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.

Holidays

 The term 3 holidays here were very busy this time.  My brother turned up on his way from Asia back to Adelaide, and stayed for a while.  I had my home education report to organise for my moderator, we went to the Royal Perth show, and Arden was off to an Airforce Cadets camp for the second week.

Particularly the camp made things a bit complicated, as I needed to discuss aspects of the report writing with Arden.  So week one was busy getting prepped, with lots of reviewing our year, both via my planning and my notes on our calendar and pulling all of that together.  I was feeling a bit stressed out about it this time, as I had a new moderator again, and I had lost last years calendar, and some of my notes.  I did *eventually* find them all!

We went to the Show with the whole family, Willow had come up from the South- West, and my brother was here, and we had a fairly full day out at the show.  We went to see the racing ducks, and the alpacas in particular (Willow, Arden and Irving had done an alpaca handling course, so they were very keen for this).  We visited the dairy pavillion, watched the woodchopping, went on some rides, and got some showbags, and watched some of the stadium performances, including the fireworks.  The finale for the night, was Arden and I  heading onto the slingshot.  I wasn't particularly keen, but it was quite magical being shot towards the sky with the moon as our target!  We were a bit lucky with that aspect.

We also headed North to visit some friends who live out of the city, and Arden got a second outing to the show with one of his homeschool friends.

Irving got into filming and photographing the showrides, after we dropped Arden off.

I managed to catch up with some crafts, and repairs, in the second  week of the holidays.  This time I did some fabric dying, and refreshed some faded clothing of both mine and Willow's.

Arden got back mid-afternoon from his Airforce cadets camp, and we had a bit of a quiet afternoon before heading out to the Fire Garden festival at Government house.  It was visually spectacular, but a little hot!  Especially since we hadn't had many hot days yet, when it was on.

term 2-highlights

Well this has been a bit slow.  I was all set to post this months ago, and our computer was unco-operative and then I didn't get back to it.  Life with two teenagers and two children just got a bit hectic! 

A beautiful afternoon at Pelican Point with some home education friends.

Working on cursive with Irving.  I've been teaching cursive in class 1 since I read about the benefits.  I do also teach print, but I try to focus on cursive in our lessons.

Form drawing- making a circle from freehand lines.

Constructing an icosahedron, as part of our learning about the Platonic solids.

Our fire shaped tetrahedron, helping to remind us that the tetrahedron's element is fire!  And adjacent, our tetrahedron die.

Some fun with sketching mathematical patterns after watching Vi Hart's youtube channel .

Some fun activities from "Earth, Fire, Air, Water".. The zaptrapp was a favourite.  Simply make a face on a piece of paper, half wrap it on an orange, and roll him along.  Arden and Irving had a lot of fun racing their oranges.

Looking at the tension of water, by floating a pin on its surface.

Floating and sinking a stone with a balloon.

Found this beauty whilst out collecting flowers to press.

And these beautiful tiles on an old building in our local area, whilst out collecting firewood.

All ready-  with our Denk firebowl, Arden and Irving keen to try cooking on it!  So setting it up with this idea in mind.

And our evening fire.

Crafting- Irving's knitting fork work, turned into fairy light decorations.

April

This past month has seen a lot of events happening, as well as us having a pleasant but too short Easter break.

Willow was preforming in her Uni Choir, Oratorio, at WAAPA, so  we headed out to see her sing.  Irving was quiet for 3/4 of it, which I was pretty happy with, and although grumbling towards the end, of course complained when it was over.  Afterwards Arden, Irving and I did some exploring around the nearby park whilst Gabriel headed to the city to busk.

The choir also did a full performance at St Mary's Cathedral, and as everyone but Damien had seen Willow sing at WAAPA, he went by himself to see her sing in Oratorio.

Some of Willow's music work from this past week.  One of my favourite parts of home ed, is that eventually some of what they can do, and are working on is just totally beyond you as a parent.  This is her uni work from last week, and whilst I learnt music with her up to a point, once Irving was born it was harder for me to keep apace, and only recently have I been doing extra music again.

Gabriel and Arden also did some workshop classes at Perth Zoo, which resulted in us having a rather full day out.  Arden's class focused on conservation, whilst Gabriel's focused on evolution.  We caught the ferry over the river of course, and as the weather was so lovely, it was a very relaxing ride.

Damien and I headed to the Joondalup festival with the littler ones for the first time, and although the festival is quite small, we really enjoyed it.  We found it a little more creative than the Fringe in some ways, and we particularly liked the community involvement, which we think is very lacking in Fringeworld.

Trying out the cloud at the Joondalup festival.

Over our Easter break we got out to see a few bands in Perth, and eat icecream at our favourite gelataria.  We divided into groups for our Easter shopping this year, with everyone (bar Irving) contributing some money towards chocolate and everyone helping to hide them and hunt for them.  Damien went with the older kids to an entrepreneur workshop for kids, which everyone found generally interesting, and has encouraged some thoughts about running businesses.  Willow, Gabriel and Arden all headed out to the movies by themselves, and it felt interesting to be transitioning Arden into the idea that he can go out with the older two.  He is of course feeling impatient to be getting out by himself!  Other than also catching up with friends I finally got a little sewing done, I would have liked to have done more, but the holidays seemed to fly by this time.

Using up scraps;pocket squares for Damien.

More scraps;bowties!

Planning a vintage Butterick shirt.

The cuffs! complete with vintage ricrac and buttons!

I'm currently preparing a simplicity pattern for Gabriel and I to work on.  We will be sewing him trousers; he will be doing navy cord and I will be working on olive linen.  I'm not sure he'll get to wear them for very long, as he is growing and growing right now, but I'm sure someone else around here will if he outgrows them quickly.

I also picked up Gabriel a copy of the Canterbury Tales to read this term, but we decided to rearrange our plan, and use Beowulf as our text instead.  He is still undecided on his focus for ancient history- but plans to make a decision after working on his timeline this fortnight.  We did a variety of writing styles last term, and he seems to have an aptitude for poetry, though isn't particularly inclined to write generally. 

Arden and I are reading "Seven Little Australians" by Ethel Turner, and I am contemplating reading the later books in the series for Arden.  We've started a block on geography and local history, and had a short start to the term last week, given ANZAC day was on Tuesday.  We headed out later in the week on a walk from the City to King's Park, observing the lay of the land and getting a sense of elevation and direction, so that we can draw our own topographical map of our local area.  We took the walk quite slowly, as Irving was walking the whole way too; we were all quite tired by the time we got to the end of the Kokoda track and headed along Lover's walk back to get a bus to the city.  Especially after in an inspired moment Irving helped us to miss 3 buses, followed by another 4!

Leaving the city, we got a bit distracted at Elizabeth's bookstore, and we had to buy "The House of Arden" by E. Nesbit when we found it there.  It was just a bit exciting to find a book with Arden's name in the title, and by one of my favourite children's authors.  Though my list of preferred children's authors might actually be quite long!

The stairs up to the Kokoda track.

Examining the old lake at the bottom of the track.

Lover's walk.

The view at the bottom of the walk.

We have a few outings planned this block, and the weather is being so beautiful that they should be lovely.

Holidays

We are having our winter holiday break, and although it's only our second day I feel very pleased. The term has been busy and full of interesting occurrences. Plus, unusually this year, it really feels like winter. I think it's the first time it's felt wintery since we've been back from living in Scotland. Certainly other years it has been cold- but often not in the wintery kind of way, where it's cold at night as well as during the day. More in the Spring time kind of way, cold at night and gloriously sunny and mild during the day.

We went out for a walk to the shops on Wednesday, when it was rainy, it was great fun getting out in the wet. And there was an amazing hail storm, that gushed in. Plus we found a blue tongue lizard stuck in the gutter unable to move. I picked it up, and relocated him to a garden nearby. He was quite lucky- we moved just as the rain and hail storm came, I am sure he would have drowned otherwise.

I have to see about show entries this week. Willow and Gabriel have a few plans, but we may need to review them- depending on timing. Mostly I am not sure if Willow's socks will be able to be entered. One is done, but I am wondering if the other one can be completed in time.