Gradually getting into the swing of things.....

 So we began some structure learning at home in mid February, when the weather cooled off a bit.  I have been quite slack about making a full plan, but given we're part way through our "year 6" plan and I've been doing this so long, I  knew what I wanted to start with this year, and that was Greek Mythology.  So so far that has been Irving's and my main focus.  We started with a review of the Ancient Greek we were learning at the end of last year, and Irving has progressed onto lower case, and we've also been writing up some names of the Gods and Goddesses.  Last week we moved onto a bit of copper work, making some square shaped bowls (next time I'm hoping to do round ones) and this week I'm thinking we'll do some watercolour painting.  We've also been reading Padraic Colum's books on Greek Myth. (The Golden Fleece and The Adventures of Odyseus)

Gabriel turned 23 at the beginning of this year!

Funny to think that I started this blog back when he was 6!

Working on some watercolour painting inspired by reading Greek Mythology

Padraic Colum's "The Golden Fleece"

Copper work- Irving's on the left, mine on the right.

Irving working on his bowl.

We have also started onto some geometric drawing, which Irving is finding quite easy.  TBH I was not at all surprised by this, as he was always keen to get involved with compass and protractor when Arden was doing geometric drawing, and every now and then since he was about 5, he would go and get the tools out to draw up some circles.

After Ancient Greek studies we moved onto some physics, using Roberto Trostli's Physics is fun.  I still really like this book- the experiments are easily achievable at home, and we get good results from most of them.  The one below involved currents being created by different pigments so that it was possible to see how they flowed through the water.



We also started up some maths and grammar, but not a lot, as with it still being Summer time, I prefer to ease into that sort of work.  We have however been doing a lot of swimming, and enjoying spending plenty of time in our pool.

Arden has been at TAFE now since the beginning of Feb- studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, which he is enjoying.  Technically this is his year 12 year and thus he is at the end of his home education journey.  And so unless something very odd happens, I feel I am definitely down to just home educating one child.  Arden disagrees, on some version of this, and claims that he is not finished til the end of the year!

Irving and I have also been out and about for some excursions.  Last week was the maritime museum, and this week was Samson house in Fremantle.  We're onto a set of history excursions with the national trust- last time we did these as family weekend outings, so I'm looking forward to doing more in this manner.

Samson House in Freo

Pirates of Penzance is a family favourite around here- especially post Willow, Damien and Gabriel performing in it with the Gilbert and Sullivan society.(https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/05/pirates-of-penzance.html)  At the time Arden was quite small- maybe 7, and Irving was about 18months old.  We've listened to the music regularly over the years, but Irving certainly didn't remember the performance, so most of the family headed off to see the Western Australia Opera perform it, with our homeschooling group.  Overall it was excellent.

Now that I'm a little less time poor, I've gotten back into the habit of making fermented foods regularly.  Mostly beet kvass and sauerkraut, but a few others too from time to time.  This one was combined with paprika, and the current one is with apple.  So delicious!

Hard waste time was in March again this year, and we came across a few interesting things along the way.  We did bring home the two coffee machines- apparently there's often not a lot wrong with them, and since Irving is interested in repairs they're on our list of things to do.  I'm hoping we might get to them in the next few weeks, as well as cleaning out a coffee grinder and dismantling some scanners.  Irving has already become our printer technician, when Damien's out at work.

Arden has taken quite an interest in Formula one racing over the past year or so, so we had to get out to grill'd for an Oscar Piastri burger.

Thornton's eggs took me back to living in Glasgow, and particularly reminded my of a little Willow, who loved all things unicorn, and who is part of the reason that our blog is Unicorn Education.  :)

A few of Willow's unicorn crafts can be found at these links.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2011/08/at-home-in-perth.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/08/change.html

2023

 So far this year has been busier than I prefer but quite enjoyable. Irving and I have just started our at home learning routine for the year at the beginning of March, and Arden started in February. Though we had rather a busy summer- with Irving and I both starting red bubble businesses.You can find Irving's shop here. And my shop here. Irving also did swimming lesson at the beach this year, and is now feeling inspired to get his swimming at the level it needs to be to join nippers next summer.

Lots of beautiful beach days in January.

We finished reading Bill Bryson's "Down Under" over the summer, whilst sitting at cafes, after our beach lessons. :) (Though this book has some IMO bizarre comments at times- that I particularly felt the need to edit for DS9).

Arden is up to year 10 and is keen to continue with aviation related studies, and he is continuing with the youth flying club at Bullcreek Aviation museum, and recently signed up for Aviation cadets. He is still doing jujutsu and is almost at the adults belts for grading now. We are thinking that this will probably be his last year doing music classes at Cottage Insititute, as he will have a solid grounding in music should he wish to pursue it later in life. He is also doing sailing classes this year, at Hillary's Yacht club.

To start off the year, he's been largely working on music theory using the ABRSM books grade 1 to 5, in a similar style to how his sister, Willow, did. (She studied a range of instruments and voice, did Kodaly style lessons at Cottage institute and only worked on the grade 1 through 5 books from year 10). Arden's interest in music however is quite different to Willow's and at one stage he was interested in musical composition and was watching Hans Zimmer's masterclass on composing. He is very particular about being able to hear movie tracks due to this interest in music soundtracks and their relationship to the film. He is a self-taught pianist from watching youtube "piano hands" channels as I like to call them, and atm he plays for about an hour and a half a day.

Irving is up to year 5, though in my opinion is only really year 4 and a half, and so that's where he's at, at home. He is born right at the cut off date for registration and since we do Steiner inspired education, I slowed down our stories and themes over the last year, to line up to mid- year since that is better for him. So at the moment we are reading the Norse Myths by Padraic Colum and learning about runes. We've also joined a small STEAM group for a bit of a hang out- there's an activity and play, he's doing music classes at Cottage, and he's doing pottery classes too. Plus there's been *lots* of swimming! We've been down swimming in our pool at least three times a week, trying to get him up to nippers qualifying level.

We had a few event outing's during February. When we had kids really into performance, we used to attend a lot of Fringe and Festival events, though these days we have been doing this very little. Irving and I did go to the Perth Festival Opening at Lake Joondalup- which we enjoyed to varying degrees, but the location was beautiful!

On the same night Arden and Gabriel both went to their first big stadium gig- off to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. DH, Damien and I had gone out Friday evening and stopped in to see a friend's band, and just happened to be there when Chad Smith, the chilli peppers drummer approached the band and asked if he could drum. Since we had our mini brush with them, Damien shook hands with him on our way out, it started a bit of a thing here, which culminated with buying last minute tickets Sunday afternoon, and both, Gabriel and Arden, heading out to see the Chilli Peppers.

Our first formal home educating outing for the year, was a fun hang out session of roller skating, and it's now looking like we'll be doing iceskating lessons again in term 3, if everything falls into place. Both the boys loved iceskating when we did lesson pre-covid.

Irving also did first aid classes again this year, Arden decided not to- since it hasn't been that long since the last ones he did.

We also headed out to A Night on Bayview- WASO's performance in Claremont. We all really miss their performances on the Swan River, and the Claremont location is lovely, but we miss the preview of the coming year's orchestral performances. I've been a bit slack checking out the program this year, Arden is particularly keen to go to a few, and WASO do very reasonably priced education tickets.

Irving has really taken to pottery classes and it looks like we'll be doing them all year. He's also been borrowing books on pottery, and we've been watching "The Great Pottery Throwdown", since he's loving it so much. He's had about three classes, so far, but they are only having their first firing, so he's excited to see how his work comes out this week.

Arden and I are back into reading "Tragedy and Hope" for our part 2 on it's take on the history of ww2. And Irving, Arden and I are just finished reading "I Can Jump Puddles" as our family reading. I am looking to find the second and third sequels, so that we can get more insight into Australia at that time, from more of a first hand account. I am particularly interested in his take on the depression, as he has such a unique view on growing up in the bush, as someone living with polio. Irving has also been reading "Charlotte's Web", as a part of our friend's book club, and he's been loving it.

Arden is also doing some study on the idea of earth as GAIA- a living complex in itself, and the forces that affect it. We've started watching Brain Cox's "Forces of Nature" as part of his background research, as well as doing a range of reading.

As an update the older kids are busy with more grown up life- Willow is just being made team leader at work. She's been working in fintech since she was almost 19, initially more admin related work for the merchant operations area, and gradually with increasing responsibility doing online fraud analysis. She loves her work, and it suits her, since one of her hobbies as a home educated student was moderating online message boards.

Gabriel finished TAFE, in 2019, and was hoping to get a job in a cafe, when all of the covid stuff happened. He decided that he wasn't interested in doing more in the digital screen and media area, and instead he was interested in drawing and art- off screen, and also learning Japanese. As well as working part- time in a juice bar, he had been doing this at home, until this year, when he decided he is interested in studying at uni and he took a place in Curtin's uni ready course.

2020 Before Covid and Heading In

The start of the year was much the same for us as any.  Taking our time and being relaxed in the heat, swimming, keeping cool and being outdoors. 

Wandering around Dalkeith and enjoying the Summer.

Plus learning some local history along the way.







We usually start into our at home activities gradually and we did that again this year.  Starting with painting.  We did some work on mosaics and finished off a story book that we were working on for Irving's Grimm fairy tales work.

Snow White and Rose Red paintings.

Irving.

Arden.

Mine with and without heading.

Arden and I worked together on painting two types of colour wheel.

Arden and Irving went through a domino/ marble run phase including making paper dominos and watch hours of youtube tutorials to develop ideas.

We spent some time reading the Mr Penguin series, and finally got around to reading Farmer Boy together.

We moved onto geometrical drawing for Arden this year, and Irving loves doing it,so he joined in a lot of the time.

We worked on more images with Irving.

This inclueded making images from plants by hammering them with a mallet to see if they would "print".

Arden started working on perspective drawing using this book.

We didn't go to as many fringe/festival shows as we often do during the Summer season, but we took full advantage of Highway to Hell after we discovered "Steve'n'Seagulls" were playing, we followed them along the first leg.

Briefly saw "Shonen Knife"  at the Highway to Hell stage.

Eventually decided we were walking to Fremantle since it was unlikely that Canning Highway would be open for a walk again.

Looking east towards the rising moon.

 And west toward Fremantle.

 

And we made it to Freo! (Irving was inspired to make it when he realised we could stop off for icecream in Fremantle.)

We got a surprising harvest of bird's eye chillis which sprouted up on our balcony garden.

We moved onto biology by the second half of the term using these books.  "Muscles and Bones" by Kovacs and "A Leg to Stand On" by Oliver Sacks (one of my favourite authors for science.

And as covid came into life and caused lockdowns and turned the world upside down, I had the luck to find a coffee machine very cheaply priced in the op shop.

Learning to use the coffee machine.