Reading

There's a few different books being read around here at the moment.

For Gabriel's coming block we've started reading 'Playing Beatie Bow', by Ruth Park.  It's set in Sydney between the 1980s and 1870s, and lines up quite well with our Geography block.

Gabriel has also started a section of a new epic to recite.  He finished Voluspo from the Edda earlier in the year, and we had a bit of a break from reciting, whilst we read the rest of the Poetic Edda.  Now we're onto Arthurian legend, and learning part of the Idylls of the King, by Tennyson.

Willow is reading two books, one is more of history and discussion of chemistry- The Bedside Book of Chemistry.  The other is the story of Oliver Sacks childhood, Uncle Tungsten.  It's quite an entertaining narrative of his life growing up surrounded by science.  We've been really enjoying reading it.

Otherwise, independently Gabriel is reading the Asterix comics and Willow is re-reading Harry Potter again. 

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2025  

Asterix and Harry Potter continue to be favourites around here.  As is TinTin, The Narnia Series, and a new one for Irving is the Howl's Moving Castle series.  It is totally entertaining- particularly the first book, and I've been wanting to reread it myself.

Busy Times Ahead

It seems that we will be busy with a few end of year Christmas acitivites. One has already happened- Willow has had her flute concert, which generally went quite well. In a couple of weeks time she will have her singing concert, followed by a choir performance at Floreat as part of the community Christmas carols.

Meanwhile Willow and Gabriel have also been attending circus skill classes on Saturdays, at the market, and both of them will be part of the Perth Christmas pageant. Apparently they go around Langley Park, down near the river. Willow has been working on the stilts and is hoping to master them this week so that she can use them in the pageant.

Willow has also started musicianship lessons, with Cottage children's choir. The musicianship lessons look really interesting. The follow the Kodaly method of teaching, and the lesson is filled with rhythmic patterning- in clapping, moving, games and singing. I'm thinking that maybe Gabriel should go next year too, when we can hopefully organise music lessons for him.

This week we've finished off Willow's last history block for the year. She's just finished a story about vikings, as well as looking at the magna carta and the crusades. Next year will be interesting, as I'm hoping to have her take over arranging most of her learning. We'll do the planning together, and then hopefully she can do most of the work independantly, that way I can focus on doing more kindy based activities with Arden. Particularly towards the end of this year, he's really needed more focused attention and more activities just for him.

Gabriel has been working on the nine parts of language again this week, with a final block on the Norse Myths.

Sinfiotli baking the Serpent Bread by Gabriel.

My picture of Sinfiotli and Sigmund.


Willow and I also worked on another Islamic pattern, as well as doing a woven star in geometry.




Next week we'll be back to physics, I haven't managed to find any magnetite here with a strong magnetic force, only a very weak piece, so we won't be able to do some of the magnetite experiments unfortunately. We can do the one where we place the magnet over a pile of crystals and the magnetite is the only crystal attracted to the magnet. At least that nicely illustrates the magnetism of the stone.

Finally here's some friendship bracelets Willow and Gabriel made this week for a friend.

This is Willow's which was designed to be a book mark.


And the one made by Gabriel.

Time for a Break

Today was our last bit of planned school work before leaving Adelaide next week. It's been a little hectic around here, with socialising, school work, packing, inspections, finding a new home and sending Damien off to Perth. He's been there 4 days now, and we're all glad to be at the half way point, and are counting down til he gets back.

I thought it was funny that one of the coldest and wettest days we've had this year occurred with Damien interstate, I'm sure he's sorry to have missed it, even with all his fun experiences and adventures around Perth.


Willow has just come to the end of her block on Ancient Rome.


And here's her latest geometry.



Gabriel is working on the structure of english at the moment. Here's his picture of Thor throwing Miolnir at Hrungir.


And finally Gabriel's progress on his cushion.

Onto block two and recent activities

Well we've finished our geometry block and Norse Myths, and have seen some beautiful work from everybody.  The geometric drawing are done with pastels, and Gabriel's picture is done using lyra pencils.

Willow's final drawing for the block.

Something by me.

Gabriel's picture of Frey.

So now we've moved onto our new blocks- Human and Animals for Gabriel and Ancient Rome for Willow. I've been reading"Wind in the Willows"
to Gabriel, and The Story of Rome to Willow. We've also been doing some reading about Latin, and I'm looking at purchasing a workbook on Latin for Willow to use. A friend lent us the Lively Latin workbook to look at it, and Willow liked the look of it, so I think I'll order a copy of it soon.

Otherwise we've had a number of interesting things happening recently. Willow had her last performance, which was at Her Majesty's Theatre. The choir, she is part of, sang the role of the bridge in Stari Most. It was a very moving performance, and beautifully done.

Then the week a before that, Damien, Willow and Gabriel went and learnt to make a long bow. All had a fabulous time, and are looking forward to the next workshop in the series- quiver and bow making and knife making.

The start of the bows.

Hard at work.

A guest.

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2025

One of the good things about living in a place that actually likes school, rather  than seeing all the negatives in it, is that there are some interesting curriculum recommendations.  Later on a friend suggested to us "Lingua Latina".  It teaches one latin via the things already familar in English.  

An example page can be seen here.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2020/09/term-2-lockdown-and-winter-solstice.html

Week one- Class 6 and 4

It's lovely to be sitting in the quiet after a very busy week this past one. Since Saturday we've been so busy doing all sorts. We headed to Womadelaide again last week, and saw some fabulous bands, had lots of fun dancing and ate some lovely food. Strangely this year, we didn't see that many of our friends, normally we almost spend more time socialising than seeing bands, this year was the opposite- despite lots of our friends being there. Musically we particularly enjoyed the Allan Kelly Quartet, Imelda May, Amadou and Mariam and Hanggai. Willow found Imelda May a bit loud, but decided she(Imelda May that is) was ok, after she autographed the CD we bought and was very chatty and friendly.

School wise we started on geometric drawing and Norse myths. The geometric drawings have been very popular, as has the geometry book we've been reading. It puts the development of geometry into a very entertaining story form.

We started with some simple geometric drawing this week using a compass, pencil and ruler. Initially there was a circle, then the sixth division of the circle by circles, and finally the sixth division of a circle into hexagons.  These are all in pastels.

Circles




Circles into sixths





Circles into Hexagons





For our Norse Myth block this time, we are reading two texts- The Children of Odin by Padraic Colum again, which I love and Norse Mythology by Charles Kovacs.

The book progresses in a more chronological order of the story, and it seems to nicely complement the Padraic book, in that they offer different details. So far this block we've been busy writing in runes and drawing the gods.

Our first craft project is almost complete too! It was just a little taste into making a toy figure - a little mouse. I've finished mine, I did a tiny orange one for Arden. Gabriel's is sewn together, but in need of details and Willow's is part was along. It was a nice taster for Willow before she starts planning her toy making project starting next week, Gabriel will be onto cross stitch instead.