him to go from reading the pictures of comics like Asterix, and TinTin, to one day reading them.  He was 9 and 1/2.

Gabriel reading Games Workshop

Arden was keen to read in a similar manner to Willow. I had learnt a bit more about the process of learning to read by the time I was assisting his development in understand, and I noticed just how much he was memorising what we were reading.  I had discovered by this point, that one of the developmental steps in learning to read, was to memorise what was being read.  With the older two, I suspected that I hadn't really noticed this process, because I was also memorising some of their picture books, because they liked to read a few specific ones over and over. (I can still partly recite "The Gruffalo"!)  Arden had a different selection of preferred books, and a wider rotation, perhaps because we had more books by the time he was born, and so I really noticed him passing through this stage, and then I noticed that he had particular words that he knew.  I remembered this from the older kids, and from my own journey learning to read.  And then one day, also at 7 and 1/2 like Willow, he worked it out.  He used to spend a lot of time reading these kids Encyclopedia books by Time Life that we had that the kids called "The Question Mark Boy" books, because of a picture on them all.

Arden and Irving with some worksheets.

Irving has always been interested in physical objects, and constructions and how things go together much more than the others, and possibly because of them he was also interested in non-fiction books from the beginning.  Similarly to Gabriel he would look through comic books regularly, and also non-Fiction books with picture instructions, and he liked to read the kids encyclopedias  regularly too.  He followed a journey somewhat similar to Arden's, and worked out how to decode the alphabet by 8 1/2.

Irving and Willow reading together.

I always found it curious that all of them were half way through a year, when they worked out how to read, I kinda wondered about that.  I myself remember working it out about 6 and a half.  I remember the slow, strained feeling of trying to understand, and then one day feeling like a light had gone on, and I simply had it.  From there I seem to remember devouring picture books for about 6months, before graduating to things like Enid Blyton, and later Roald Dahl.

I think the lightbulb moment is in itself something so important for adults to remember when "teaching" reading.  That it is the child's journey of processing, and that when they are ready, it will simply happen and be easy.  I learnt from a homeschooling friend, around when Willow had first learn to read, that the normal age range for kids to begin reading was 2yrs old to 13yrs old, with most kids being in the middle, at about 7yrs.  With the education model  being so strongly driven towards learning via reading, being at the late end of that curve would be traumatising.  Our homeschool friend, whose older 2 children attended school, were at the late end of the curve, and it was only her youngest, who was homeschooled the whole way through, who developed a more constructive relationship to reading.  

I tend to wonder if the children who learn to read later, have tended to be later speakers, but I haven't had the inclination to investigate further.  I know that has been the case in my family.  I also know that because we value more modes of learning, that we haven't hurried people to read.  But we haven't taken a completely natural learning approach either.  There are so many other ways to learn, and school only really focuses on the intellect.  I remember my Mum telling me, that aged 3, she would get me to select casettes for her,  I couldn't read, but I could correctly identify all the cassettes.  I've always been interested in geometric patterns and art, and I came to the conclusion, that I must have been recognising the patterns of the shapes and colours too.

January

 So far our January has been rather quiet and fairly relaxing.  New Years saw us playing board games and hanging out as a family. And since then we've had a bunch of catch up with friends, sailing and nippers as well as reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" together- Arden, Irving and myself.  We've also been doing the Jim Kwik memory course on Mind Valley- with Gabriel too, and Irving and I have been trying the Quantum Jumping course. Next week will be quite a bit busier since Irving will be doing sailing lessons- tackers 2, and the following week we will be doing half the vacswim classes.  It turns out it's not possible to cancel a place!

There's been a bunch of planning and organising the last week or so.  Arden got offered a place at TAFE last week, which he accepted on Monday.  So this year he'll be studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, and so that's his year 12 and his last year  home schooling sorted!

  I thought we would be doing archery again this year, but Irving told me yesterday that he's not interested in doing more archery, and tbh we're doing enough physical activity ATM.  Sailing and swimming make life quite busy.  I've booked us into doing more woodworking classes from March.  If you've read much of my blog you'll know that we like to take the Summer easy, til things cool off more!  And another home ed friend has arranged a bunch of outings, so we've signed up for National trust history excursions, as well as the Literature centre.

Willow turned 25 this past week and it's funny to reminisce on all the changes that life has brought both because of her and our travels.  She inspired us to look at alternative education, and that as well as some other influences brought us here to home education.  We have tried so many different activities because home education and encouraging the kids pushed us outside of our comfort zone, and I'm incredibly grateful for this journey.  Being a parent and home educating has been the best thing that I have ever done, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes  us this year.

Willow with her teddy collection in 2001, when I was working part time and pregnant with Gabriel.

Term 1

Our first term was very full, and filled with lots of interesting outings and activities- this term is looking to be similar so far!

Irving's pottery class has been going well, and we even started watching "The Great Pottery Throw Down" to compliment all the learning in the class that he's been attending in Guildford. It's also become a bit of a thing, to stop and look at interesting pottery shops.

Picking up a cute pot after pottery class.

And cute fish.

We continued on with Norse myths learning to write in Runes, drawing and painting some of the Gods and characters and reading Padraic Colum's version, and also reciting "The Poetic Edda- Voluspo", as well as reading some of "The Viking Tales" (we're big fans of Norse Mythology here!)

Irving's and my paintings.

Norse Reading.

Arden has been reading "The Greek Treasure" by Irving Stone, because we really enjoyed his book on Michaelangelo, this one took us awhile to get into, and Arden is still finishing it. It became much more interesting to read when Henry Schliemann discovered Troy. It's possible to virtually view some of the Schliemann's discoveries on this Russian Museum's site.


Arden finished the term looking at the way different aspects of the world are integrated together, doing some reading,writing and watching "Brian Cox's Forces of Nature" series. We finished off with looking at the Gaia theory, and the idea that the Earth is a living complete organism.

Irving looked at local Aboriginal culture, and we learnt about how the Aboriginal people cultivated the land, and how that knowledge had been suppressed in our culture, We listened to Bruce Pascoe's tedtalk on this topic. We also read February Dragon, by Colin Thiele. A fabulous book the illustrates so well, the ever present danger of bushfires in Australia.

Hard waste collection happened again, and this time we found a vintage coffee table- it appears to be one of a set of nesting coffee tables originally. Irving and I are hoping to spend some time on it, repairing it.

Irving enjoyed our steam group this term and there were lots of interesting lessons on anatomy, and was complemented at home with watching "Operation Ouch" on some of the topics we covered- including the hand and it's joints, the brain, the heart, the bladder, the kidneys.

One of the completed activities from our Steam group.

Towards the end of term, we attended our first home school sport's day for the family. Arden was too old to participate, but acted as assistant coach with the Team captain, and joined the parent's races for some of the activities. Though the kids were keen to have him join in the parents versus kids, tug of war. Irving had a great time doing all the activities- three legged races, egg and spoon, relays. The only down side was it was the last very hot day of Summer and the first very hot day, we'd had for a week or so, so we were all struggling in the heat a little. Much fun was had at the end, with water fights, to cool off!

Damien, Arden and I headed to ECU Joondalup to find out about their aviation course, and to see their open day generally. We had a good chat with a couple of the lecturers there, and saw the flight simulators in action. Arden used one, and very nicely took off, flew and landed. It was interesting for me to see, because I had only ever seen his first home education session on a simulator, some years ago, where he needed a lot of help. After his years in the flying club at Bull Creek, he really knows what he's doing.

Arden's lemon tree is doing very well.

Okonomiyaki by Arden.

New shorts for Irving.

Black and white sesame balls.

-

2025

We still haven't gotten to fixing that coffee table, but hopefully it won't be too far away, as we continue to develop our woodwork skills at Joy of Wood's classes.  We've been doing a few repair jobs this  year, so it would be nice to think that we may get onto this soon.