Work

I'd been hoping to get to an art/craft open day last weekend, but unfortunately it didn't happen as I had a sore neck.  Instead we did our usual thing, which was hang out in the cultural centre, whilst Damien busked.

We're almost at the end of our planned work now, which is lovely.  Currently we're reading Peter Pan and Ivanhoe.  Peter Pan, as the kids will be going to the ballet in December, and Ivanhoe, as Gabriel is doing a block on medieval history.

Medieval history has been filled with some interesting activities,as well as some written pieces.  Arden's been getting a bit involved too.

This is Gabriel's castle plan.


Then our attempts at illuminated letters.
Gabriel's "T"


Arden's mixture of letters.


My "P"


Then Gabriel's final activity for the week, was a diagram of a Viking Longship.  He was given the choice of learning about Caliphs, Viking boats, Germanic tribes, or the Templars.


Arden and I have come to the end of his alphabet work.  He can read a few words here and there, and has been experimenting with writing words quite a bit. Tomorrow he's off to a class about making a book.

These are our recent paintings of letters.

Arden's "O" painting of a pot, followed by mine.

Arden's "U" painting followed by mine, of a tub.

Willow's currently working on physics, so far she's progressed through sounds and light.  She's done some interesting experiments involving waves in water and seeing how they move, and also some experiments with lenses, and how they focus light.

Some Highlights from this Past Week

This past week has seen us reading 'The Golden Goose'.  Arden has liked this story much better than Rapunzel, and we only worked on two letters this week, so there was some extra time for modelling.  Since we were working on the letters 'b' and 'k' and Arden was curious how they sounded together, we decided to put some vowels in the middle, and made the word 'book'.

This is Arden's painting of the king from the Golden Goose- using the 'k' to make the king.

Willow has been experimenting with weaving on our new square loom, as part of her craft project for this term.

We've also been setting up an etsy account that she can sell some craft stuff on, as part of her main project this year.  Her project is focusing on creating her own small craft business.  She had her first market stall for this year, selling her brooches at City Farm for mothers day, and we're now looking at ways that she can sell online too, as well as other projects that she might like to try selling.

This is from Gabriel's geometry from last and this week, dividing a square into halves and thirds, and extending the pattern.

Gabriel has still been working on physics this week- we've been looking at light.  There's been some fun experiments with colour, and light and darkness this week.

Finally I came home tonight to find Arden playing his own special version of pinball.  Gabriel came up with the layout, and Arden added the flips-  I thought this was very cool!

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2025 

Willow didn't progress far with the craft business.  She ran the stall for a while, but people were interested in her things being cheap, and since she was using pure wool, it didn't progress far.  I'm not sure what happened with the etsy account now.

At this point she was still busking regularly- most likely flute, and she was pretty happy with how much money she made from that.  When she was older she would sing, and later she gave up busking, and after completing her Diploma in 2017, she worked in a cafe for a year.