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

Summertime

 I seem to begin every year meaning to post our activities more regularly, and this year seems to have ended up the same.  Partly because, we have been very busy, and partly because now that I only have Irving left to home educate, I am trying to take advantage of having some small amount of time to myself again.  Amusingly Arden is very insistant that he is *still* home educated, but he isn't in that system any longer, but is busy off at TAFE, studying for his Diploma in Aviation Management.

We started off the year with a week of sailing, with Irving doing tackers 2, and he got a last minute offer to do Vacswim too, and so we also did a week of that.  It was lovely being out on the beach daily again.

We headed out to a lovely local Italian restaurant, Maruzella's for my birthday, where I got a complimentary birthday drink.  :)

We headed out to Northbridge to watch the 2025 Ausroad Cycling Nationals.

Trying out the new train line- heading out to Whiteman park.

Walking back to catch the train.

Irving doing some lego building, basing his design off a model in a recently purchased book.

Some of my recent paintings.  I haven't done a lot of painting this year- I've been busy doing some crafts again, and doing a bit more reading.

End of term

 This term has been a bit unusual with  Arden being at TAFE, and Irving and I doing two days of home based activities without him.  It made the dynamic quite different, given that it's the first time that I've only had one child to work with.  

Overall Irving and I had a very busy term- with our STEAM group, going to see Mary Poppins, music classes and pottery.  He also started doing Nippers on Sunday, and with how active that is, he was prefering to have a quiet Monday.

Our at home learning this past semester has involved Steiner grade 5 work, and we read a picture book version of Gilgamesh by Bernada Bryson and studied some of the early cultures of the world- with a particular focus on the Mesopotamian region.

Collecting mulberries

Waiting for Mary Poppins to begin

Pottery at home.

Irving's pumpkin head for Halloween.

A model sailing ship Irving bought on a day out in Fremantle.

Nippers and hanging at the beach.  In case you're not Australian Nippers is swimming/ surf life saving training for kids.  They get to swim, paddle board, run and do relays amongst other things.  We've never done it with the kids before, and tbh I think it is one of the best sporting activities that we've ever done.  The club is very supportive, and everyone is getting behind every other member of the age group and encouraging them through some rather tiring activities.

Irving working at the sewing machine, making treasure bags to sell at the homeschoolers' Christmas market.

Market stall on the day!  He only sold a few things at full price, and then he sold a few at a mark down towards the end of the market, and then he got into bartering.  Given his place in the family, he's become quite good at negotiation and persuasion, and so with bartering he was in his element.  He came home with a nice array of goods from some of the other stall holders.

Irving, Damien and I went out to see the Christmas light up by ourselves this year.  Willow was down south,  Gabriel headed home as he had an early start with work, and Arden was at airforce cadets.  Gabriel joined us for dinner beforehand, and it was a pleasant evening with just the three of us.

Our next book to read "The Phantom Tollbooth"

Arden had an interesting term at TAFE and completed his cert 3 in aviation (remote pilot) easily.  He enjoyed the course, and after some discussion we reconsidered our plans for his year 11 and instead of being home educated for the first semester we are looking at another TAFE course.  This time he's looking at engineering.  For now he has put in an application for a couple of courses, and we're waiting for January to hear back.

Otherwise we decided to read "The Iliad" since Arden is interested in the classics.  We have both just started and will continue to read this over the coming year.  We are up to our last 20 pages of "Tragedy and Hope" by Carroll Quigley and hope to finish tomorrow!  It's been a bit of a challenge at times reading it together, and it does feel great to be finishing!

Arden also just completed his first year with the airforce cadets, and  has graduated to the next level.  He loved this year and is looking forward to more activities next year.  He also just passed another Japanese jujutsu belt gradings, and is finally into the adult belts!

We had a lovely relaxed end of year movie session with some home ed friends last week, when we went to see "Wonka"!  It was a great way to finish the year and now we are taking it a bit easy.

-

2025

Irving's market stall experience last year can be found here.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/12/closing-on-another-year.html

With some of the prep for it here.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/12/term-3.html

He is keen to do more sweet snacks for this years market, after having a successful day selling brownies last year, as well as supplementing with his left over goods.

I discovered over the course of the last few year, that as Willow and Gabriel had transitioned into their own adult lives, that I had inadvertantly allowed Arden to fill all the space.  So the past 18months have been interesting for me, learning to put some boundaries back, and reclaim time for myself, and develop a rhythm that works for Irving and I focusing on learning together three days out of the week.  (All the TAFE course Arden has done have been Mon-Wed, so this has worked best for us).  ATM Arden is studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, and he has also completed a Cert 3 in Ground Operations.

Term 3

 During the break Arden had an opportunity to do a barista course and a half day of work experience.  He headed to the course with one of his home schooling friends and they both enjoyed the day.  

Irving having hot chocolate at the cafe.

When the term came around again it was my turn to host our STEAM group and this time we were hand-sewing treasure bags.  I practised a few versions at home, and tried to approximate time, but my doubling time for the kids was woefully inadequate, though at the end everyone did get the bag finished.

Variation 1

Variation 2

Last term was very busy as we took up a term of iceskating with some home school friends.  There was a lesson followed by social time, and just like before covid times, when we did iceskating, this quickly became one of my favourite activities for the week.  Pre-covid we went to a rink north of the river, and we spent the afternoon there before heading to music lessons.  This time we were at a rink south of the river, and the classes were much more focused on getting all the kids skating well, rather than doing the individual levels.  Both Arden and Irving could already skate well, so really it was a chance to have a review, and hang out with  old friends, and make some new ones too!

After iceskating one wee, we  headed out to Jandakot TAFE and had a chat with one of the lecturers there, who was very generous with his time, and gave lots of interesting advice and ideas regarding Arden's first steps into tertiary education, and his goal of being a pilot.

At Jandakot

Aeroplanes at Jandakot

Arden headed off to King's Park for an orienteering session, and Irving spent quite a bit of time sitting in a tree reading. 

Irving's steam group, were also lucky enough to do a tour of Browne's dairy, including getting to milk a cow!  The dairy was very interesting, and the farmer who spoke to us was very informative on the processes of the plant, and the care of the animals.

Milking time

Irving started to hand sew his pyjamas.

And got most of the way through his top.

Irving started to make snails at pottery class.

Arden did one pottery class and made a very cute duck. (Although its eyes ran, and it came out a little horror movieish in the end!)

I started knitting a "Weasley jumper" for Irving, and finished it by the end of term!

    

We had a few movie sessions.  Willow, Arden and I went to see "Barbie",  Damien, Gabriel and Arden went to see "Oppenheimer",  Damien and I went to see "Sound of Freedom", and Damien, Arden and Irving went  to see "Across the Spiderverse".  We hadn't been to the movies so often in years! 

We took up swimming again to make sure that Irving would qualify for nippers, since it was winter-time our pool was closed, so we went to a few different pools around the city and practised doing laps.  Just when we thought we had everything prepped, Damien took Irving and registered him, and we discovered that he might have to do 100m freestyle, and so we went in did more practise! Freestyle was not his preferred stroke, he loves to breaststroke!

We also went to the Ancient Egyptian exhibition that came to Western Australia.

We finally got to Araluen's tulip festival, where we could appreciate our volunteering and everyone else's too, that helped to contribute to the festival.

We grew a few potatoes.

Irving also did some work on gardening, and got a few more plants for our balcony.  He learnt a little about monocots and dicots, and planting according to the moon and astrology.  Arden's main focus for the term was physics and history.  He decided to review "Life of Fred physics", and also to do Khan academy's physics course.  History involved us doing a lot of reading of "Tragedy and Hope" and we are not far from the end now.  There was quite a bit on the development of nuclear weapons, so the timing of "Oppenheimer" at the movies was quite nice, as we had been reading about him quite a lot.