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

January

 So far our January has been rather quiet and fairly relaxing.  New Years saw us playing board games and hanging out as a family. And since then we've had a bunch of catch up with friends, sailing and nippers as well as reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" together- Arden, Irving and myself.  We've also been doing the Jim Kwik memory course on Mind Valley- with Gabriel too, and Irving and I have been trying the Quantum Jumping course. Next week will be quite a bit busier since Irving will be doing sailing lessons- tackers 2, and the following week we will be doing half the vacswim classes.  It turns out it's not possible to cancel a place!

There's been a bunch of planning and organising the last week or so.  Arden got offered a place at TAFE last week, which he accepted on Monday.  So this year he'll be studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, and so that's his year 12 and his last year  home schooling sorted!

  I thought we would be doing archery again this year, but Irving told me yesterday that he's not interested in doing more archery, and tbh we're doing enough physical activity ATM.  Sailing and swimming make life quite busy.  I've booked us into doing more woodworking classes from March.  If you've read much of my blog you'll know that we like to take the Summer easy, til things cool off more!  And another home ed friend has arranged a bunch of outings, so we've signed up for National trust history excursions, as well as the Literature centre.

Willow turned 25 this past week and it's funny to reminisce on all the changes that life has brought both because of her and our travels.  She inspired us to look at alternative education, and that as well as some other influences brought us here to home education.  We have tried so many different activities because home education and encouraging the kids pushed us outside of our comfort zone, and I'm incredibly grateful for this journey.  Being a parent and home educating has been the best thing that I have ever done, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes  us this year.

Willow with her teddy collection in 2001, when I was working part time and pregnant with Gabriel.

First Half of the Year!

Well I didn't mean to be so neglectful of this blog this year, but it turns out that I have.  We've had a very full year.  So I'll give a bit of an update starting with term 2.  Arden and Irving both continued with iceskating and music classes.  Arden was also busy with fencing, airforce cadets, and youth flying club whilst Irving and I took up the homeschool classes with Joy of Wood.

Arden continued to work independantly on a range of topics- including aviation studies, maths, science, and english, as well as joining in with activities that Irving and I were doing as it suited him.  Irving and I spent some time reading "Legends of Hawaii" by Padraic Colum and doing some painting, as well as doing various cultural studies.

Irving working on some handwriting styles.

Owl paintings -Arden's, Irving's and mine.

Irving and my toolbox, made during our woodwork classes.

My spoon partly made in our classes and finished at home.

Our spoons

Elastic band gun- our last item made in class.

Irving and I have done a lot of gardening this year,  He has been very interested in herbs, and is interested in any sort of gardening generally.  He decided that he wanted to make his own herb book, so we found a journal and cut out alphabetical tabs and  he's  been making notes as we grow different herbs.

Irving's herbal book.

As usual we celebrated winter solstice with an early morning fire and a cooked breakfast on the flames, including damper cooked in the embers- everyone's favourite part.

A good friend - The Whole Cake made this lovely cake for Irving's 11th birthday.  She is a naturopath and has a lovely herbal garden and knew that Irving was interested in herbs, and so she came up with this fabulous cake.  He was very pleased.

I have been continuing to work on various designs for my redbubble store  and French cakes and pastries have been a big theme.  I've been taking a painting and coffee break most weekends, and partly painting what I see and trying to do so quickly, so that my coffee is still somewhat warm by the end.  It has been an interesting experience!  There's also a bunch of my paintings inspired by Padraic Colum's "Hawaiian Myths" here.

 

Our mid year holidays were pleasantly refreshing and in Arden's case quite short, because he applied to TAFE again. He was accepted into a cert 3 in Ground Operations at Jandakot TAFE adjacent to the airport.  Irving and I had our usually 6week or so break, in which I was expecting to have to do lots of activities with him, but it seems he has finally developed enough interests that he enjoys indepedently, and so we had a bustly and relaxing break.

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.

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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.

First Day of "School"

 So tomorrow sees Arden off to study at TAFE, hopefully on the way to journeying towards a career in aviation.  This year has seen a bunch of changes to our routine including Arden starting  to volunteer with the airforce cadets.  He has really enjoyed the experience with them so far, and he has continued to enjoy being part of the youth flying club, and so we headed out to TAFE and ECU to discuss options he needs to consider on his path to becoming a pilot.

After conversing with TAFE, we decided that Arden would apply to study a cert 3 in Aviation (Remote Pilot) in term 4.  We lodged his application mid last term, and he was quickly accepted on the basis of his year 9 NAPLAN results.  There was some back and forth organising things, and although I did some of the initial calls, Arden did all the emailing, and the later phone calls.  Given that he is moving into tertiary education younger than his older siblings, I wanted  to give him a chance to hear some of the interactions, before he had to do them himself.

Tomorrow Damien is going to accompany him to TAFE, as he hasn't been there yet, and it will be a bit strange around here!  For this term at least, I will only have Irving to home educate.  The course is a full time study load, although he only has to attend two days a week.

For more on tertiary life, there's a bit of info here regarding Willow getting into university, and a post here on how she found university.  Plus some info here about Gabriel getting into TAFE.

Willow's process involved a lot more examination of specialised skills as she had to audition and be tested, and submit a portfolio to get accepted.  Gabriel needed a year 10 report.  The older kids had very different experiences getting into tertiary education for the first time, and although there were some hiccups, on the whole the process was positive.

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2025

Arden is now studying a Diploma in Aviation Management at TAFE, as his year 12 year.  Last year he completed 6 months at home learning, followed by 6 months at TAFE studying a cert 3 in ground operations.

Trip to Adelaide

Finally after some planning, we managed to get us all on a weeks holiday to our hometown of Adelaide.  For Irving it was his first time there, and for some of us, we hadn't visited in 6yrs, so it became an opportunity for family and friends catch-ups as well as being a bit touristy and eating lots of good food.  I must admit that is the biggest thing that I miss Adelaide, so much good food!

So first stop, on our first day there we headed to the Central markets to top up on some groceries, and to show Arden and Irving some of our favourite places.

This place was excellent, if like me you like kombucha.  A few of us got spider kombuchas here.  Plus they had a kefir from WA that I had never seen here.....

A few of us headed to the zoo.  First stop was the pandas (there is one hiding down the back on the left of this shot).

Arden and Irving had a great time watching this echidna wander around.  Plus we saw a fenneck Fox which Arden was very pleased about.

After the zoo with Grandma, we managed a tram ride to the fringe, to catch up with friends and more family.  It was great riding the extension up North Tce, and to see the tram network growing since our last visit.

The following day saw us head off to Womadelaide for an evening full of music and dance,  It was a very full evening, with bell ringers doing performance art, cossack dancing, celtic fiddling, Carmen performed flamenco style.  All the best things of getting to Womad- very diverse cultural performances and styles.

Trying out some Cossack dancing.

We got to our favourite chocolatier!  Steven ter Horst with his amazing chocolates and cakes and now waffles!

A very poor shot of flying foxes (or fruit bats)  that apparently migrated to Adelaide not long after we left!  They make quite an impressive sight flying across the north-east corner of the city at sunset.

There was an exhibition celebrating local Kaurna (said Garna) culture called Yabarra as part of Fringe.  Probably my favourite bit was Arden's reaction to the river Torrens.  "That is a river!!!???"  After living in Perth for most of his life, the shock is quite understandable.  :D

We also made it to the art gallery, where they have currently arranged the gallery into a nice mix of multi-cultural Australia

Our apartments attempt at a pool was rather dismal....only somewhere without 6months worth of swimming weather would think it was reasonable to put the pool in the middle of the car park!?

A cute alleyway discovered on a walk on our final morning.

The beautiful Adelaide Arcade, has quite a few interesting collectible style shops.

We stopped here for coffee, in the Arcade.  I always hoped someone would do something like this to this part of the Arcade.

Stop off at the museum, examining some Kaurna artifacts.

Aboriginal Australian boundaries for the places that we've lived- Perth and Adelaide.

The Ancient Egypt Exhibit- which has scared at least two people in our family (one is me, the other, Willow).

Space travel exhibit

Crystals

Exploring Antartica

Checking out radiation.

Heading home to Perth again.

We haven't done much travelling, as a family, like this for quite a while, and it does remind me how much I love travelling and how lovely it is to go on a family adventure like this  with kids.  We're moved to Perth with this sort of idea in mind, and have stayed longer than planned, and it is interesting to know two different cities well enough to consider them as home.

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2025

I've made it a bit of a habit since this visit to Adelaide, to order icecream in cafes and by kombucha and make myself a spider.  My preferred kombucha here is Hippie, and their dragon fruit kombucha is delicious as a spider.  

Gabriel had to head home early on this trip and had his first experience of a house to himself.  Something that Arden has now just done recently too.