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.

What's Been On

Well, it seems like it's about time I sit down and do another post on here.

We are coming to the end of our organised school year, and it's such a relief to be nearly done, particularly this last term with all these extra things we're currently doing. At present we're spending Tuesdays at Burnside pool, Thursdays at choir and Fridays at Highland dancing. Everyone has been enjoying it alot, but it is rather tiring with all these extra activities to do!

The choir sang in the lead up to the Christmas Pageant, and they did a marvellous job. All the children deal with it so confidently, it's nice to seem them so self assured.

Last weekend we attend the Alliance Francaise's French festival. I must admit it was a little lacking compared to a couple of years ago, but the music was still good this time. I particularly enjoyed Zaza Fournier. The food was rather lacking this year, as was the variety of beers according to Damien.