End of term

 This term has been a bit unusual with  Arden being at TAFE, and Irving and I doing two days of home based activities without him.  It made the dynamic quite different, given that it's the first time that I've only had one child to work with.  

Overall Irving and I had a very busy term- with our STEAM group, going to see Mary Poppins, music classes and pottery.  He also started doing Nippers on Sunday, and with how active that is, he was prefering to have a quiet Monday.

Our at home learning this past semester has involved Steiner grade 5 work, and we read a picture book version of Gilgamesh by Bernada Bryson and studied some of the early cultures of the world- with a particular focus on the Mesopotamian region.

Collecting mulberries

Waiting for Mary Poppins to begin

Pottery at home.

Irving's pumpkin head for Halloween.

A model sailing ship Irving bought on a day out in Fremantle.

Nippers and hanging at the beach.  In case you're not Australian Nippers is swimming/ surf life saving training for kids.  They get to swim, paddle board, run and do relays amongst other things.  We've never done it with the kids before, and tbh I think it is one of the best sporting activities that we've ever done.  The club is very supportive, and everyone is getting behind every other member of the age group and encouraging them through some rather tiring activities.

Irving working at the sewing machine, making treasure bags to sell at the homeschoolers' Christmas market.

Market stall on the day!  He only sold a few things at full price, and then he sold a few at a mark down towards the end of the market, and then he got into bartering.  Given his place in the family, he's become quite good at negotiation and persuasion, and so with bartering he was in his element.  He came home with a nice array of goods from some of the other stall holders.

Irving, Damien and I went out to see the Christmas light up by ourselves this year.  Willow was down south,  Gabriel headed home as he had an early start with work, and Arden was at airforce cadets.  Gabriel joined us for dinner beforehand, and it was a pleasant evening with just the three of us.

Our next book to read "The Phantom Tollbooth"

Arden had an interesting term at TAFE and completed his cert 3 in aviation (remote pilot) easily.  He enjoyed the course, and after some discussion we reconsidered our plans for his year 11 and instead of being home educated for the first semester we are looking at another TAFE course.  This time he's looking at engineering.  For now he has put in an application for a couple of courses, and we're waiting for January to hear back.

Otherwise we decided to read "The Iliad" since Arden is interested in the classics.  We have both just started and will continue to read this over the coming year.  We are up to our last 20 pages of "Tragedy and Hope" by Carroll Quigley and hope to finish tomorrow!  It's been a bit of a challenge at times reading it together, and it does feel great to be finishing!

Arden also just completed his first year with the airforce cadets, and  has graduated to the next level.  He loved this year and is looking forward to more activities next year.  He also just passed another Japanese jujutsu belt gradings, and is finally into the adult belts!

We had a lovely relaxed end of year movie session with some home ed friends last week, when we went to see "Wonka"!  It was a great way to finish the year and now we are taking it a bit easy.

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2025

Irving's market stall experience last year can be found here.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/12/closing-on-another-year.html

With some of the prep for it here.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/12/term-3.html

He is keen to do more sweet snacks for this years market, after having a successful day selling brownies last year, as well as supplementing with his left over goods.

I discovered over the course of the last few year, that as Willow and Gabriel had transitioned into their own adult lives, that I had inadvertantly allowed Arden to fill all the space.  So the past 18months have been interesting for me, learning to put some boundaries back, and reclaim time for myself, and develop a rhythm that works for Irving and I focusing on learning together three days out of the week.  (All the TAFE course Arden has done have been Mon-Wed, so this has worked best for us).  ATM Arden is studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, and he has also completed a Cert 3 in Ground Operations.

Finale

Term one is over again, and has disappeared very quickly as usual.  We seem to have a much more relaxed rhythm this year, which is lovely, three days of school work at home, one out, and one day off.  Willow is following her own timetable this time, and getting herself to most of her out of home activities.  She's had a busy term, and is enjoying rehearsing for her latest performance with Gilbert and Sullivan; this time they're doing "Pirates of Penzance".  She has been finding herself a little too busy, with her school work, music practise and circus teaching, and we have been trying to find a nice balance so that she has time for her own interests.  Currently she's madly knitting half her friends fingerless gloves!

Willow working on making herself a pillowcase.

Gabriel is now working through his second block of the term: geometry, unusually we started with geography this time.  Looking at the poles and North and South America.  Currently he's working on making a stuffed toy zebra and planning the pattern for it.  He's also decided that he wants to learn the unicycle at circus, and so has been focusing on that as his main skill.  He also passed his first jujutsu belt grading recently, so that was a bit of an exciting moment for him, and he's already planning for his next grading.  (Willow meanwhile is hoping to delay grading her next belt for as long as possible!  She likes being better than what her belt suggests.)

Gabriel's map of Antarctica

Sketching a Zebra

Arden and I worked together on lots of interesting symmetrical pictures for our first block for the year.  Some were painted, and some were using filed pieces of wax crayons that were then melted; we also did some work on his printing and cursive during this time.

Mix of symmetry works done during our form drawing block

I have been busy doing some more craft, and am gradually getting through some projects, as some things start to get easier to do again, now that Irving is getting bigger.  I'm onto my third pair of tap shorts, and have finally made Irving a Christmas stocking, and done a little bit of work on Arden's (which was fraying around the edge.)

The lining!

I found this book in David Jones for only $10.  Was a great surprise :)

We have just finished reading "The King of Island's Son" by Padraic Colum, and have really enjoyed it.  We started it when Gabriel was doing grade 2 but for some reason never finished it. so it was nice to come to the end.  We've now moved on to the "Celtic Wonder Tales" for story time, and Arden's main lesson story is Aesop's fables, whilst Gabriel is reading 1421 and Willow is reading HMS. Ulyssees.  As a family we are reading "The Princess and the Goblin" by George Macdonald- he and Padraic Colum are two of our favourite authors around here.

We had a fabulous time going to many events during Fringe and Festival time- there were a few bonus surprise outings (Arden got free tickets to a show, and we made a last minute booking into a yo-yo class), as well as planned in advance outings to see the Swing Revue.  Damien took Willow and Gabriel off to see Madama Butterfly, and we also attended some baroque orchestras and an education session on Baroque music(which was fabulous and lots of fun).  Last but not least, I must mention the giants, as they were certainly a high point of the festival.  We were very spoiled with them spending quite a bit of time in our park across the road!

The giants asleep.

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2025

I just read 1421 again last year with Irving,  I wasn't sure that he'd be that interested in it, but because he loves sailing, he found it very interesting.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/12/closing-on-another-year.html

We're considering reading Gavin Menzies follow up book, 1434, later this year.

2014

We've had a reasonably laid back Summer- as well as one can when there is a baby in the house anyway!  We've mostly spent our time near home, and have been a bit poor at catching up with friends.  My mother-in-law came to visit, which was pleasant.  We had a few birthdays- Arden was 6 in December.  I made a lovely soaked grain mango cake with self lighting candles!

Willow turned 14 in Januarly- her cake was accidentally made out of oat flour, which I'd bought for oat cakes, and used in error; it was surprisingly tasty!  Damien and I are both now 40, and we had an interesting science experiment, by sharing our birthday cake with a friend, and attempting to light 125 candles for all our birthdays: this is what it looked like.

Sadly we were unable to light all 125, but some towards the middle melted quite impressively, was fun all the same!  We have one birthday left for the Summer- Gabriel will be turning 12 in a week, and after that we will have our first non summer baby birthday, but not until June.

I was rather slow with my homeschool planning for this year, due to Irving's presence.  Normally I do it right at the end of the year, but I didn't start til January this time.  Grade one was fairly straight forward to plan, as was grade seven (Gabriel will be doing a very similar selection of topics as Willow did in Grade 7, but is doing computing as his subject choice for the year.) and grade 9 was a little interesting in that it's a bit more open ended so that Willow can have more time for natural learning this year.  Plus I'm looking at her being a bit more that direction with maths this time, so that she can regain a bit of fun with it.  Asides for geometry, she hadn't really been keen on it last year.  She's also doing history from an artistic perspective.  Gabriel will be starting trumpet this year,  and also started jujutsu last week and Arden had his first circus lesson, where he felt happy and confident to be there,so that was great.  He says that he'd like to do jujutsu too, but I'd like to see how circus progresses first I think.

We're off to a few shows for Fringe and Festival season here.  Last night was the Festival opening, down near the Swan river, and the show was quite brilliant.  Tonight, Damien and Willow, have headed off to see "Not by Bread Alone" which is a deaf-bliind baking production.  They were also interested in the Blackout restaurant, but that had sadly sold out.  Arden and I are off to a mime performance, called Ilo.  We've also bought some tickets to see Adam Hall perform Beyonce at the Fringe, and Willow will be taking Gabriel to a Fringe circus show.

Anyway our homeschool work starts again in a week.  I'm looking forward to seeing how we go again this year.  Will be interesting to have two children doing most of their work independantly.

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2025

Gabriel didn't end up doing trumpet lessons, every time we tried to organise a teacher or a class something went wrong, and so it drifted away.  He still has his trumpet that we bought for him to learn on.  Willow and Gabriel both did jujutsu til 16, and Arden finished at 15, although he started younger.  Irving's done a couple of terms of jujutsu during covid, and we are considering starting him again soon.  We were still doing circus classes regularly at this stage, and these continued for a couple more years, until we had a falling out with the circus school.

Getting ready

Well since baby no 4 will be here in June, it's only a week til we start more organised schooling this time.  Fortunately I have most of our stuff sorted out, we just have to finalise details on our first block for the year.  Gabriel is starting off with Geometry and Willow is starting off with a block on Shakespeare- studying Romeo and Juliet. 

We've also arranged most of our classes for the year too, though we're yet to sort out Willow's music teacher.  Everything is more or less the same as last year, except Willow will be doing jujutsu instead of basketball.  There are a few interesting homeschool outings too, that I'm thinking about booking us into.

Gabriel received a surprise ticket yesterday, to a Fringe show, whilst busking in the City, so I went and bought a second ticket, and he and I headed of for a show.  It was a combined performance of Classical and Jazz harp, and was very entertaining.