Summertime

 I seem to begin every year meaning to post our activities more regularly, and this year seems to have ended up the same.  Partly because, we have been very busy, and partly because now that I only have Irving left to home educate, I am trying to take advantage of having some small amount of time to myself again.  Amusingly Arden is very insistant that he is *still* home educated, but he isn't in that system any longer, but is busy off at TAFE, studying for his Diploma in Aviation Management.

We started off the year with a week of sailing, with Irving doing tackers 2, and he got a last minute offer to do Vacswim too, and so we also did a week of that.  It was lovely being out on the beach daily again.

We headed out to a lovely local Italian restaurant, Maruzella's for my birthday, where I got a complimentary birthday drink.  :)

We headed out to Northbridge to watch the 2025 Ausroad Cycling Nationals.

Trying out the new train line- heading out to Whiteman park.

Walking back to catch the train.

Irving doing some lego building, basing his design off a model in a recently purchased book.

Some of my recent paintings.  I haven't done a lot of painting this year- I've been busy doing some crafts again, and doing a bit more reading.

Term 3

We have had a few family things going on around here this past term, and so I seem to have taken fewer pics than usual.  Irving has been continuing along learning to read and write, and count and all the usual things that little people do, which in his case includes experimenting with instruments, paper cut outs and working out how things work.

Arden has been continuing along on latin, using Lingua Latina, learning about Ancient Rome, Hawaii and the Polynesian nations, and geology.  We've almost finished knitting socks (Irving has been learning to knit too) and he's been learning to sew on the sewing machine.

This game has ended up being used quite creatively for various constructions by Irving.

 

 

One variation of the game.

Flower Pressing and decorating candles.

Arden progressing through his knitting.  One sock down, one sock to go for both of us.

Constructing platonic solids out of modelling wax and tooth picks.

Woodwork with the "Joy of Wood".  Using traditional tools.

A dice by Arden, out of wood, and a dice by Irving out of aluminium.

Working on some handsewing- beanbags and a scabbard.

Arden working on designing a harmonica bag for his first machine sewing project.

Some of my sewing.  Pyjama repairs.

Learning to do bound buttonholes.


Finished!

Turning jeans into a skirt with fringe.

Arden's cooking- checkerboard cookies.

Streusel.

Some of our garlic harvest.  We've also had tomatoes and capsicums and potatoes this year.

Our drawings from reading "Red Riding Hood"
Irving's.

Arden's.

Mine.

Out enjoying the Winter Light's in Brookfield Place.

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2025

I've been repairing the socks that I made that year, earlier today, they've been very comfy for around the house, but need a bit of attention to the soles to keep them going a bit longer.  My sewing and knitting pile is currently a bit ridiculous and I'm gradually getting through it. TBH there's a few too many loose ends around here and one of my goals is to finish up a bunch of things this year.

Tomorrow we start back at our woodwork classes for term 3.  Continuing on our lund stools.

Term 2 part 2

Towards the end of the term we spent a month looking at poetry, in different styles and learning about metres, and how to understand them.  Arden and I worked together to come up with the our own poems in the various rhythms. 

We have a few poetry books at home, but I figured we needed a greater variety for this, so collected some more from the library.

The poetry books we used.

During this time we were also reading Beowulf. 

Plus we ordered a denk fire bowl to use in the colder weather.  It doesn't really get cold in Perth, just overnight, so we got up early on Winter solstice and made a small damper to bake in the embers of our bowl.

It got a bit stuck to the aluminium foil, but was still delicious!

We were playing hopscotch whilst out and about for a while, after meeting a lady who drew up a game of it for us!

Arden recently finished reading Hemmingway's "Old Man and the Sea".

We read "Tom Sawyer" earlier in the year, and we used Kovacs' "Ancient Rome" as well as Emily Frenkel's version of "Aenas" for Arden's first block on Ancient Rome.

Third time around we are using "Lingua Latina" for Latin.

Irving and I had been working on some cursive, helping to build up his familiarity with the alphabet.

Irving experimenting with celtic knot patterns.

Irving and Arden working on geometry.  Irving likes to join in, so he does the bits he can manage.

I'm still working on this,just recently traced the quilting image onto it, unfortunately it won't be ready til next winter! (I'm sitting under it right now!-2025)

Irving is starting to get the hang of skateboarding.