Term 1- quite late

 This year has seen a lot of swimming and surprisingly, not really any sailing.  Irving did nippers again, and enjoyed the season to varying levels, and we waited til the heat had mostly subsided to start our home learning again.

Irving and I headed to the Titanic exhibition.  This exhibition was a mixture of historical objects, and recreations of aspects of the ship, as well as giving the cultural context of the time, and the enduring legacy.  We had gone down the Titanic rabbit hole, before with the older kids, and so I read Irving "A Night to Remember" and watched the movie from that book.

 

As usual we started off with some painting, and doing some art.  Since Gabriel is very much interested in art, he joined in with us, and we had a pleasant month or so at the beginning of our school year exploring the colours and painting the rainbow, including trying veil painting.

Our reference books for watercolour painting

 

Towards the end of the term we moved onto Chemistry and this is what we are still doing at the moment this term.  We are again reading "Uncle Tungsten" and Irving is really enjoying it, as he is very much interested in chemistry.

We have also done some gardening, and looked at some woodwork and also knitting as we have flowed into different ideas across the term.

For fiction Arden, Irving and I have been finishing off the Harry Potter series, and we are part way through the Deathly Hallows.  Then Irving and I have also been reading Tom Sawyer, and Huckleberry Finn.

Last term for English we had a bit of an exploration of journalism and interviewing people and we also read some of Oriana Fallaci's work- in particular her interview with Hitchcock and Sean Connery, as both people are still quite well known in modern culture and I thought with some context would be interesting to Irving.

I found this book in Paper Bird in Fremantle.  Irving and I both enjoyed reading it, and what it had to say about screen usage in young people.

Irving has also taken an interest in French patisserie, and got into experimenting with choux pastry.  We also found the French version of Masterchef, and used that to practise our French.

First week of Class 5 and Class 7

We're in the middle of a rather hot spell, but fortunately we had some cooler weather for our first few days of school last week. I've been wondering how we'll manage with Willow running through her work independently, and Gabriel and Arden and I working together. Pleasingly it went very well. Willow worked through her planned work over 4 days, whilst Gabriel and I did school stuff over 3, and I have a planned activity (painting, drawing, modelling, cooking, home loving) for each day of the week for Arden. Arden loved it, and Gabriel really enjoyed doing the kindy stuff with Arden once he got into the idea of it.

Here's a selection of work from this week.

Willow's first week of class 7

Willow's bread- baked this morning for breakfast


One point perspective


Modelling


Breathing exercises


Willow found the dark centre to the lighter edge more difficult.


Geometry




Some of Gabriel's work from our first week of class 5

Modelling



Mandala


Forms


My mandala (drawn with Gabriel for his form drawing this week)

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2025

Arden loved the structured learning the most I think of all the kids.  He continued to want to work alongside Irving in highschool and see what he was doing too, where the older kids were more inclined to work independantly.  This was partly necessary  because I was busy with the younger two, but it was also because that was what they wanted to do.