Christmas, Holidays and 2013

Well we've had a busy Christmas/ New Year season as expected, though not as busy as last year.  Arden turned five at the beginning of the holidays, and we had a lovely family dinner to celebrate.

The Perth Christmas pageant was on 15th December, and Willow managed to walk the whole way on stilts, which was quite a feat given that she'd only got the hang of them a couple of weeks before.  (The walk in the pageant was 6km!)  The pageant was at night this year, and I thought it was much nicer than being at a daytime pageant, where it frequently ends up being far too hot.

Damien had a couple of weeks off over Christmas, so we went on a few outings, that we'd been meaning to do for a while.  The first one was an outing to Hilarys to visit AQWA, and have a swim.  The underwater walkway, was liked by all, except the moving floor made Willow, Gabriel and Damien feel a bit ill. We also finally got to Perth Zoo (everyone loved the giraffes, zebras, and orangutans), and Damien took Willow and Gabriel out sailing on the Swan River again.

We also are celebrating Willow's 13th birthday today.  We've spent a fairly quiet day at home, but will be having an afternoon tea out at Koko Black later in the week.

I've got my homeschool stuff planned for the year, I did most of it before Christmas, and it was nice just to be able to set it aside and forget about it.  Our plan is to start in Feb this year, with some part time school, as we're expecting baby no. 4 in June.  I'm also going to do class 1 part time with Arden this year, to cover the govt requirements for pre-primary.  I'd prefer to wait til he's but given timing and how interested he is in learning to read, I feel quite ok about doing class 1 over this year and next.

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2025

Willow attended a friend's wedding on Saturday, who was one of the girls at her 13th birthday party and one of her first proper friends in Perth.  There can be so much anxiety around friendships and homeschooling, and it's really not necessary, as there is just as much possibility of finding people that you relate to as at school.  Many people come out of school without really creating lasting friendships, and sometimes even confused as to what a friend is, because they felt that they had to hang out with someone or they would have been alone.  

Thoughts on Boys and Girls

We've had a bit of a funny week really. Some odd stuff happening at home. And then we caught up with our homeschool group for the first time this year. So Gabriel came back from this last catch up, saying that he had no fun as all the boys are too aggressive. Funnily enough over lunch all the mums sat around nodding their heads about how 'boys are SOOOO different to girls'. I didn't say anything at the time as there was no need, but that has never been my experience.

However when we came home and Gabriel was saying that he had no fun. I felt that I needed to say something. It has opened up the discussion at least, and hopefully it can move to a positive space. My experience is that boys are usually more physical that girls, but that the aggression, is related to the tribal experience of Australians as well as television. It seems that many mothers are unable to address this, and are not able to encourage their boys through any aggression Instead it is just accepted that they have no control over the desire to hit, push, shove, and wrestle. In particular it concerns me that these children are role models to younger children, and that children younger than 7, primarily learn through imitation. Of course these older children have no idea, that they are being emulated, but I think as a society all older people need to be held more accountable for their actions. I suspect that if this happened with all children we'd be living in a much more stable society. I know that, for myself, I had no idea how important my behaviour was in shaping another person until we had my daughter.

What a different world it would be if people realised that the behaviour of each of us matters.

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2025

I still feel this way generally.  We now have more boys and each one is quite different to another, and in fact I was discussing with someone recently that if I only had certain combinations of my children, I could be going around saying "all children are motivated, driven and organised when it comes to achieving their goals around their interests and careers".  Now anyone can see that it is a blatantly ridiculous generalisation, but at this stage I definitely have two children that are more that direction.

Equally I have two that are more dreamy.  And I could make generalisations that way, if I only had those two.  So I just steer clear of generalisations myself.  I hated them growing up, I wanted to be seen for me, and how I do things and not for being a "girl" and so I treat my children as I wished to be treated, as unique individuals with their own goals and interests to be nurtured and expressed.

In general we've still found my above complaints to be an issue here, and overall they've affected us somewhat as a family.  The culture is always in a hurry and has little time for attention to children, and that definitely affects how the children behave.  We've adapted to this aspect of the culture, and accepted the deficits and the assets it brings- because that is one aspect that I  have probably matured in living here, is that there are pros and cons to everything.

So much to do, and so much we've done

Well it's Fringe time here, so we've been out and about seeing bits and pieces whilst it's on. Plus Womad came to town last weekend, so we headed out to that for a day too.

Fringe wise we saw a lovely puppet show 'The Grimstones', which I really enjoyed, and the kids thought was ok. Sadly the venue was lacking, and it was very difficult to see in some spots- we moved three times! And the music from some of the other shows, affected our ability to hear at times. Otherwise it was definately worth seeing.

Womadelaide, was of course, excellent. We saw a few really good bands, and enjoyed all the music generally, and had plenty of yummy food. Byron Bay organic doughnuts came to town again for it. And I ran into tonnes of friends, so it was a great social outing too. I really enjoyed Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, and Paprika Balkanicus were fabulous too.

Home wise we're doing some woodcarving which has been loads of fun so far. And we're in the process of moving house. So there's lots of packing to be done.

End of Year

Well we've finished the majority of our homeschool activities now for this year, except for a couple of craft things Willow needs to finish. It feels good to be done! We finished highland dancing and choir last week, and next term will be much quieter- we're taking it easier with the heat. And we've finally finished reading The NeverEnding Story- don't let the movie put you off, the book is amazing.

Arden is now one, amazingly enough, and now share's his birthday with two friends. One turns 36 and the other is now around 11 days old.

Gabriel made a beautiful Steiner style doll for his final class 1 craft project for the year.

And now it seems to be party season- birthdays, Christmas, solstice, etc,etc.

The Last Week

This week we've been doing allsorts of things. The main thing was our homeschool review, which fortunately was successful and is over and done with now til next year.

Otherwise we've tried a bit of wet felting with mixed results. We'd done beads before but we tried to do some felt sheets and although they felted the results were patchy. In the end, I think the multiple attempts on the same bit of wool didn't help for getting consistent results. It was fun though, especially when Arden decided to chase our soapy water around the room!

Crocheting wise I've just finished the scarf and hat for my brother, and I'm quite happy with them. So hopefully he is too. Now I need to get back to Damien's jumper, I did two more rows last night, so there's still a small chance he might get to wear it for this winter.

We went to The Bead Hive today for our homeschool outing and everyone made beautiful jewellery. The kids made some great pieces, and it was a relaxing way to spend the afternoon. I picked out a few beads to add to a hat I'm planning to crochet for myself (I already have the wool). And I think we might have to do it again...though it'll have to wait a little while, as I'm starting to gather a bit of a list of interesting homeschooling activities.

Finally we finished The Princess and the Goblin, it is one of the best kids books I've read. It's only a small book but everyone loved it, and I think we finished it in around 2 weeks. I've just order the next book, The Princess and Curdie off Amazon, so we're rather keen to get into it.

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2025

The Bead Hive was the first home school excursion that I organised.  I learnt a few things from it, and my further excursions over the years.  Get people to pay in advance.  Quite a number of people, half I seem to recall, decided not to turn up that day.  It was a beautiful sunny winter's day, and people decided it would be nice to be out in it.  The shop had put on extra staff to cater to our activity, and fortunately for me, they didn't ask me to pay for those that cancelled on the day.  

Over the years since then, I have discovered that this isn't unusual.  Whilst living in Perth I've organised quite a few excursions to performances, or classes, and there's always some people that just find other things to do, especially if something is free.  It seems at some point people stop valuing certain things, if they are free.

Activities

Recently we've tried out a few different activities. In my corner I have a multitude of repair work, and other things to do. Willow and Gabriel have some pants needing to be fixed, as do I, and there are a few other bits there too. For my brother, Justin, I am crocheting a hat as a very early Christmas present, before he heads off to Germany later in the year. I'm also still in the middle of doing Damien a jumper- I'm now onto the front, but unfortunately with all this other work I'm not quite getting through it quickly enough for him. On the plus side I have finished the corduroy pants of mine that I was redecorating into 3/4 pants, so that's one thing off the list.

Homeschool wise we've been trying out a few things. Last week we made pompoms, with varying success depending on the thickness of the wool. I read it works better to have a very fine ply, but we wanted to try a few colours, and some of the thicker ones really didn't work all that well. Still it was a fun exercise, and they look quite nice hanging in our carport.

Today we tried out making our own felted sheets. We're not sure yet if it was a success- they're still drying, so time will tell. I found a method using sushi mats, so since we have an abundance of them that seemed perfect. It was a bit tricky with Arden, he was very enthused to join in, and help with laying the wool. If it comes out nicely I plan to use some on the slippers I'm making for Gabriel.

Gabriel has just felted his first bit of knitting and sewn it into a beautiful pillow for his doll.

And Willow is still working on knitting her baby booties, they're coming on a little slowly, but very nicely.