Term 2 in Pictures (mostly)

Irving worked out how to draw stars! This was a pleasant surprise, and he had a little burst of drawing five pointed ones.

A bit of maths. (we like to get these blocks out for our pattern making section of Arden's JUMP maths book, and Irving always enjoys joining in).

Working together.  Pre-primary and grade 5.

Labyrinth puzzle....art and maths....crazy family project!

Chocolate making.  We learnt a little about tempering with a second chocolate bar at a free workshop by Sue Lewis, and we made dark chocolate with thyme oil creatures.

Reading one of my favourite children's authors, Padraic Colum, "The Golden Fleece".

After reading about the minotaur we looked at labyrinths and mazes.

More patterning.  Working on rose windows.  These are a lot of fun to make, but can get a little complicated. (Some other examples by Willow when she was 12).

And a variation, using the kite paper to make layered pictures by tearing/cutting shapes and layers.

Reading related to our Australian history studies.  We actually took longer to read this than intended  (we just finished it recently) and it is wonderful for showing the older and slower Australian lifestyle prior to the arrival of the car. 

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During this time we did a tour of Karakatta Cemetry.

We also did a tour of the Perth mint (again)! And the Perth Bell Tower.  View from the Bell Tower.

  These are the beautiful flame trees along the river, on our walk from the Bell Tower to the Mint.

The impressive 1 tonne gold coin.  (Though I missed seeing all the beautiful collectors pieces that they used to keep in the secure vault, and which this coin has replaced).

Some of Gabriel's reading.  Gabriel is very interested in military history, and increasingly interested in working and rendering 3D objects on the computer using blendr.

Working on improving crochet, by making some dishcloths.

A blanket that I was making that is still not finished unfortunately, as I haven't found the sort of blanket binding that I would like yet.

Some new books.  Latin dictionary to help Gabriel's study.  Plus the Long Winter because we are still getting through this Little House Series.

Finally two of my favourite things about home education; Pleasurable family outings and slow breakfasts.

Gabriel, Arden and I went to see WASO performing "The Goblet of Fire", to the film.

And enjoying a family breakfast.

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2025

Link to the rose window book can be found here.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2011/10/southern-aurora.html

Some of our rose windows over the years.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/search?q=rose+windows

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2012/10/recent-work.html

This Past Week

We all got back into our at home schooling routine this week, and turns out it has been helpful.  Irving has been loving being involved in all of Arden's activities, and has been really getting into doing maths with Arden in particular.  (He's so keen that he wanted me to get the JUMP book out for him.)  Arden is also quite please because we received a new lot of Life of Fred books (goldfish, honey, icecream and jellybeans) and he has been getting into them again.

This week Arden and I are back into doing English and we've been looking at tenses and sentence structure and reading about Norse Mythology.  To compliment this, we've also been doing some pen and ink drawing.  I seem to have missed photographing Arden's picture this week, but here is mine.

Arden has almost finished his embroidered cushion, and we just need to stuff and sew it now.

We're planning his next piece which will likely be cross-stitch, and something to do with cacti.  (He's got a small collection of cacti, and is wanting to get a venus fly trap next.)

Gabriel has moved onto looking at social sciences, and we're looking at freedom and political systems.  We had been contemplating reading "1984" and also seeing the stage play, but decided to leave it, after reading the reviews, and also because Gabriel was expressing a preference to reading "Fahrenheit 451".  He also headed to a talk this past week with Damien, on judiciary in WA.  Apparently it was a little dry, but did spark some further conversation.

Gabriel has started on the process of making himself some trousers.  He's making some out of cord, with floral pockets.  I'm almost finished making him some linen trousers.  I ran out of thread with the belt loops and hems to go.

Cutting out the pattern

The colour is an olive green, and really didn't come out well in this shot

As Gabriel is focusing his art studies around Games Workshop, we decided that it would be interesting to see other exhibitions that relate to models.  Since the Brickman lego exhibit was in town, and we are all mad lego fans, we all had to go.  We got a bit engrossed, and really didn't get to see it in as much detail as we would have liked.

Great Barrier Reef

Titanic

Some lego building by Arden

Today, Gabriel and I headed to the Art Gallery of WA, to see the sneakers exhibition, it was an interesting progression through the history of the shoe, and into the more artistic creative aspects of the modern sneaker.  We were intending for us all to go, but Damien was feeling a but unwell, so we will have to go back with the others.  Going just with Gabriel, did mean, that we could take our time and have a thorough look through the exhibition.

Arden has been wondering about his grandfathers (both died before he was born) and so for their birthdays this year we baked them cakes.  My family heritage on my Dad's side is German, and he often brought home streusel cakes after visiting my Nana, so we decided to make him one.

Dough is waiting topping.

Ready out of the oven!

We had a rather cold middle of the morning recently, and so Willow, Gabriel, Arden and I all headed out for a coffee.  (We were trying to take advantage of the cold, as it is never here very long.)  Arden has been enjoying doing some food photography when we are out ( as well as other things,from time to time) and got a couple of lovely shots of his hot chocolate at duotone.  He's sharing his photographs @ardenaragorn on instagram.

Reading- Little House and Heidi

Arden and I are continuing to read the Little House series and we are now reading "Little House in the Prairie".  This has been complementing our JUMP maths education of Canadian geography, as we look up the places Laura's family travelled, and study maps in maths that are Canadian.  When asked about where Arden lived on the map, we decided to see if we could find a Perth in Canada, and of course we did!  :)

Last week we came to the end of reading Heidi together, and apparently all the kids love this book enough, that I had them all coming to listen to parts of it; usually Gabriel will still listen to me reading, but Willow doesn't often any more.

Camping to Cooking

I've been busily spending the morning trying to make arrangements for Willow to attend a homeschool camp.  At this stage we're just booking the first leg of the trip- to Adelaide and later when she's saved some more, we'll sort out the rest.  She's been wanting to go on a homeschool camp for quite some time, so she's pretty excited at the idea of it.  The camp is down near Mt Gambier in South Australia, as her cousins, who are also homeschooled live near there.

Willow's also has been busy explore lots of aspects of Ninjago and Lord of the Rings.  This is her singing "Pippin's Song", though my preference is for "Golum's Song", though the recording doesn't do justice to just how beautiful her voice sounds.  In relation to Ninjago, she's been making up her own fan stories, and some poems too.

Here is some of her other work for the week.

Progressing through geometry

Blanket making- this rug is being woven using a square loom.

Gabriel has been working on geography- we're looking at the Asian region.  This last week saw him doing some map drawing, and writing about New Zealand and the Maori people.

Gabriel's map of Oceania

Geometry from the last two weeks- spiral drawing

Arden has been busy working through his jump maths book doing some basic adding questions, which he's been loving.  He's also currently into Jamie Oliver and doing quite a bit of cooking.  This week we've made scones, and oat cakes together, making sure to soak our grains overnight.

Holiday Recovery

We're back into our usual routine this week, after lots of interesting activities and outings over the holidays- the first week was really relaxing and the second week was exhausting!

Willow and Gabriel spent varying amounts of time at City Farm helping out and doing activities for the school holiday program there.  Both had a fabulous time participating in woodwork, gardening, soap making, woodwork, amongst other things. 

This week saw Willow finishing her apron finally -it looks amazing, and is just in need of an iron to finish it off nicely. (She hand sewed this).

She's now on her way to planning some slippers to make.

We finally received our JUMP workbooks, which I'm quite pleased about as it will simplify doing maths- no more copying questions out for me!  We ordered a trial pack from grade 1-8, which offered one of each workbook.  Perfect for us really, and I've been really happy with the way they arrange maths.  Just need to pair it with the online teacher guides and we're all set.

Gabriel is still working on a block on ancient Egypt and we're reading Roger Lancellyn Green's book on Egyptian Myth.  Willow is doing a musical block, looking at different regions of the world and progressing into medieval music, it ties in quite nicely with her musicianship classes, where they are looking at studying different musical pieces and learning about composers and notation.

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2025

Willow changed from doing choral classes after our first year in Perth ( at this stage she was doing choral classes and suzuki flute), and shifted over the doing the Musicianship lessons which use the Kodaly method.  We started off with a local flute teacher, but that wasn't working well for us, so we starting doing remote lessons with the teacher we had in Adelaide, then we had communication issues based off the distance, so we returned to local lessons with another teacher.  We didn't have much success with local teachers TBH- this next one was rather temperamental, and so after a break, we moved onto private singing lessons- first with a jazz singer, and later with an Opera singer.  This was all over the course of about 5 years.  

Endings and Beginnings

Gabriel is just coming to the end of his first block on fractions. He's been really enjoying. Initially he was finding it a bit tricky, and I started to wonder if it would suit him better if I introduced the new concept and let him sleep on it, so the ideas had time to settle. It has worked brilliantly, he's gone from being irked to being pushed into new ideas to totally embracing each concept.

In terms of maths I largely use the jump curriculum, but still remain steiner inspired. I've found this really helps me to keep on track with us getting through all the maths work that needs to be done, and also breaks down the concepts well to enable me to explain and teach them better. I generally 'get' maths, without needing the extra steps so this has been very helpful for me in teaching it, and recognising that there are steps that I may not have thought need explaining, but do for some people.

Willow has started the second half of the Ancient Rome block. We've been using Charles Kovacs' book on ancient Rome.

I like the way he presents the book, and the ideas that are brought forth through it. Some of the ideas around Christianity are very conservative IMO, but they have brought forth some useful discussions during our lessons.

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2025

I've used JUMP- Junior Undiscovered Maths Prodigies for all the kids now.  I actually think it is really brilliantly put together and it has helped me with my instructions for almost everything, enabling me to think about the idea that maybe there is a misalignment in concepts between myself and my child, and trying to work out how to remedy that.  

"The Myth of Ability" by John Mighton is the original book that I read on the principles in the JUMP program.  

I actually think that this was one of the books and programs that has really helped me understand better the idea of being a learner, and what learning and progression looks like in children and people, and probably most importantly that everyone can understand maths, with the correct guidance.