First Half of the Year!

Well I didn't mean to be so neglectful of this blog this year, but it turns out that I have.  We've had a very full year.  So I'll give a bit of an update starting with term 2.  Arden and Irving both continued with iceskating and music classes.  Arden was also busy with fencing, airforce cadets, and youth flying club whilst Irving and I took up the homeschool classes with Joy of Wood.

Arden continued to work independantly on a range of topics- including aviation studies, maths, science, and english, as well as joining in with activities that Irving and I were doing as it suited him.  Irving and I spent some time reading "Legends of Hawaii" by Padraic Colum and doing some painting, as well as doing various cultural studies.

Irving working on some handwriting styles.

Owl paintings -Arden's, Irving's and mine.

Irving and my toolbox, made during our woodwork classes.

My spoon partly made in our classes and finished at home.

Our spoons

Elastic band gun- our last item made in class.

Irving and I have done a lot of gardening this year,  He has been very interested in herbs, and is interested in any sort of gardening generally.  He decided that he wanted to make his own herb book, so we found a journal and cut out alphabetical tabs and  he's  been making notes as we grow different herbs.

Irving's herbal book.

As usual we celebrated winter solstice with an early morning fire and a cooked breakfast on the flames, including damper cooked in the embers- everyone's favourite part.

A good friend - The Whole Cake made this lovely cake for Irving's 11th birthday.  She is a naturopath and has a lovely herbal garden and knew that Irving was interested in herbs, and so she came up with this fabulous cake.  He was very pleased.

I have been continuing to work on various designs for my redbubble store  and French cakes and pastries have been a big theme.  I've been taking a painting and coffee break most weekends, and partly painting what I see and trying to do so quickly, so that my coffee is still somewhat warm by the end.  It has been an interesting experience!  There's also a bunch of my paintings inspired by Padraic Colum's "Hawaiian Myths" here.

 

Our mid year holidays were pleasantly refreshing and in Arden's case quite short, because he applied to TAFE again. He was accepted into a cert 3 in Ground Operations at Jandakot TAFE adjacent to the airport.  Irving and I had our usually 6week or so break, in which I was expecting to have to do lots of activities with him, but it seems he has finally developed enough interests that he enjoys indepedently, and so we had a bustly and relaxing break.

End of term 2

Amongst Iolanthe performances we managed to get a little bit of school work done, but mostly we spent the time recuperating from the intense performance schedule (9 performances in two weeks).  Fortunately there was a long weekend in the middle, and so Damien was at home that day.  During the second week Willow got a cold, with a hoarse voice, so she learnt all about being in the chorus and being unable to sing!

Arden had been working on a block on homes, during Iolanthe, and we had hoped to get out and see some of the local historical buildings during the show, but we decided to leave it til a bit later, since people were run down, and it was a very intense schedule for Arden.  Arden did manage to build a model of our home in lego though, based of floor plans that he drew up.

We've had Arden and Irving playing knights and princes around here a little bit recently, and this led into building block castles.  Note the drawbridge.

Arden and I have been working at a book of creation from the Bible this week.  Lots of english and lots of painting.  Working at nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc; writing the story up in cursive and painting an illustration for each section.  

Gabriel has been looking at steam and combustion engines, we have plans for a more practical component during the break, but mostly we focused on theory during Iolanthe.  Some of the steam videos Gabriel watched.  This page was meant to be mostly combustion engines, but ended up a mix of things engine related.  This week Gabriel has moved onto chemistry and distillation.  We're hoping to distill essential oils after the break, and as a lead up he's making cold infused frangipani oil (we're thinking of trying this again later in the year, when the frangipanis are more fragrant) and a lavender water.

Willow has been doing a little sewing again, and made herself a small purse.

 

Gabriel is currently hand sewing his tie, and Arden is making progress on his jammy pants. I've been making a new bra out of green gingham;  I'm making the straps much wider this time.  On the whole I've been happy with my previous bras, except the width of the straps.

 We found this wooden ironing board in the hard waste.  Was too nice a piece of wood to let it get thrown out.

Arden and Irving being fairies on winter Solstice.

Enjoying my breakfast the day after solstice;taking in the sun, before getting started for the day.

We had our first home education excursion for awhile out to the Supreme Court this week for a hypotheticals session.  Willow and Gabriel found the process quite interesting.  Since Arden and Irving were too young for the session,we had a few other errands to do, for Irving's birthday tomorrow, so we met up with everyone later.

Solstice

We had a lovely Solstice celebration with some friends yesterday, sharing a meal together, and later heading to the beach. It was a pleasant evening, albeit noisy with music and singing coming from all directions at the beach. We had a spectacular thunderstorm, in the distance, for entertainment too. We watched the clouds roll in, and were hoping for rain, but none appeared where we were.

Happy Solstice where-ever you are!