Adventures Of A Homeschool Graduate

Hello everyone! How are you all?

It's been a while since I've posted, but it appears that mum has been giving a few small mentions to what I've been doing at waapa. But why don't I give you my own update on it all?

Currently I'm in the process of exams. I've survived the first half of the semester! I've heard a lot of horror stories about studying at university and none of them have really materialised.
 I've been having a lot of fun though. I've already performed in two shows, I have a third coming up in under a week, and I've made quite a range of interesting friends. Of course, I've been doing much more than performing and socializing.

 The main thing I've noticed so far is that university isn't too different from homeschooling.

• Learning is self driven
     It's not quite the same as homeschooling, but quite a lot of the learning is self driven. Sure, I have to sit in a history class for an hour and listen to the lecturer talk about whatever era we're in now, but because it's only an hour there's a limit to what we can be told. Which leaves the opportunity to answer my own questions by googling and looking in the library.



• The lecturers will tell you about their passions
     In my experiences from being homeschooled, if I wanted to learn about a specific topic I would find someone who knows a lot about that topic and loves it. I've done that with voice acting - I emailed people who did it, asking for their experiences and for tips... I even ended up going to a studio to watch some voice acting in action.
     It's the same with the lecturers. The history lecturer was delighted when I told him I wanted to know more about music history, and gave me a list of his favourite history books. The music theory lecturer is also a flute tutor, and gave me a few practising techniques. If I'm looking for information on a certain topic, chances are someone there can inform me on it.

    Of course, there's the main big difference with the "socializing" (fun fact - "social" originally meant "devoted to/related to home life") side of things. Instead of going out and just making friends along the way, there's the school mentality where everyone has to have a friend.
   So there's a lot of acting from everyone. It's quite annoying. It's hard to see who people actually are underneath the persona they've come up with. Some people don't act, and most of them tend to be the people who were homeschooled for a year or two.


  It's being an interesting journey. My exams will be over this week, and then I'll be starting semester two in July. And maybe I'll be doing bachelor next year.

If people would like to hear more about being a homeschool graduate in university, let me know. I can give up dates on what I'm doing, my thoughts on certain subjects.

~Willow

April

This past month has seen a lot of events happening, as well as us having a pleasant but too short Easter break.

Willow was preforming in her Uni Choir, Oratorio, at WAAPA, so  we headed out to see her sing.  Irving was quiet for 3/4 of it, which I was pretty happy with, and although grumbling towards the end, of course complained when it was over.  Afterwards Arden, Irving and I did some exploring around the nearby park whilst Gabriel headed to the city to busk.

The choir also did a full performance at St Mary's Cathedral, and as everyone but Damien had seen Willow sing at WAAPA, he went by himself to see her sing in Oratorio.

Some of Willow's music work from this past week.  One of my favourite parts of home ed, is that eventually some of what they can do, and are working on is just totally beyond you as a parent.  This is her uni work from last week, and whilst I learnt music with her up to a point, once Irving was born it was harder for me to keep apace, and only recently have I been doing extra music again.

Gabriel and Arden also did some workshop classes at Perth Zoo, which resulted in us having a rather full day out.  Arden's class focused on conservation, whilst Gabriel's focused on evolution.  We caught the ferry over the river of course, and as the weather was so lovely, it was a very relaxing ride.

Damien and I headed to the Joondalup festival with the littler ones for the first time, and although the festival is quite small, we really enjoyed it.  We found it a little more creative than the Fringe in some ways, and we particularly liked the community involvement, which we think is very lacking in Fringeworld.

Trying out the cloud at the Joondalup festival.

Over our Easter break we got out to see a few bands in Perth, and eat icecream at our favourite gelataria.  We divided into groups for our Easter shopping this year, with everyone (bar Irving) contributing some money towards chocolate and everyone helping to hide them and hunt for them.  Damien went with the older kids to an entrepreneur workshop for kids, which everyone found generally interesting, and has encouraged some thoughts about running businesses.  Willow, Gabriel and Arden all headed out to the movies by themselves, and it felt interesting to be transitioning Arden into the idea that he can go out with the older two.  He is of course feeling impatient to be getting out by himself!  Other than also catching up with friends I finally got a little sewing done, I would have liked to have done more, but the holidays seemed to fly by this time.

Using up scraps;pocket squares for Damien.

More scraps;bowties!

Planning a vintage Butterick shirt.

The cuffs! complete with vintage ricrac and buttons!

I'm currently preparing a simplicity pattern for Gabriel and I to work on.  We will be sewing him trousers; he will be doing navy cord and I will be working on olive linen.  I'm not sure he'll get to wear them for very long, as he is growing and growing right now, but I'm sure someone else around here will if he outgrows them quickly.

I also picked up Gabriel a copy of the Canterbury Tales to read this term, but we decided to rearrange our plan, and use Beowulf as our text instead.  He is still undecided on his focus for ancient history- but plans to make a decision after working on his timeline this fortnight.  We did a variety of writing styles last term, and he seems to have an aptitude for poetry, though isn't particularly inclined to write generally. 

Arden and I are reading "Seven Little Australians" by Ethel Turner, and I am contemplating reading the later books in the series for Arden.  We've started a block on geography and local history, and had a short start to the term last week, given ANZAC day was on Tuesday.  We headed out later in the week on a walk from the City to King's Park, observing the lay of the land and getting a sense of elevation and direction, so that we can draw our own topographical map of our local area.  We took the walk quite slowly, as Irving was walking the whole way too; we were all quite tired by the time we got to the end of the Kokoda track and headed along Lover's walk back to get a bus to the city.  Especially after in an inspired moment Irving helped us to miss 3 buses, followed by another 4!

Leaving the city, we got a bit distracted at Elizabeth's bookstore, and we had to buy "The House of Arden" by E. Nesbit when we found it there.  It was just a bit exciting to find a book with Arden's name in the title, and by one of my favourite children's authors.  Though my list of preferred children's authors might actually be quite long!

The stairs up to the Kokoda track.

Examining the old lake at the bottom of the track.

Lover's walk.

The view at the bottom of the walk.

We have a few outings planned this block, and the weather is being so beautiful that they should be lovely.