Closing on another year

 This past term seems to have flown by and also to have been filled with a wide range of entertaining activities both at home and out and about.  What at first impression seemed to be going to be a quiet term ended up very busy.

We started off the term doing some geography- in particular looking at the areas extending out from Australia- Asia and New Zealand.  Our corresponding reading was "1421- The Year China Discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies.  Since Irving had taken to sailing, he was very interested in this book, because although it is a mixture of geography and history, it is written from Gavin Menzies viewpoint of being a submarine Captain.  As part of our geography studies we headed to Cottesloe and  checked out the sundial again.

The Cottesloe Sundial

Instructions for reading the Cottesloe sundial.

We managed to get to sailing a few weeks this term, despite the fact that sailing collided with Nippers.  After a chat with nippers, a decision was made to go sailing whenever a comp was happening with nippers, as Irving was happy to miss them.

Boats waiting for competition time.

My sketch of a catamaran.

With this new found love of boats, Irving got into building a boat from lego, machine sewing the sail and working out the ballast to get it floating.

Pirate ship with sails.

In the sink working out the ballast.

After nippers one day I made may way up the coast to our fishmonger, and had oysters.  Such a beautiful spot to stop.

At the beach for our nippers session.

Irving loves all sorts of old things, and he loves the idea of repairing them, and he had become captivated by the quill set below in a local shop in the city, so with some birthday money and some savings he saved up and bought himself this set.  He's been working on his handwriting with it fairly regularly.

Irving's homeschool market stall this year  included a few things left from last year- pottery items, a treasure bag, the plants he was preparing, and after a visit to the gem exhibition, and some handiwork with my old jewelry tools, some pendants.  We also had a very busy kitchen the day before, as he was busy making brownies.  The brownies were definitely the most popular product.

An example of one of Irving's pendants.

Practising his stall set up.

Our last main topic for the term, was Ancient Greece.  Irving had recently gotten into reading Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan had written the intro to the Greek Myth's book we had so I figured he'd find that a bit interesting too.  We read Roger Llancelyn Green's Greek Myth's first this time (we're going to read Padraic Colum in the beginning of next year.)  Since it was coming to the end of year, I took it as an opportunity to watch a couple of old movies- Jason and the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titans.  We also watched the Channel 4 series, "Home Greek Home", so he could see a bit more of what Greece is like.  Plus because he's interested in languages we did a short youtube course in Ancient Greek, where we focused on learning the alphabet.

Irving's Ancient Greek

My Ancient Greek Alphabet

Our woodwork term  had a delayed beginning and so we only ended up  with four classes this term.  We were  working on making bread boards and butter knives.  I just finished my board before the end of term, and Irving was still progressing on his.  He is doing an interesting design of a little mouse popping out of the board, that he came across in a woodwork book, that was bought for his birthday one year.

My rustic cheeseboard.

We had some excitement last week at sailing with our first experience of a lithium battery fire.  A rentable scooter was pulled out of the river, and the water caused the battery to catch alight.  Given that this is a hazard of lithium batteries, I was glad to have the experience during the day, with lots of helpful people about.  It was interesting to see how the powder extinguisher only partly quelled it.  Eventually it was taken onto the sand where it waited for the fire brigade.

Scooter on the sand.

We had a bunch of fun one off outings this term too.  One of our friends organised an end of year movie session- so we headed off to see "Wicked".  I wasn't expecting much, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  The cinema had been upgraded too, so we all had excellent comfy reclining seats.  Then another friend arranged two educational sessions- one at the Perth Mint, and a Zookeeper 101 day, at the Perth zoo.  We had done the mint tour a bunch of times before, but Irving really enjoys the melting and setting gold session, so it was worth it.  The zookeeper 101 had a bunch of interesting behind the scenes activities- including cleaning out the kangaroo enclosure, feeding the lizards, and getting to see the storage areas for some of the animals meals.

Arden finished his tafe course this term, and also turned 17.  We headed out to ifly to do indoor skydiving for his birthday.  Just the five of us, as Willow had things to do in Manjimup, and couldn't get up here for the day.  I was a bit nervous about trying, but I was prepared to have a go.  Irving was also nervous.  Arden did a high flyer, but the rest of us stayed low- unsurprisingly he loved it, everyone else enjoyed it, and I was amazed to discover that I really enjoyed it too.  It has got to be one of my favourite aspects of home ed-trying things that I'm not usually interested in, and then being surprised at how my expectations vary from the reality of doing them.

Icecream cake and icecream for Arden.

I've been plodding away on my redbubble store, aiming to get a significant amount of designs on, after doing some research into how to get my site profitable and self sustaining.  So I achieved that goal after a very busy few months, and for now I've given myself a bit of a break from it.  It certainly has helped with how many views my shop is now getting.

I have bought my range of Irish Myth's myth mugs now.

My Irish Myth's Mug set

I bought a few of Irving's design's as gifts for family members for Christmas, after buying this one for our family, and really loving the simplicity of the design and how lovely the love heart looks at the end of the mug.  Irving's mug is here on his red bubble shop.

Irving's love heart mug

Since I've spent a lot of this year at Something French, in the city here, having a coffee and painting their patisseries, I decided to let them pick a picture and frame it as a gift.  They picked this one. I was so happy with how it looked in the black frame.  I also have it on my red bubble store.

My strawberry tart painting framed.

2023

 So far this year has been busier than I prefer but quite enjoyable. Irving and I have just started our at home learning routine for the year at the beginning of March, and Arden started in February. Though we had rather a busy summer- with Irving and I both starting red bubble businesses.You can find Irving's shop here. And my shop here. Irving also did swimming lesson at the beach this year, and is now feeling inspired to get his swimming at the level it needs to be to join nippers next summer.

Lots of beautiful beach days in January.

We finished reading Bill Bryson's "Down Under" over the summer, whilst sitting at cafes, after our beach lessons. :) (Though this book has some IMO bizarre comments at times- that I particularly felt the need to edit for DS9).

Arden is up to year 10 and is keen to continue with aviation related studies, and he is continuing with the youth flying club at Bullcreek Aviation museum, and recently signed up for Aviation cadets. He is still doing jujutsu and is almost at the adults belts for grading now. We are thinking that this will probably be his last year doing music classes at Cottage Insititute, as he will have a solid grounding in music should he wish to pursue it later in life. He is also doing sailing classes this year, at Hillary's Yacht club.

To start off the year, he's been largely working on music theory using the ABRSM books grade 1 to 5, in a similar style to how his sister, Willow, did. (She studied a range of instruments and voice, did Kodaly style lessons at Cottage institute and only worked on the grade 1 through 5 books from year 10). Arden's interest in music however is quite different to Willow's and at one stage he was interested in musical composition and was watching Hans Zimmer's masterclass on composing. He is very particular about being able to hear movie tracks due to this interest in music soundtracks and their relationship to the film. He is a self-taught pianist from watching youtube "piano hands" channels as I like to call them, and atm he plays for about an hour and a half a day.

Irving is up to year 5, though in my opinion is only really year 4 and a half, and so that's where he's at, at home. He is born right at the cut off date for registration and since we do Steiner inspired education, I slowed down our stories and themes over the last year, to line up to mid- year since that is better for him. So at the moment we are reading the Norse Myths by Padraic Colum and learning about runes. We've also joined a small STEAM group for a bit of a hang out- there's an activity and play, he's doing music classes at Cottage, and he's doing pottery classes too. Plus there's been *lots* of swimming! We've been down swimming in our pool at least three times a week, trying to get him up to nippers qualifying level.

We had a few event outing's during February. When we had kids really into performance, we used to attend a lot of Fringe and Festival events, though these days we have been doing this very little. Irving and I did go to the Perth Festival Opening at Lake Joondalup- which we enjoyed to varying degrees, but the location was beautiful!

On the same night Arden and Gabriel both went to their first big stadium gig- off to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. DH, Damien and I had gone out Friday evening and stopped in to see a friend's band, and just happened to be there when Chad Smith, the chilli peppers drummer approached the band and asked if he could drum. Since we had our mini brush with them, Damien shook hands with him on our way out, it started a bit of a thing here, which culminated with buying last minute tickets Sunday afternoon, and both, Gabriel and Arden, heading out to see the Chilli Peppers.

Our first formal home educating outing for the year, was a fun hang out session of roller skating, and it's now looking like we'll be doing iceskating lessons again in term 3, if everything falls into place. Both the boys loved iceskating when we did lesson pre-covid.

Irving also did first aid classes again this year, Arden decided not to- since it hasn't been that long since the last ones he did.

We also headed out to A Night on Bayview- WASO's performance in Claremont. We all really miss their performances on the Swan River, and the Claremont location is lovely, but we miss the preview of the coming year's orchestral performances. I've been a bit slack checking out the program this year, Arden is particularly keen to go to a few, and WASO do very reasonably priced education tickets.

Irving has really taken to pottery classes and it looks like we'll be doing them all year. He's also been borrowing books on pottery, and we've been watching "The Great Pottery Throwdown", since he's loving it so much. He's had about three classes, so far, but they are only having their first firing, so he's excited to see how his work comes out this week.

Arden and I are back into reading "Tragedy and Hope" for our part 2 on it's take on the history of ww2. And Irving, Arden and I are just finished reading "I Can Jump Puddles" as our family reading. I am looking to find the second and third sequels, so that we can get more insight into Australia at that time, from more of a first hand account. I am particularly interested in his take on the depression, as he has such a unique view on growing up in the bush, as someone living with polio. Irving has also been reading "Charlotte's Web", as a part of our friend's book club, and he's been loving it.

Arden is also doing some study on the idea of earth as GAIA- a living complex in itself, and the forces that affect it. We've started watching Brain Cox's "Forces of Nature" as part of his background research, as well as doing a range of reading.

As an update the older kids are busy with more grown up life- Willow is just being made team leader at work. She's been working in fintech since she was almost 19, initially more admin related work for the merchant operations area, and gradually with increasing responsibility doing online fraud analysis. She loves her work, and it suits her, since one of her hobbies as a home educated student was moderating online message boards.

Gabriel finished TAFE, in 2019, and was hoping to get a job in a cafe, when all of the covid stuff happened. He decided that he wasn't interested in doing more in the digital screen and media area, and instead he was interested in drawing and art- off screen, and also learning Japanese. As well as working part- time in a juice bar, he had been doing this at home, until this year, when he decided he is interested in studying at uni and he took a place in Curtin's uni ready course.

Term 4 2022

 Term four disappeared rather quickly - we had our annual moderator visit- which has become fairly routine after home educating so long, and we did a bunch of lovely out and about activities

We learnt a little about herbs and weaving- learning the difference between sow thistles and dandelions as we went to collection dandelion stems for weaving these lavender bunches.

Dandelion Stems

Lavender Bunches

Irving learnt about a few different animals and spent some time drawing them- this is his kookaburra.

Irving finally finished his cushion- doing all the sewing with the exception of the zip, and Arden made himself a t-shirt.

With non-seasonal Halloween both Arden and Irving wanted to make some creepy food- so we made some pizza dough and some home made lemonade with add activated charcoal for some creepy colouring!

Our final portion of the year saw us doing quite a few history walks around the city. The city of Perth has some great history guides and we got out and about and looked around our city as tourists for a few weeks. Looking at the architecture, and old stories of our local area. We also had a surprise visitor for about a month- as my brother stopped with us, on his way home from Malaysia, whilst heading back to Adelaide. So there was lots of other things going on during that time- we hadn't seen him since pre-covid, when we last visit Adelaide, and there were many interesting conversations during that time.

Arden had been wanting to do sailing earlier in the year- but with all the covid things going on here that didn't eventuate, until finally in term 4 an opportunity do a home school class appeared at Hillary's yacht club. There were a bunch of delays- with our start to summer being slow- and classes being cancelled and rescheduled though eventually sailing did happen!

Arden was also lucky to get the chance to try a rather unique home education class- herbalism- another home schooling Mum had arranged for a herbalist to run a class. There was a mix of looking at plants, studying the actions, learning how herbs treat illness. Arden found it quite interesting, and useful.

He also got an opportunity to try a one on one parkour class with Isaac from Make Parkour- another thing he had been wanting to do for some time, but seemed much easier post all the covid drama. He had an amazing lesson with Isaac, who was very attentive, and pushed Arden to try some new ways of moving.

In a continuing theme of opportunities suddenly appearing Arden was invited by his flying club to have his first attempt flying a plane. Over the years Arden started at the Aviation kids club and learnt about planes and flying, his interest has grown until he got to join the Youth Flying Club and was able to start flying on the simulator most weeks. He and another home educated friend got to share their first flying experience, his friend taxiing and flying part of the leg to Murray Field, and Arden getting to try taxiing and partial flying back to Perth. It was a very satisfying experience for him, and now he's looking forward to trying more!

2022 Part One

 So at the end of 2021 my PC died and so did my attempts to keep this blog up to date. Since I now have a new PC and I was thinking about blogging again, I thought with the new year I would start with a recap of 2022.

For quite some time we have taken the beginning of the year slowly, avoiding any structured work until late February/ beginning of March and we continued in this style. Taking the Summer to swim, visit the library and celebrate 5/6 of our birthdays! By March we started to ease into some more structured activities, and as usual we began with some geometry and painting and reading.

Arden and I started the year reading about Shakespeare, by Bill Bryson, and reading the first section of "Tragedy and Hope" by Carroll Quigley for History.

    

Meanwhile I was working on re-upholstering a circa 1940's sofa we had found in the hard waste, which at times was being delayed due to comfort!

Arden and Irving both did some weaving for their first craft project. Irving wove a small rug out of wool, and then did a second version from embroidery thread. Arden worked on a band on the inklette loom.

Irving working on his woollen rug.

Irving trying out embroidery thread

Arden's inklette loom work.

We all worked together on a domestika illustration course- which we have been rather slow completing! 

Arden's work.

Irving's work.

My work.

As usual we started the year with watercolour painting- this time we did lots of coloured themes and worked on a flowing colour wheel.

Setting up to paint.

Working on colour wheels.

We've been having some regular bird visitors to our place, and Irving decided he had had enough- Our residence was declared closed!

Arden got into "The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" this past year, I've been gradually getting through this excellent book of celebrity interviews from the 60s' "Limelighters" by Oriana Fallaci that was a hard waste find. "Covid-19: The Great Reset" was my first foray into reading the World Economic Forums take on our future, and finally we read "The Never-Ending Story" by Michael Ende together (so much better than the movie IMO).