Last of the Year and a Graduate

Well we have been quite pleased that Gabriel has been offered a place in tafe next year, studying cert 3 in screen and media, for the first 6months of the year.  He's not done any formal schooling, so we thought starting with a cert 3 for the first half of his year 12 would give him an intro into classroom study, and we could look at the follow on cert 4 class for the second half of the year.

This year he has had quite a few interesting experiences including volunteering at making hot dogs, at Supernova and Heritage Perth recently.  I think the Supernova experience might have set him up for expecting better organising skills from organisations....apparently Heritage Perth were a bit slow in certain areas, but they did provide a much nicer lunch! :)

Recently all the older kids-Willow, Gabriel and Arden did a chocolate making class at Sue Lewis' chocolate shop.

Irving has been working alongside Arden on patterning.  Arden has been doing mental calculations, whilst Irving has been building the patterns.

We went out exploring the Columns in Perth recently as part of our Greek studies.  We have been reading "The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tales of Troy" by Padraic Colum.  We love his writing style and re-telling of the myths, and even Irving is starting to listen for longer stretches.  We also watched a few videos on the Greek alphabet, which Irving, Arden and I can now recite fairly well.  Next week there are plans for Arden to make a Greek meal for dinner.

Corinthian style columns.

Mini-columns on the Treasury building.

The only example of Doric columns that we found- on the old court house.

As part of Perth Heritage days we visited the Bon Marche building.  Strangely it has a mini-prison gate on the top floor.  We're hoping someone will spend some time and money restoring it to it's former beauty.

My pile of paper-work for writing up my notes for our home education review.  Our moderator visited last week, and we are all done for another year.

Finally my sewing.  The dragon in my last post, made it onto this vintage pattern dressing gown.

Which has some left-over star fabric for its lining.

January Follow Up

The last portion of last year seemed to be one step forward and two steps back!  December was filled with some interesting events, and some of them just ended upside down.

Our "Class Dismissed" screening never happened due to a mix up-looking into rescheduling that.  Arden's birthday was on a weekend that was cold and wet, which is unusual for here, and so resulted in all our plans being rearranged.  On the whole he took it well- as he was very much looking forward to his first Christmas pageant that day.  Instead we had a late night movie run with "Back to the Future part 2 and 3".

Willow and Gabriel performed in "Clowns vs Ninjas" with their circus school, and that was fabulous!  All the people involved pulled the show together into a really amusing and entertaining performance.  Willow had hurt her foot the night before, and still managed some of her parts, which I imagine was a great relief to all involved. 

We also had our home ed review and received our exemption for another 12months, and Willow auditioned for WAAPA, and was told that she had missed out this time around.  She's feeling philosophical about the whole thing, and is looking at it as a learning opportunity for applying this year.

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2025

We didn't continue with circus after the next year, I seem to recall, so Arden didn't get to perform in the Christmas pageant.

When we visited WAAPA on their open day, Willow was told that it was unlikely she would get offered a place at 16, as the voice continues to develop as people mature.  We decided that it was worth going through the process anyway as it would help her to understand what to expect.

She was also lucky enough to be going there monthly to listen to lectures, as she was offered the opportunity on the Open Day.  So from about mid year 10, she would go down once a month and listen to some of the lectures.

Exciting Times Ahead

We have quite a week coming up.  This week sees our annual homeschool review, Willow's audition at WAAPA, Arden's 8th Birthday, the Perth Christmas Pageant (it will be Arden's first time in it) and the Perth Screening of "Class Dismissed".

For anyone else that might happen to be in Perth-here's the facebook link to the event.
https://www.facebook.com/events/710606305708149/
Otherwise here's a link to their webpage.
http://classdismissedmovie.com/about-the-film/