Knitting, Thinking and the Importance of Handicrafts in a Steiner Education

 https://educationfreedom.locals.com/upost/4672591/knitting-and-crafts-in-steiner-education

This article that I've shared in my local's account, on knitting, is a great read, and clearly explains why handicrafts are so important to life, and bodily development.  All of my children have followed a variation of this plan to become accomplished in a variety of  handicrafts, and on a more personal level different crafts continue to appeal to each of the children as they grow older.

Term 1

Our first term was very full, and filled with lots of interesting outings and activities- this term is looking to be similar so far!

Irving's pottery class has been going well, and we even started watching "The Great Pottery Throw Down" to compliment all the learning in the class that he's been attending in Guildford. It's also become a bit of a thing, to stop and look at interesting pottery shops.

Picking up a cute pot after pottery class.

And cute fish.

We continued on with Norse myths learning to write in Runes, drawing and painting some of the Gods and characters and reading Padraic Colum's version, and also reciting "The Poetic Edda- Voluspo", as well as reading some of "The Viking Tales" (we're big fans of Norse Mythology here!)

Irving's and my paintings.

Norse Reading.

Arden has been reading "The Greek Treasure" by Irving Stone, because we really enjoyed his book on Michaelangelo, this one took us awhile to get into, and Arden is still finishing it. It became much more interesting to read when Henry Schliemann discovered Troy. It's possible to virtually view some of the Schliemann's discoveries on this Russian Museum's site.


Arden finished the term looking at the way different aspects of the world are integrated together, doing some reading,writing and watching "Brian Cox's Forces of Nature" series. We finished off with looking at the Gaia theory, and the idea that the Earth is a living complete organism.

Irving looked at local Aboriginal culture, and we learnt about how the Aboriginal people cultivated the land, and how that knowledge had been suppressed in our culture, We listened to Bruce Pascoe's tedtalk on this topic. We also read February Dragon, by Colin Thiele. A fabulous book the illustrates so well, the ever present danger of bushfires in Australia.

Hard waste collection happened again, and this time we found a vintage coffee table- it appears to be one of a set of nesting coffee tables originally. Irving and I are hoping to spend some time on it, repairing it.

Irving enjoyed our steam group this term and there were lots of interesting lessons on anatomy, and was complemented at home with watching "Operation Ouch" on some of the topics we covered- including the hand and it's joints, the brain, the heart, the bladder, the kidneys.

One of the completed activities from our Steam group.

Towards the end of term, we attended our first home school sport's day for the family. Arden was too old to participate, but acted as assistant coach with the Team captain, and joined the parent's races for some of the activities. Though the kids were keen to have him join in the parents versus kids, tug of war. Irving had a great time doing all the activities- three legged races, egg and spoon, relays. The only down side was it was the last very hot day of Summer and the first very hot day, we'd had for a week or so, so we were all struggling in the heat a little. Much fun was had at the end, with water fights, to cool off!

Damien, Arden and I headed to ECU Joondalup to find out about their aviation course, and to see their open day generally. We had a good chat with a couple of the lecturers there, and saw the flight simulators in action. Arden used one, and very nicely took off, flew and landed. It was interesting for me to see, because I had only ever seen his first home education session on a simulator, some years ago, where he needed a lot of help. After his years in the flying club at Bull Creek, he really knows what he's doing.

Arden's lemon tree is doing very well.

Okonomiyaki by Arden.

New shorts for Irving.

Black and white sesame balls.

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2025

We still haven't gotten to fixing that coffee table, but hopefully it won't be too far away, as we continue to develop our woodwork skills at Joy of Wood's classes.  We've been doing a few repair jobs this  year, so it would be nice to think that we may get onto this soon.

Term 4 2022

 Term four disappeared rather quickly - we had our annual moderator visit- which has become fairly routine after home educating so long, and we did a bunch of lovely out and about activities

We learnt a little about herbs and weaving- learning the difference between sow thistles and dandelions as we went to collection dandelion stems for weaving these lavender bunches.

Dandelion Stems

Lavender Bunches

Irving learnt about a few different animals and spent some time drawing them- this is his kookaburra.

Irving finally finished his cushion- doing all the sewing with the exception of the zip, and Arden made himself a t-shirt.

With non-seasonal Halloween both Arden and Irving wanted to make some creepy food- so we made some pizza dough and some home made lemonade with add activated charcoal for some creepy colouring!

Our final portion of the year saw us doing quite a few history walks around the city. The city of Perth has some great history guides and we got out and about and looked around our city as tourists for a few weeks. Looking at the architecture, and old stories of our local area. We also had a surprise visitor for about a month- as my brother stopped with us, on his way home from Malaysia, whilst heading back to Adelaide. So there was lots of other things going on during that time- we hadn't seen him since pre-covid, when we last visit Adelaide, and there were many interesting conversations during that time.

Arden had been wanting to do sailing earlier in the year- but with all the covid things going on here that didn't eventuate, until finally in term 4 an opportunity do a home school class appeared at Hillary's yacht club. There were a bunch of delays- with our start to summer being slow- and classes being cancelled and rescheduled though eventually sailing did happen!

Arden was also lucky to get the chance to try a rather unique home education class- herbalism- another home schooling Mum had arranged for a herbalist to run a class. There was a mix of looking at plants, studying the actions, learning how herbs treat illness. Arden found it quite interesting, and useful.

He also got an opportunity to try a one on one parkour class with Isaac from Make Parkour- another thing he had been wanting to do for some time, but seemed much easier post all the covid drama. He had an amazing lesson with Isaac, who was very attentive, and pushed Arden to try some new ways of moving.

In a continuing theme of opportunities suddenly appearing Arden was invited by his flying club to have his first attempt flying a plane. Over the years Arden started at the Aviation kids club and learnt about planes and flying, his interest has grown until he got to join the Youth Flying Club and was able to start flying on the simulator most weeks. He and another home educated friend got to share their first flying experience, his friend taxiing and flying part of the leg to Murray Field, and Arden getting to try taxiing and partial flying back to Perth. It was a very satisfying experience for him, and now he's looking forward to trying more!

Term 3 2022

During our winter break, we started, and finished this 3,000 piece "Where's Wally?" jigsaw puzzle.

Arden and Irving finished their weaving. Arden's was done on an inklette loom, and Irving's a lap loom.

Since Arden has done quite a bit on biology before and is also inclined to doing lots of physical activity, we pulled out my massage books from when I was studying, and learnt a little about massage, reflexology and essential oils.

The Directory of Essential Oils

The Complete Book of Massage

Irving designed and hand sewed, embroidered, and appliqued a cushion cover for himself. This project last a little while as he built up the patience to keep going, and he developed more speed as he got better at it.

Damien took Arden and Irving off to Wild movement to learn about making spoons using fire.

As part of our chemistry block last year, Arden made soap from a base of lard and lye.
Just finished.

And curing.

There was some experimenting with bending glass, and copper wire.

Since Arden is interested in aviation for his WW1 studies we read "The Red Baron", unfortunately we watched the movie too! We do not recommend it at all- the story veered far too much from the truth for both Arden and I. We also watched the movie "Fly Boys"- which was about the first American aviation pilots who flew with the French, before the US joined WW1. Some of this movie was also apparently inaccurate, however we used it as a starting point for further research.

"Joyeux Noel" has been a favourite around here for our WW1 studies. It is the history, of the Christmas Armistices, where the Germans, French and Scotts, decided to lay down their weapons and celebrate together. It's also worth watching the research they did to make the film- they were very attentive to detail, and brought in some very interesting facts- such as the execution of a cat, who was seen to be a spy!

We also bought a double distiller to experiment with making our own essential oils.  Trying out making Pine.

The result....

And a bit of sewing....Floral shirt for Irving

2022 Part One

 So at the end of 2021 my PC died and so did my attempts to keep this blog up to date. Since I now have a new PC and I was thinking about blogging again, I thought with the new year I would start with a recap of 2022.

For quite some time we have taken the beginning of the year slowly, avoiding any structured work until late February/ beginning of March and we continued in this style. Taking the Summer to swim, visit the library and celebrate 5/6 of our birthdays! By March we started to ease into some more structured activities, and as usual we began with some geometry and painting and reading.

Arden and I started the year reading about Shakespeare, by Bill Bryson, and reading the first section of "Tragedy and Hope" by Carroll Quigley for History.

    

Meanwhile I was working on re-upholstering a circa 1940's sofa we had found in the hard waste, which at times was being delayed due to comfort!

Arden and Irving both did some weaving for their first craft project. Irving wove a small rug out of wool, and then did a second version from embroidery thread. Arden worked on a band on the inklette loom.

Irving working on his woollen rug.

Irving trying out embroidery thread

Arden's inklette loom work.

We all worked together on a domestika illustration course- which we have been rather slow completing! 

Arden's work.

Irving's work.

My work.

As usual we started the year with watercolour painting- this time we did lots of coloured themes and worked on a flowing colour wheel.

Setting up to paint.

Working on colour wheels.

We've been having some regular bird visitors to our place, and Irving decided he had had enough- Our residence was declared closed!

Arden got into "The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" this past year, I've been gradually getting through this excellent book of celebrity interviews from the 60s' "Limelighters" by Oriana Fallaci that was a hard waste find. "Covid-19: The Great Reset" was my first foray into reading the World Economic Forums take on our future, and finally we read "The Never-Ending Story" by Michael Ende together (so much better than the movie IMO).