Term 3

 During the break Arden had an opportunity to do a barista course and a half day of work experience.  He headed to the course with one of his home schooling friends and they both enjoyed the day.  

Irving having hot chocolate at the cafe.

When the term came around again it was my turn to host our STEAM group and this time we were hand-sewing treasure bags.  I practised a few versions at home, and tried to approximate time, but my doubling time for the kids was woefully inadequate, though at the end everyone did get the bag finished.

Variation 1

Variation 2

Last term was very busy as we took up a term of iceskating with some home school friends.  There was a lesson followed by social time, and just like before covid times, when we did iceskating, this quickly became one of my favourite activities for the week.  Pre-covid we went to a rink north of the river, and we spent the afternoon there before heading to music lessons.  This time we were at a rink south of the river, and the classes were much more focused on getting all the kids skating well, rather than doing the individual levels.  Both Arden and Irving could already skate well, so really it was a chance to have a review, and hang out with  old friends, and make some new ones too!

After iceskating one wee, we  headed out to Jandakot TAFE and had a chat with one of the lecturers there, who was very generous with his time, and gave lots of interesting advice and ideas regarding Arden's first steps into tertiary education, and his goal of being a pilot.

At Jandakot

Aeroplanes at Jandakot

Arden headed off to King's Park for an orienteering session, and Irving spent quite a bit of time sitting in a tree reading. 

Irving's steam group, were also lucky enough to do a tour of Browne's dairy, including getting to milk a cow!  The dairy was very interesting, and the farmer who spoke to us was very informative on the processes of the plant, and the care of the animals.

Milking time

Irving started to hand sew his pyjamas.

And got most of the way through his top.

Irving started to make snails at pottery class.

Arden did one pottery class and made a very cute duck. (Although its eyes ran, and it came out a little horror movieish in the end!)

I started knitting a "Weasley jumper" for Irving, and finished it by the end of term!

    

We had a few movie sessions.  Willow, Arden and I went to see "Barbie",  Damien, Gabriel and Arden went to see "Oppenheimer",  Damien and I went to see "Sound of Freedom", and Damien, Arden and Irving went  to see "Across the Spiderverse".  We hadn't been to the movies so often in years! 

We took up swimming again to make sure that Irving would qualify for nippers, since it was winter-time our pool was closed, so we went to a few different pools around the city and practised doing laps.  Just when we thought we had everything prepped, Damien took Irving and registered him, and we discovered that he might have to do 100m freestyle, and so we went in did more practise! Freestyle was not his preferred stroke, he loves to breaststroke!

We also went to the Ancient Egyptian exhibition that came to Western Australia.

We finally got to Araluen's tulip festival, where we could appreciate our volunteering and everyone else's too, that helped to contribute to the festival.

We grew a few potatoes.

Irving also did some work on gardening, and got a few more plants for our balcony.  He learnt a little about monocots and dicots, and planting according to the moon and astrology.  Arden's main focus for the term was physics and history.  He decided to review "Life of Fred physics", and also to do Khan academy's physics course.  History involved us doing a lot of reading of "Tragedy and Hope" and we are not far from the end now.  There was quite a bit on the development of nuclear weapons, so the timing of "Oppenheimer" at the movies was quite nice, as we had been reading about him quite a lot.

Winter Term 3

 As covid lockdown receded and we thought about our coming year, we decided to try to continue with a slower pace of life for at least the short term.  Sadly Arden's favourite activity- iceskating - came to an end as our preferred iceskating rink closed during lockdown.  We decided to go and trial an ice hockey session; just after having enrolled to do ten pin bowling.  The ice hockey went down well.  As did the ten pin bowling.  We had enrolled in the teenage class- Irving had said he wasn't interested  in doing ten pin, but by mid term he was part of the teenage class and loving it.

For quite some time we have attended plenty of arts events- Fringe, Festival, Ballets and Operas.  Due to covid we decided to slow down on this and take the year more slowly.  We did still get to a few local gigs, but much fewer classical performances.  Historically it was Willow who had expressed a particular interest in these, and as she had not been home educated for about 3yrs, it seemed to make sense to redirect our time.

Enjoying a piano concert in Government House's gardens.

We had a lot of fun doing chemistry in our kitchen using  "The Wonders of Waldorf Chemistry" as our guide.  It was interesting to try some of the experiments that I didn't get to with the older kids- such as burning sulphur, and also to have some trouble with experiments I expected to work, because we had done them before.
 

Making charcoal.

Attempting to burn charcoal.

Burning some different items-including sulphur, which has the blue flame.

Acids and Bases.

Our reading- King Arthur and the Knights of the Round table by Llancelyn Green, and The King of Ireland's Son by Colum- which we did a series of paintings about.

Paintings by Irving. (All paintings are inspired by the King of Ireland's Son.)

Paintings by Arden.

Arden's painting on the left, and mine on the right.

My paintings.

Our first carrot from our balcony garden.

Cable socks for me.

Repairing Gabriel's satchel with berry coloured velvet.

A new quilted blanket for Gabriel; made from an old cotton blanket, his old comforter and cotton and cotton flannel.

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2025

My socks!  I just finished repairing them to hopefully get them to last  longer.  They look quite pilled now, but they are super warm and comfy.  I also just recently got my leather boots repaired, and we were realising that with inflation to buy an equivalent quality pair, I would now be paying double what I paid in maybe around 2010 to get them.  So with the repairs I had done to them- new zips and soles and a good polish they felt like new and looked amazing.  

I have also been doing some mending repairs on the pillow case cover that went with Gabriel's comforter that had the wizard and dragon.  It is starting to look rejuvenated.

1 week In

We started this years new learning with some painting and reading.  We continued where we left off with this "Colour Dynamics" book.  Last year we worked through the individual primary and secondary colours as the start of the year.  This year we worked through the colour combinations- through working with red, blue and yellow, and the rainbow colours.

Colour dynamics book

Painting in the primary colours

Version two with the primary colours

Rainbow paintings.....by Irving

By Arden

Mine

All our paintings from last week.

Our current reading, "String, Straight-edge and Shadow", one of my favourite books for understanding the development of geometry.

Heading out to ice-skating again.

I received this excellent vintage slipper pattern in the post.  I am thinking with starting off by making Arden some moccasins for the winter, since the pattern is about his size.

 We've been making bean bags for juggling and counting games.  Irving is enjoying improving his sewing.

The finished results...Arden made his out of an old pair of green cords he had worn to death, and I made one out of one of Damien's old ties, so I could work on sewing in silk.

 

 We had a very small but appreciate potato harvest, which were boiled and covered in butter!

So far we have had a lovely start to doing more structured stuff together again this year.  Arden has been also learning mandolin, after receiving one for his birthday.  We haven't been doing a lot of music yet this year, but we have gotten to quite a few musical performances and this will be continuing.  Irving seems to finally be enjoying counting, and we are starting off doing some number work this week.

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2025

Sadly the iceskating rink that we attended at closed down during covid.  We did take up skating lessons again at a different rink a few years later and Arden and Gabriel also went to trial ice hockey classes.

Ice hockey.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2021/02/winter-term-3.html

Sadly we never finished the slippers.  I'm not exactly sure why not-  occasionally projects fall by the wayside, and this seems to have been one of them.

We have been doing quite a bit of gardening in recent years. as Irving really enjoys it.

Some posts on gardening.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/08/term-2.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2023/10/term-3.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/11/first-half-of-year.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/12/term-3.html