Trip to Adelaide

Finally after some planning, we managed to get us all on a weeks holiday to our hometown of Adelaide.  For Irving it was his first time there, and for some of us, we hadn't visited in 6yrs, so it became an opportunity for family and friends catch-ups as well as being a bit touristy and eating lots of good food.  I must admit that is the biggest thing that I miss Adelaide, so much good food!

So first stop, on our first day there we headed to the Central markets to top up on some groceries, and to show Arden and Irving some of our favourite places.

This place was excellent, if like me you like kombucha.  A few of us got spider kombuchas here.  Plus they had a kefir from WA that I had never seen here.....

A few of us headed to the zoo.  First stop was the pandas (there is one hiding down the back on the left of this shot).

Arden and Irving had a great time watching this echidna wander around.  Plus we saw a fenneck Fox which Arden was very pleased about.

After the zoo with Grandma, we managed a tram ride to the fringe, to catch up with friends and more family.  It was great riding the extension up North Tce, and to see the tram network growing since our last visit.

The following day saw us head off to Womadelaide for an evening full of music and dance,  It was a very full evening, with bell ringers doing performance art, cossack dancing, celtic fiddling, Carmen performed flamenco style.  All the best things of getting to Womad- very diverse cultural performances and styles.

Trying out some Cossack dancing.

We got to our favourite chocolatier!  Steven ter Horst with his amazing chocolates and cakes and now waffles!

A very poor shot of flying foxes (or fruit bats)  that apparently migrated to Adelaide not long after we left!  They make quite an impressive sight flying across the north-east corner of the city at sunset.

There was an exhibition celebrating local Kaurna (said Garna) culture called Yabarra as part of Fringe.  Probably my favourite bit was Arden's reaction to the river Torrens.  "That is a river!!!???"  After living in Perth for most of his life, the shock is quite understandable.  :D

We also made it to the art gallery, where they have currently arranged the gallery into a nice mix of multi-cultural Australia

Our apartments attempt at a pool was rather dismal....only somewhere without 6months worth of swimming weather would think it was reasonable to put the pool in the middle of the car park!?

A cute alleyway discovered on a walk on our final morning.

The beautiful Adelaide Arcade, has quite a few interesting collectible style shops.

We stopped here for coffee, in the Arcade.  I always hoped someone would do something like this to this part of the Arcade.

Stop off at the museum, examining some Kaurna artifacts.

Aboriginal Australian boundaries for the places that we've lived- Perth and Adelaide.

The Ancient Egypt Exhibit- which has scared at least two people in our family (one is me, the other, Willow).

Space travel exhibit

Crystals

Exploring Antartica

Checking out radiation.

Heading home to Perth again.

We haven't done much travelling, as a family, like this for quite a while, and it does remind me how much I love travelling and how lovely it is to go on a family adventure like this  with kids.  We're moved to Perth with this sort of idea in mind, and have stayed longer than planned, and it is interesting to know two different cities well enough to consider them as home.

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2025

I've made it a bit of a habit since this visit to Adelaide, to order icecream in cafes and by kombucha and make myself a spider.  My preferred kombucha here is Hippie, and their dragon fruit kombucha is delicious as a spider.  

Gabriel had to head home early on this trip and had his first experience of a house to himself.  Something that Arden has now just done recently too.

Gradually Planning 2018

Our jar of happy notes from 2016, being read on Christmas Day.  Happy Memories...  :)

Somehow first term of the year always creeps up too quickly for my liking.  We never start any formal home learning til March (most of the heat has gone by then) but classes always start in Feb, and I'm always left feeling like they should also wait another month.  But not so.  This year I have three registered again- Gabriel for yr 11, Arden for yr 5 and Irving for pre-primary (which for us will mostly involve whatever everyone else is doing!)

Gabriel is in theory planning his year 11 largely himself...but at this instant I'm starting to feel like I might have to lock him to the computer to do his planning....there's lots of ideas about his areas of interest, but nothing put into even a vague structure as of yet.  Mostly he has spent the Summer reading.  Currently he is reading "Bulldog Drummond", since we have been watching a few film noirs this Summer also.  (Recently we have been watching the Bacall and Bogart set).

I made a plan for Arden at the end of the year, so I will review that in the week before we start our planned work at home.  I like the yr 5 Steiner themes, covering all the ancient world, and the stories that go with them.  We are hoping to head to the Maritime museum to see the Pompeii exhibit next week.  Gabriel and I have both seen it before, on a visit to Melbourne in 2009,  Willow found it creepy and doesn't want to come this time, but the rest of us are looking forward to it.

Musicianship classes will be back on in a week, and Willow and Gabriel are taking swing dancing classes (there's an excellent swing dancing scene here filled with young people from 20s through to 40ish).  Basketball will fortunately be starting when it cools down (Arden isn't keen to continue, but Gabriel loves it) but both of them are interested in doing some parkour classes, so we might try that this term.  We have been discussing tap dancing off and on over the years, as both Gabriel and Arden would like to learn broadway tap, but I haven't found anyone that offers quite what they would like.  Gabriel has decided to leave jujitsu this year, as he doesn't really love it, and for now he feels he's learnt as much self-defence as he would like.  Probably we'll be encouraging Arden to learn in a year or two.....seems pretty amazing that he's already heading towards high school years.

On that theme Willow recently turned 18, and is heading off to visit family in Adelaide for a couple of weeks.  Plus she is off to Womadelaide whilst there.  She is working on a mixture of projects this year, as she missed out on a place at WAAPA (she came home from her audition fairly certain that she would miss out).  She was a bit disappointed, but she was  pleased to get her Diploma in Classical Voice, and to have generally done well in that, and in some ways she is glad to be able to take the year out.

Fringe is upon us next week, as is the Perth Festival (which I have already purchased tickets to some shows.  We've made a list for the Fringe but have not yet sat down and discussed who will go to which shows and with whom.  Over the Summer so far, Irving, Arden and I have spent quite a bit of the Summer out and about, or hanging out at home with me doing some craft and them playing.

Playing at Fremantle

Flowers growning on a Moretan Bay Fig.  Photography by Arden.

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2025

LOL I just reread this post and I have no idea what I meant by "I might have to lock him to the computer to do his planning".....planning has not been one of his preferred activities.  And I wonder if he had told me that he would type up a plan.....

Week 5

We were all feeling a little worn out after the business of last week, and are looking forward to a quieter day tomorrow.

Gabriel spent a busy week in Adelaide, seeing family, attending Womadelaide and being taken out and about quite a bit: he went to a concert with his Granny, climbed Mt Lofty, caught his cousins in a basketball match, visited our favourite chocolate shop- Steven ter Horst, amongst a few other things.  Thursday morning he was up super early Perth time, to fly back here.

Anyway so far Gabriel is remaining attached to his Womadelaide wrist band.




So generally until Thursday, our homeschool week was a bit quieter, just being Irving, Arden and Willow here. Arden was finishing off his number block; we did the last painting and sewed his number book together.

My painting for the number nine; nine golden apples from the Golden Bird.


Arden's number nine painting and sewing up his number book.





Willow had some extra free time, to catch up on some bits last week: physics, craft and maths mostly.  She's busy finishing her doll's dress.  Here's Nya (Irving was enjoying her!)



This week Arden and I are working together on cursive.  Last time we read "the Secret Garden" I noticed a discussion revolving around whether or not Mary could print, she could certainly write, but wasn't sure about print.  Anyway I looked into it a bit, and it seemed it used to be usual to learn cursive first; so this time I decided to do the two together.  Arden has been enjoying it so far.  Here's today's work.

My examples for Arden to copy from, followed by print, to help him see the word in both forms.

Arden's cursive, and some print.


Gabriel's back to finishing his perspective block this week.  Here's this morning's breathing exercise, and his floor plan drawing.




We also had a pleasant time, off seeing WASO performing Tchaikovsky, over the weekend.  It was the first time I'd been to the Perth Concert Hall, which reminded me of the Concert Hall in Glasgow.  Generally everyone enjoyed it, but it was a bit chaotic- at one point Arden was wriggling all over the place because he was too hot!  Though fortunately that was easily solved by taking off his jacket.  :)

Autumn

Gabriel's first sock .

More Zebra sketches- this reminds me of art deco drawings.

Some recent geometry, Gabriel's dodecagon, followed by my dodecagon.

 Gabriel's been busy working on geology these last couple of weeks, as his main lesson.  There's been quite a lot of writing work, and we've been focusing on his cursive.  Today we discussed the evolution of alchemy into chemistry, and elements.  We've been using 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' by Jules Verne, as our story for this block. Since Gabriel has finished his first sock, we've had a couple of weeks off, so he can focus on his main project for this year- making a zebra- before he gets onto doing sock no 2.  Gabriel and I finished reading the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets together, and so we've moved on to the Lord of the Rings- The Fellowship of the Ring.  Gabriel's goal is to improve his reading enough, that after reading the first book with me, he'll be able to do the others by himself.

Willow's geometry from the last week- making a variety of stars.

Willow is moving onto chemistry this block, and has also been busy progressing along  her doll.  She was hoping to finish the doll's hair last week, but unfortunately they'd run out of black wool.  I've also ordered a square loom, so that Willow can do some weaving; she was thinking of doing a blanket out of squares.  Last weekend Willow and Gabriel got to try out surfing at Trigg beach, as Willow won a voucher to try surfing.

Arden has been working on numbers and reading and writing them this block.  Previously I'd done more of a creative maths block for class 1, as in the waldorf style, but I really like the JUMP programme and how well it's worked for Willow and Gabriel, so I'm using it as the focus of our maths with plans to complement it with some of the creativity that accompanies waldorf.

We're coming to the end of term one, so I'm looking forward to a couple of weeks off.  Will have to spend a bit of time, getting baby stuff sorted, so that we're ready for June.  We've all still been learning rockabilly dancing, and have been getting a few lessons of kick step in before Gabriel has musicianship lessons back on.  We've all been loving the dancing, and I've been trying to get lots in before the baby is born, as it will be tricky to get to lessons then.

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2025

We actually continued to do a lot of dancing once Irving was born, as it seemed he was accustomed to music, and so he just slept through it.  Later on we all learnt some blues and kick step rock and roll too.  Plus when towards the end of high school for Gabriel, Willow and Gabriel, did some swing lessons, and Willow also did some ballroom.  All this was part of our plan to complement her desire to be an opera singer/performer.

Some posts discussing our dancing experiences....

Highland dancing

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2008/11/whats-been-on.html

Lessons with Cool Cats

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

Rockabilly

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/06/dancing-numbers-astronomy.html

Tap dancing and rockabilly with Arden.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2018/04/summer-holidays-finally-here.html

Willow and Gabriel doing swing lessons

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2018/01/gradually-planning-2018.html

Swing dancing scence.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/10/timetables-part-2.html

Arden trying cossack dancing at Womadelaide.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2019/04/trip-to-adelaide.html