The last Fortnight

So next week we'll be onto grade 7, grade 5 and kindy-at-home for Arden. I've spent this evening arranging Gabriel's first block, and helping Willow plan hers. So looks as if we're all arranged. I'm looking forward to having extra time with Arden, and I'm hoping that Willow will find her way, with directing her learning.

We headed out to the Steiner shop at Bibra lake again last week, this time going via Fremantle. It was certainly a much more pleasant journey. Since our last visit, the shop has also renamed itself, and is now called 'the Honeyclock',after a giant honey filled egg timer they sell. I do like the shop there, and we had a pleasant time looking around at all the different items. I picked up a blackboard, duster and chalk, as well as some main lesson books, pencils, modelling wax and a book by Padraic Colum, 'The boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter.' The blackboard has gone down well with everyone, and it was quite amusing watching everyone wondering about how to use the duster!

I also picked up a glockenspiel last week, it's probably the nicest quality instrument in the house. It has a beautiful resonance. I'm hoping to make quite a bit of use of it with Arden. Damien also bought us a keyboard, to help Gabriel and Willow out with their musicianship classes. Everyone is quite taken by it. Damien and I have been practising daily, Arden likes to changes it to drumming and use it as a drum machine, and Willow and Gabriel have just been generally trying out tunes on it.

Gabriel has turned ten, and our birthday season is over til next Summer. It was pleasant to just make it a family affair this year. It's the first time we've done that, so it felt a lot less busy, which was very nice. Willow and Gabriel went busking at the Perth Cultural Centre, and we also came across the Red ball Project, on Gabriel's birthday. Everyone found the giant ball quite fun.

We also headed to our first homeschool outing for the year, off to the Naturaliste Marine Discovery Centre. Willow and Gabriel enjoyed the class, and whilst they were busy doing that Arden and I got to pat some sea creatures in a rock pool, at the centre, amongst them was a cat shark, sea urchins, star fish, and sea cucumbers. We had a swim at the beach at Hillarys after, it is quite an interesting set up, enclosed in from the ocean, by the marina.

Hillarys Beach


On the beach theme, we headed to Cottesloe last week, and were chased out of the water, by the life guards, setting a siren off, for a shark warning. A helicopter had been following it up the coast, til it was too near to the swimmers. Apparently it was a hammerhead. I suggested that it was nicer just spotting dolphins in Adelaide, but the kids were just as impressed by the shark idea.

Finally Willow went out last weekend with Damien on a catamaran. They both headed out onto the Swan River, for an hours worth of sailing. Willow loved it and Gabriel will be going this weekend, with Damien.

Looking North across the Swan


And I've finished carving my egg! I polished it with beeswax today, and I'm quite happy with it.



Everyone else's are also progress nicely, and now I seem to be also making one for Arden!
L-R: Egg for Arden, Willow's, Gabriel's and mine.


We do seem to have been very busy recently! And actually there has been more happening- circus class have started again, and both the kids have new bikes, and Damien and I have been discussing Codex amongst our food oriented community. We have had a very lovely Summer here, getting out and doing lots of things, but I am glad that it's starting to feel cooler. Even if that means the temperature is in the high 20's during the day, and high teens overnight.

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2025

The Naturaliste Marine Discovery Centre is now the Fisheries Department.  We happened to have a home ed excursion there again this past week, where Irving got to dissect a fish, with one of his friends.

Beginnings

Organised classes have resumed for the year, and in the process we've discovered that these are very popular in Perth's homeschool network. It seems every corner of Perth has someone organising a day to a week of activities for homeschoolers- it comes off as very schooly to me- particularly as one friend pointed out, some people do send their kids every day. However this at least isn't usual, surely some of the fun of homeschooling should be having one's kids at home!

Willow and Gabriel both started musicianship at Cottage Children's choir this week. We've decided to leave off the choir this time, and Willow is focusing on musicianship and flute and improving her violin skills. Gabriel has just recently started guitar.

We spent a fortnight at Cottesloe for swimming lessons, and also headed to South Beach, near Fremantle and found another organic shop. It had the best ice-cream we've eaten since Scotland (other than home made) though sadly of course it wasn't Australian- it had come from New Zealand! We've also had Willow's, Damien's and my birthdays, and just have Gabriel's to go next week.

Cottesloe Beach



Cottesloe Reef




We've all been doing some woodwork the last couple of weeks- gradually getting through carving an egg.

Our work in progress.



I also finished carving a fish I started over a year ago! Arden is enjoying playing with him.

Golden fish.




Willow was busy doing some sewing this week for Damien's birthday, she made him a pocket square. It took a bit of planning- finding some fabric Damien would like, lots of ironing, and pinning but it looked lovely at the end.

Finally some birthday images.


Willow's birthday cake, by Willow.



Aesop's Marrakech perfume for me. Got to love the Aesop details- it comes safety-pinned with a button.


Damien's cake with loads of candles (we still had these from my 35th birthday, so Gabriel and I decided lots of candles were in order).

Returning

It's been a very long time since I've posted on this blog, but since I'm now starting another blog on making money, I decided to reconnect to this one and make more of an effort.

We moved house and are now living on top of a hill! But still very near to Adelaide. The move was a bit mad, but it has been worth it- living in North Adelaide is much more community orientated than Unley. It has been nice to find somewhere to live in Adelaide, that I like, since our return from Europe. I had been struggling a bit to appreciate the place since returning. And recently another market has opened, the community market at Grange is lovely, and a great place to spend this time of the year at, if one heads to the beach too.


We've had quite a busy year with our homeschooling activities, and amazingly it's heading towards the end. We've nearly finished class 4 and class 2. Our craft activities have been all quite successful. We all made fabulous wooden swords, and I am feeling much more confident in our ability to do woodcarving. Willow has nearly finished knitting one sock (with second to follow next year). Hopefully she may finish the sock now rather than reading my post! ;) But perhaps she's too busy giggling. So in the course of Willow knitting socks, I also have learnt to knit socks and am currently up to my third pair- one for each child.

Gabriel learnt to purl this year, and next year will see his first real knitting project. Quite an exciting step forward! Our final selection of craft for the year is cross stitch, which is being enjoyed by all presently.

Activity wise has seen lots of interesting things happen here. We've started our own Waldorf Co-op, which meets fortnightly, and is looking for a few more people but establishing itself gradually. Willow went for a sail on the One and All, which was fabulous apparently and took a year to occur. It was a beautiful mild day for it, which was great considering the last cancellation was due to excessively hot weather. Willow and Gabriel can both swim reasonably well now, after 6months worth of lessons with Ken Richter, who is an amazing swimming teacher and currently everyone is back to Young Adelaide Voices for singing- with the Pageant coming up soon. There is not quite as much excitement as last year about the Pageant singing performance, but everyone is still looking forward to it.





We also headed to Melbourne for a holiday and had a great time. Our first holiday away since returning to Adelaide. We flew with Tiger airways and whilst the flight was fine, the terminus in Melbourne was quite amusing. It was basically a gigantic padlocked carport. Very odd indeed. We had a few eating destinations requested by the kids, which we headed to. One was Wagamama, we ate there regularly in Glasgow, and Fifteen. The guys had been watching Jamie at Home and decided it would be good to go to his restaurant in Australia. We all had a bar meal. It was really good, and has inspired Willow and Gabriel with their cooking.

And now it looks like Summer is here, so things are starting to wind down and yet get busier at the same time. Lots of fun end of year Christmassy things to happen!

So much to do, and so much we've done

Well it's Fringe time here, so we've been out and about seeing bits and pieces whilst it's on. Plus Womad came to town last weekend, so we headed out to that for a day too.

Fringe wise we saw a lovely puppet show 'The Grimstones', which I really enjoyed, and the kids thought was ok. Sadly the venue was lacking, and it was very difficult to see in some spots- we moved three times! And the music from some of the other shows, affected our ability to hear at times. Otherwise it was definately worth seeing.

Womadelaide, was of course, excellent. We saw a few really good bands, and enjoyed all the music generally, and had plenty of yummy food. Byron Bay organic doughnuts came to town again for it. And I ran into tonnes of friends, so it was a great social outing too. I really enjoyed Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, and Paprika Balkanicus were fabulous too.

Home wise we're doing some woodcarving which has been loads of fun so far. And we're in the process of moving house. So there's lots of packing to be done.