We Made It

 At the beginning of the year, Irving decided that he would like a super long Winter break, I wasn't sure how we'd manage without the regular April holidays, but I agreed to go along with him.  I also suspected that the moment Arden was off TAFE, it might become a bit more challenging to keep focused.   Well, I was right, but Irving and I persevered, and we did our first half of the year as a single semester, and now we have a seven week winter break!  Which I am feeling really appreciative of.

We started on Ancient Rome and the story of Aeneas.  Normally we'd do some Latin this year, but Irving is keen to continue the Ancient Greek lessons that we're doing for now, so the plan ATM, is  to do Latin next year.  We used "The Writing Revolution" to complement our writing for this block, with the goal being to develop more refined sentences.  By then end of the term, we were moving on to the section on How, What, Where, When, Why and Who.  It reminded me, very much of my year 7 teacher, and how he taught us English.

We did some more copperwork, Irving decided to try another square bowl, and that he wasn't interested in trying to saw yet.

He is still a huge fan of Rubik's cube, and so this one was his new addition to his collection.  The book, underneath,  "The Invisible Rainbow- A History of Electricity and Life" we were reading as part of our physics study, we just read the first half for now, which was largely a historical background.  I have read it before, and I spent quite a bit of time checking his references, as it was really unlike anything I had ever heard about electricity before.

We continued with home school excursions with the National Trust.  This time to Mundaring Weir.  Other than it was a quite a hot day, this one was excellent and we really enjoyed the walk around the Weir, and the tour of the historic building which is now a museum for it.

The final excursion in this series was to Woodbridge house in Midland.

More sailing on the Swan River.

We moved on to some civics for a few weeks, and used "Robin Hood" by Roger Llancellyn Green as our accompanying text.  As well as an overview of the Australian Political system, we took a look at the Magna Carta and read through the original conditions that it required King John must maintain.


We also did a series of excursions to the Literature Centre in Fremantle, with our homeschool group.  The focus was on Shaun Tan's art works and books.  The classes were engaging and interesting, albeit a little short, there wasn't quite enough time to really settle into developing ideas  properly in our hour and a half length classes.

We also got to do a tour of the Alcoa Bauxite mine.  It's the third mine tour that I've ever done.  The first one was of a copper mine in Burra when I was 12, and we also  visited the Kalgoorlie superpit when we were on our way to Perth, and TBH I found that pretty horrifying.  This seemed better overall, in the way that it was managed and regenerated, but apparently it devastates the local animal population, and TBH for all their good media propaganda, it was easy to see that that was the case.

Irving was doing some weaving on the vintage weave it loom.

A kookaburra guest came and stole some food!

The local Catholic Cathedral had its front door open, which is highly unusual!  We walk past it regularly and have been told that this is because it's a jubilee year.

Willow, Irving and I had a day out to New Norcia.  We decided to walk around the town ourselves, rather than do the tour.  It was very odd.  It's apparently the only Monastic Town in Australia, but it is now largely a ghost town, and is filled with these large magnificent buildings that used to be schools or associated with them.

We had a surprise visit from my brother, on his way to Adelaide after a holiday in Bali.  So we seemed to  spend a couple of days just hanging out and visiting cafes with him!  

Irving and I were working on building truncated solids out of toothpicks.  This was highly challenging as some of them were very large!

We found this chocolate from down south, near our dentist.  This is the best chocolate I've found in WA.

We all headed out to see WASO perform John William's music over the past weekend.  So many great songs!  Everyone really enjoyed it, and it was lovely to run into some friends too.

I've started making tallow again, since the brand we were buying has stopped producing smaller quantities.  And some purple sauerkraut this time.  I love the colour that it comes out!

One of my watercolours- I wasn't too sure about how this one came out!

Arden was participating in the Dawn vigil with the airforce cadets again this year.  Damien, Gabriel, Irving and I went  along too.  It was my first time attending and reminded me of going to church with my cousins, who were Lutheran.  It was a funny experience as a German Australian, as I had generally been made aware when I was at school that I was the "enemy" with "Heil Hitlers" being directed my way from time to time.  So none of my family  ever attended despite being multi-generational Australians.  

Standing vigil

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