Holidays

 The term 3 holidays here were very busy this time.  My brother turned up on his way from Asia back to Adelaide, and stayed for a while.  I had my home education report to organise for my moderator, we went to the Royal Perth show, and Arden was off to an Airforce Cadets camp for the second week.

Particularly the camp made things a bit complicated, as I needed to discuss aspects of the report writing with Arden.  So week one was busy getting prepped, with lots of reviewing our year, both via my planning and my notes on our calendar and pulling all of that together.  I was feeling a bit stressed out about it this time, as I had a new moderator again, and I had lost last years calendar, and some of my notes.  I did *eventually* find them all!

We went to the Show with the whole family, Willow had come up from the South- West, and my brother was here, and we had a fairly full day out at the show.  We went to see the racing ducks, and the alpacas in particular (Willow, Arden and Irving had done an alpaca handling course, so they were very keen for this).  We visited the dairy pavillion, watched the woodchopping, went on some rides, and got some showbags, and watched some of the stadium performances, including the fireworks.  The finale for the night, was Arden and I  heading onto the slingshot.  I wasn't particularly keen, but it was quite magical being shot towards the sky with the moon as our target!  We were a bit lucky with that aspect.

We also headed North to visit some friends who live out of the city, and Arden got a second outing to the show with one of his homeschool friends.

Irving got into filming and photographing the showrides, after we dropped Arden off.

I managed to catch up with some crafts, and repairs, in the second  week of the holidays.  This time I did some fabric dying, and refreshed some faded clothing of both mine and Willow's.

Arden got back mid-afternoon from his Airforce cadets camp, and we had a bit of a quiet afternoon before heading out to the Fire Garden festival at Government house.  It was visually spectacular, but a little hot!  Especially since we hadn't had many hot days yet, when it was on.

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.

Some Thoughts on Learning

I've been home educating long enough now, to feel pretty happy with what we do. I've seen my children learn and grow, and many of the things that left me nervous and uncertain in my early days have been overcome. I have two adult children in their early stages of making their way in the world, and on the whole I feel home educating has been the right choice for our family.

Some things that I think are worth considering on this journey are the balance between structured (classes, etc) and unstructured learning (question led and going down rabbit holes!) and multi-generational family and independent learning.

Learning together- exploring colour as a family.

My parents were a blend of structured and unstructured in their approach to learning, and some of my fondest memories are of me spending time with my Dad, and having him explain to me various activities, that perhaps other adults would have thought I was too small to understand. As the second youngest of 12, I assume now he treated me this way because he was treated this way( he died 21 years ago). I feel very blessed to have had this experience and to have been able to bring an experimental multi-generational sense of learning to family, that I now realise was routed in spending time with my Dad.

When we started home educating, Willow who's 23, had been to a Steiner school and the creativity and the practical side, and the screen minimisation (both Damien and I were in favour of this, both of us had computers young, and Damien works as software engineer) and in our early years I was very much trying to replicate Steiner at home. I did quite a bit of reading on it, including reading some of Steiner's takes on education. At this stage now, in my 18th year, I feel this background continues to serve me in how I approach education with my children, as I have this understanding to fall back on, when I am wondering how my children are progressing in life. The main tenants, I find particularly useful are knowing that children in the first seven years tend to imitation, from 7-14 they tend to imagination, and from 14-21 they tend to inspiration.

In practise what this looks like is children under 7 copying everything they see and hear, try to use their vision of the world and what interests them to create the sort of people that they wish to become. For children 7-14, the imagination stage can be creating anything- stories, game, drawings, etc. 14-21 year olds, need guidance through mentorship, inspiring people and stories, and initiation to start to bring themselves into maturity.

So coming back to my earlier thoughts- structured and unstructured learning. Both have value and both have potential. My preference is to have a balance of both in our family. A class with an exceptional teacher/mentor can impart knowledge that I lack and the right circumstances speed up learning. However they do not tend to teach a child how to be a self-directed independent learner. That is something that unstructured learning can offer- particularly I think if a parent/guardian is prepared to be a co-learner with their child/student. Doing research together, asking questions together and exploring together, set up the child to understand how to do the process easily when they are more mature.

Trying out an ice hockey class.

Multi-generational learning, in a family or in extended community, brings enormous rewards in that the student gets to receive skills across the family, or across the generations of people that are becoming or have become significant in their field (this of course does not have to mean paid work- it could be a hobby that they are exceptional at). Independent learning give the student a chance to research , to understand their own boundaries and how far and how much they can push themselves without an adult judging whether they have done enough or are good enough. It encourages them to self-assess and to work on themselves, themselves.

A spontaneous bit of history- on a walk to a park to meet friends.

Some interest led learning- Arden exploring textures of fabric close up, on my camera.

And so, over the years I have noticed a couple of things in my community here, in Perth. People doing very structured home education- with lots of text books and classes can manage the high school years easily. They fall back on the idea of the traditional view of education, probably pre-dating modern schooling. Those that unschool in the early years, and do not learn how to learn with their children seem to come unstuck at high school, and seem to particularly need to send their children to high school, as they are uncertain how to transition into more academic style learning. This seems to be particularly the case when people claim that unschooling is "doing nothing" (I have heard this statement quite a number of times over the years, and I highly recommend reading John Holt for anyone that thinks that this is what it is). I find it quite a shame that many people come unstuck at this point, and I think it would serve many people well to remember that they are the child's first teacher- walking, talking, etc and to remember that what skills one has as an adult are valuable to pass on to children. Not force on to them, just work side by side learning together, so that the best of both world's can be had, and that there is no need to find endless classes (or schools) because sometimes learning in the family at home can be enough.

A past obsession; marble runs made out of jenga blocks. There was lots of self-directed creative play, building, learning and inspiration from youtube.

2023

 So far this year has been busier than I prefer but quite enjoyable. Irving and I have just started our at home learning routine for the year at the beginning of March, and Arden started in February. Though we had rather a busy summer- with Irving and I both starting red bubble businesses.You can find Irving's shop here. And my shop here. Irving also did swimming lesson at the beach this year, and is now feeling inspired to get his swimming at the level it needs to be to join nippers next summer.

Lots of beautiful beach days in January.

We finished reading Bill Bryson's "Down Under" over the summer, whilst sitting at cafes, after our beach lessons. :) (Though this book has some IMO bizarre comments at times- that I particularly felt the need to edit for DS9).

Arden is up to year 10 and is keen to continue with aviation related studies, and he is continuing with the youth flying club at Bullcreek Aviation museum, and recently signed up for Aviation cadets. He is still doing jujutsu and is almost at the adults belts for grading now. We are thinking that this will probably be his last year doing music classes at Cottage Insititute, as he will have a solid grounding in music should he wish to pursue it later in life. He is also doing sailing classes this year, at Hillary's Yacht club.

To start off the year, he's been largely working on music theory using the ABRSM books grade 1 to 5, in a similar style to how his sister, Willow, did. (She studied a range of instruments and voice, did Kodaly style lessons at Cottage institute and only worked on the grade 1 through 5 books from year 10). Arden's interest in music however is quite different to Willow's and at one stage he was interested in musical composition and was watching Hans Zimmer's masterclass on composing. He is very particular about being able to hear movie tracks due to this interest in music soundtracks and their relationship to the film. He is a self-taught pianist from watching youtube "piano hands" channels as I like to call them, and atm he plays for about an hour and a half a day.

Irving is up to year 5, though in my opinion is only really year 4 and a half, and so that's where he's at, at home. He is born right at the cut off date for registration and since we do Steiner inspired education, I slowed down our stories and themes over the last year, to line up to mid- year since that is better for him. So at the moment we are reading the Norse Myths by Padraic Colum and learning about runes. We've also joined a small STEAM group for a bit of a hang out- there's an activity and play, he's doing music classes at Cottage, and he's doing pottery classes too. Plus there's been *lots* of swimming! We've been down swimming in our pool at least three times a week, trying to get him up to nippers qualifying level.

We had a few event outing's during February. When we had kids really into performance, we used to attend a lot of Fringe and Festival events, though these days we have been doing this very little. Irving and I did go to the Perth Festival Opening at Lake Joondalup- which we enjoyed to varying degrees, but the location was beautiful!

On the same night Arden and Gabriel both went to their first big stadium gig- off to see the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. DH, Damien and I had gone out Friday evening and stopped in to see a friend's band, and just happened to be there when Chad Smith, the chilli peppers drummer approached the band and asked if he could drum. Since we had our mini brush with them, Damien shook hands with him on our way out, it started a bit of a thing here, which culminated with buying last minute tickets Sunday afternoon, and both, Gabriel and Arden, heading out to see the Chilli Peppers.

Our first formal home educating outing for the year, was a fun hang out session of roller skating, and it's now looking like we'll be doing iceskating lessons again in term 3, if everything falls into place. Both the boys loved iceskating when we did lesson pre-covid.

Irving also did first aid classes again this year, Arden decided not to- since it hasn't been that long since the last ones he did.

We also headed out to A Night on Bayview- WASO's performance in Claremont. We all really miss their performances on the Swan River, and the Claremont location is lovely, but we miss the preview of the coming year's orchestral performances. I've been a bit slack checking out the program this year, Arden is particularly keen to go to a few, and WASO do very reasonably priced education tickets.

Irving has really taken to pottery classes and it looks like we'll be doing them all year. He's also been borrowing books on pottery, and we've been watching "The Great Pottery Throwdown", since he's loving it so much. He's had about three classes, so far, but they are only having their first firing, so he's excited to see how his work comes out this week.

Arden and I are back into reading "Tragedy and Hope" for our part 2 on it's take on the history of ww2. And Irving, Arden and I are just finished reading "I Can Jump Puddles" as our family reading. I am looking to find the second and third sequels, so that we can get more insight into Australia at that time, from more of a first hand account. I am particularly interested in his take on the depression, as he has such a unique view on growing up in the bush, as someone living with polio. Irving has also been reading "Charlotte's Web", as a part of our friend's book club, and he's been loving it.

Arden is also doing some study on the idea of earth as GAIA- a living complex in itself, and the forces that affect it. We've started watching Brain Cox's "Forces of Nature" as part of his background research, as well as doing a range of reading.

As an update the older kids are busy with more grown up life- Willow is just being made team leader at work. She's been working in fintech since she was almost 19, initially more admin related work for the merchant operations area, and gradually with increasing responsibility doing online fraud analysis. She loves her work, and it suits her, since one of her hobbies as a home educated student was moderating online message boards.

Gabriel finished TAFE, in 2019, and was hoping to get a job in a cafe, when all of the covid stuff happened. He decided that he wasn't interested in doing more in the digital screen and media area, and instead he was interested in drawing and art- off screen, and also learning Japanese. As well as working part- time in a juice bar, he had been doing this at home, until this year, when he decided he is interested in studying at uni and he took a place in Curtin's uni ready course.