New Year, Mild Summer, High School Graduate

We've had a busy Summer so far, and have been enjoying the time off, and the unusually mild weather.  (It has been nice to do some indoor activities this Summer-usually we spend most of it out and about!)  We have still been getting out to some Fringe shows, and on the weekend we made it to Opera in the Park.  We're probably midway through Fringe by now, and we're looking forward to getting to see some shows at PIAF also.

Willow discovered that she passed her aural and theory test for WAAPA, at the end of last year, when she was offered a place in their course, and her ECU portion of the application was formalised at the beginning of this year, so she's all set to start a diploma in Classical voice this year.  (We're all just a bit excited about this!)  It feels really interesting to have come full circle with one child now, and to have some idea where we are going with the others.  (Our first full year, was 2006 we were travelling, then we were back in school for half of 2007, and mid '07 we started home ed permanently, with me starting this blog, in an evolving form in 2008.)

Self portrait by Willow.

This last Christmas, Arden helped Damien make a Christmas pannetone bomb, using our favourite Perth icecream, ChiChos.

I've been doing a bit of sewing over the Summer, and have received a few sewing gifts.

I made this vintage pattern skirt out of green sateen.

And later I made a matching halter top with green ricrac.

The inside is purple floral, and I can reverse it if I like!

New sewing book and vintage pattern.

New Cushion cover.(and Irving's feet!)

Willow and I both had our birthday's over January.  She had treacle tart as her "birthday" cake and she's now 17.

And we got cute number star candles for my cherry cake.  (I felt a bit lucky that cherries were still nice, usually my birthday is late for good cherries!)

Gabriel and I have been using "Switch on your brain" again, to support him with improving his spelling.  It is one of my favourite books, and works along the same lines as many brain gym activities.  We first used it when he was about eight, and had a lot of success with improving his focus.  Recently I realised, that whilst he reads quite well, he hasn't worked out the spelling patterns of many words, so we've been spending some time working on this, and we've been supporting it with the exercises from this book.

Gabriel finally made a successful batch of bokashi, out of coffee grinds.  We're looking forward to using it in our composting bin!

Waiting for the bus to musicianship last week.  Classes are back!  And a bit of balancing fun.

 A bit of beach weather.  And a sandcastle moat.  (working on our physics.)

 

 And unusually cool rainy weather.

 Making match box cars.

First model with tacks.

Second model with wire axles, and modelling wax tyres.

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2025

I have such pleasant memories of Willow being accepted in to WAAPA, we were both super excited.  She had a fabulous year studying there and getting her Diploma, and she was sorry to miss out on a place in the Bachelor the following year, but she accepted that maybe it was better to do something else for a while, and return to music later.

That next year she worked in a cafe, and she felt unappreciated for much of it, and found that difficult.  The following year, she got the opportunity to do a short stint in admin( it was meant to be three months), where Damien, her Dad works, and because she did such a great job, they kept her on and kept giving her more and more work.  So now she works as a team leader in online payment fraud management.

5 Years in Perth

Since arriving here in 2011, Willow has been counting the years and reminding us, of the anniversary of our arrival every year.  This year, since it was "half a decade" as she put it, she was keen for us to have breakfast at Dome, as we did the year we arrived here.  So Tuesday morning we headed out early, so that Damien could arrive at work on time, and went for breakfast.  Only thing was, that pretty much everything went wrong!  Or at least on my and Damien's end of it.  Damien ended up mostly coated in milk and had to go home and get changed. Since Dome's service had been so average this time, we headed to a coffee shop in the Treasury Building, had a drink, and I picked up a rose, for Damien to cheer him up a bit, after the chaos of the morning!

 Arden and I have been reading the Bible, and creating a story book about God creating the world.

Arden's painting

My painting

I wasn't feeling the best yesterday, so to help me out, Gabriel painted with Arden.

Arden's painting

Gabriel's painting

 Arden has been working on modelling pyramids and prisms in his maths this week.

Gabriel's tie is getting closer to completion.

Arden and I planted some linseeds earlier in the year; these are the seed pods and a dried stalk.  The stalk would be used to make linen. 

Seeds removed from seed pods.

Enjoying homemade pumpkin pie over the weekend.

Gabriel has been working on finishing his essay comparing "Romeo and Juliet" and "Iolanthe" and is currently reading "Swiss Family Robinson".  He is moving on to history this semester (though we still have a few bits of science to finish off).  He is researching and writing about the history of transport, communities and communication.

Willow is back at musicianship classes this week, and has a welcome party for her next performance, which is a youtube series this weekend.   She has recently started using a music theory website to help her fine tune some of her aural music skills.

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.  

Beginnings

Organised classes have resumed for the year, and in the process we've discovered that these are very popular in Perth's homeschool network. It seems every corner of Perth has someone organising a day to a week of activities for homeschoolers- it comes off as very schooly to me- particularly as one friend pointed out, some people do send their kids every day. However this at least isn't usual, surely some of the fun of homeschooling should be having one's kids at home!

Willow and Gabriel both started musicianship at Cottage Children's choir this week. We've decided to leave off the choir this time, and Willow is focusing on musicianship and flute and improving her violin skills. Gabriel has just recently started guitar.

We spent a fortnight at Cottesloe for swimming lessons, and also headed to South Beach, near Fremantle and found another organic shop. It had the best ice-cream we've eaten since Scotland (other than home made) though sadly of course it wasn't Australian- it had come from New Zealand! We've also had Willow's, Damien's and my birthdays, and just have Gabriel's to go next week.

Cottesloe Beach



Cottesloe Reef




We've all been doing some woodwork the last couple of weeks- gradually getting through carving an egg.

Our work in progress.



I also finished carving a fish I started over a year ago! Arden is enjoying playing with him.

Golden fish.




Willow was busy doing some sewing this week for Damien's birthday, she made him a pocket square. It took a bit of planning- finding some fabric Damien would like, lots of ironing, and pinning but it looked lovely at the end.

Finally some birthday images.


Willow's birthday cake, by Willow.



Aesop's Marrakech perfume for me. Got to love the Aesop details- it comes safety-pinned with a button.


Damien's cake with loads of candles (we still had these from my 35th birthday, so Gabriel and I decided lots of candles were in order).