Last of the Year and a Graduate

Well we have been quite pleased that Gabriel has been offered a place in tafe next year, studying cert 3 in screen and media, for the first 6months of the year.  He's not done any formal schooling, so we thought starting with a cert 3 for the first half of his year 12 would give him an intro into classroom study, and we could look at the follow on cert 4 class for the second half of the year.

This year he has had quite a few interesting experiences including volunteering at making hot dogs, at Supernova and Heritage Perth recently.  I think the Supernova experience might have set him up for expecting better organising skills from organisations....apparently Heritage Perth were a bit slow in certain areas, but they did provide a much nicer lunch! :)

Recently all the older kids-Willow, Gabriel and Arden did a chocolate making class at Sue Lewis' chocolate shop.

Irving has been working alongside Arden on patterning.  Arden has been doing mental calculations, whilst Irving has been building the patterns.

We went out exploring the Columns in Perth recently as part of our Greek studies.  We have been reading "The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tales of Troy" by Padraic Colum.  We love his writing style and re-telling of the myths, and even Irving is starting to listen for longer stretches.  We also watched a few videos on the Greek alphabet, which Irving, Arden and I can now recite fairly well.  Next week there are plans for Arden to make a Greek meal for dinner.

Corinthian style columns.

Mini-columns on the Treasury building.

The only example of Doric columns that we found- on the old court house.

As part of Perth Heritage days we visited the Bon Marche building.  Strangely it has a mini-prison gate on the top floor.  We're hoping someone will spend some time and money restoring it to it's former beauty.

My pile of paper-work for writing up my notes for our home education review.  Our moderator visited last week, and we are all done for another year.

Finally my sewing.  The dragon in my last post, made it onto this vintage pattern dressing gown.

Which has some left-over star fabric for its lining.

Summer is Creeping In

This post has been a little slow making it out in the world.  We have had a fairly busy term with outings and various things going on, and so I got this half here, and then life happened....

Games Workshop miniature by Gabriel.

Some early ideas and brainstorming for Gabriel's yr. 11 next year.

Beautiful evening in Fremantle enjoying the start of Summer, and getting some rock climbing in.

Taking a look about Perth's Heritage buildings.  We really enjoyed seeing the change in this building, which was once the Gas and Electric building, but which we remembered as an ugly (maybe 1980s) bank.

Inklette loom arrived in the post, didn't take long to assemble and get started.

A small cross stitch project by Arden.

Science experiment with ice.

My crafting...making some bags

Learning pattern drafting

And a guest....a red wattlebird come to visit our balcony.

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2025

This post has reminded me that I have set up the inklette loom for me to try (finally!) but the pattern is a little non-convenational.  Hopefully that doesn't cause me too much trouble.