Building Lego

Gabriel has been busy making robots, controlled by spiders, after watching some Beastie Boy film clips with us last week.  Damien and I were doing a bit of musical reminiscing after reading that one of them had recently died, and Gabriel found them inspiring for lego models.

Evolving into a flying robot.

Willow decided to redraw the Fibonacci curve to make it more flowing.

Amongst other projects in her last block on Ancient history, Willow made a lego model of one of Leonardo's machines.

Willow will soon be off for a week in Adelaide, to participate in a flute concert, and catch up with family.  Plus we've bought tickets to the ballet later in the year, which will also be exciting.

Willow has moved on to reading about Leonardo da Vinci and Gabriel and I have been reading Padraic Colum's 'Myths of the World'. 

Both have recently come to the end of their last blocks,  Willow will be moving on to Biology and Gabriel on to maths.  Willow will be using Kovac's Muscles and Bones as her main text, and we will complement it with Cure Tooth Decay, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration and some other interesting articles.  Gabriel and I will continue on with using JUMP maths.

Willow has also been volunteering at City Farm, which has been interesting on many levels.  She has been involved in various mosaic projects around the farm, and is really enjoying being involved in the community there.  However we have been quite amused by their conversations around food- despite being an organic farm, there is still a great interest at lunch time in MacDonalds, Mars Bars and white bread.  Each week Willow comes home with some sort of discussion about popular food culture.

Why we need to change

This young woman speaks beautifully about why we need different sorts of education.

http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com.au/p/speech.html

-

2025

This is just as relevant and interesting now, as it was the first time I heard it.

Progress

Willow has been experimenting with knitted flowers.

Trying out raft making

Willow's first try at drawing a fibonacci curve.

A knitted dress, for a doll.

Gabriel has been making knitted leaf brooches for the coming market.

Finally we've been trying out paper making. 

English, Gilgamesh, Craft and Samhain

Willow has come to the end of her first english block for the  year, and has done some beautiful written pieces.  She worked on short narratives and short descriptives using the wish, wonder and surprise theme, as well as doing a week on poetry work.

Gabriel and I moved on to reading about Gilgamesh and looking at ancient Mesopotamia combined with looking at the  nine parts of speech.  There was a painting day imitating the style of Gilgamesh by Bernada Bryson.  This was Gabriel's work.

Willow was busy planning her apron, styling her pattern and measuring and putting it together so that it would fit her.  Now that the pattern is sorted, was can get some fabric, and get it started.

She's also planning another stall at city farm, and has been busy making brooches.  Gabriel's been knitting some leaves, and I've gotten onto Arden's penguin's socks.

We celebrated Samhain quietly last weekend, and Gabriel was very pleased with his Jack-o-lantern.

And finally a picture by Arden.  A swan, a pelican and a duck waiting for a train.

-

2025

Gilgamesh by Bernada Bryson is such a lovely version that it's worth putting in the effort to find it.  I bought my copy of ebay.

Knitting and Thinking

This is great reading, on the importance of knitting and crafts in Steiner schools.

https://new.pyrites.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Knitting-begets-thinking.pdf

-

2025

All four of my children can knit- with Irving still in the process of developing more advanced skills.  Willow had enjoyed it the most, and done the most knitting.  But the main reason that I like having everyone being able to knit, is that they have the skills to deal with minor issues in knitted clothing.  The deskilling of society into consumers instead of creators has been extremely sad IMO, and has created enormous waste.  

I was part of the generation that lost those skills that those before me had- my mum could sew and knit well, my Dad could do exceptional woodwork and had great handyman and problem solving skills.  I did learn a bunch of these from my Dad, but as we started to homeschool I was aware just how many skills I had not received to enable me to pass them down easily.  I am really grateful to say that we have reclaimed some of them.

Willow's sock knitting

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2011/03/summer-coming-to-end.html

Gabriel learning to knit.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2008/07/activities.html

Gabriel's socks.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2014/12/2014.html

Arden learning to knit.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2014/05/projects.html

Arden's socks.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2020/09/term-2-lockdown-and-winter-solstice.html

Fibonacci and Geometric Doodling

A friend posted this on facebook recently- and it took us on a mathematical doodle journey.  It's just wonderful for all sorts of geometrical patterns.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXIMUkSXX0&feature=youtu.be

-

2025

I believe that this was a link to Vi Hart's youtube channel which now seems to have gone.  If you do a search a few of her things still come up, but most of them are now gone.  The whole family were huge Vi Hart fans, and Willow was inspired to do some interesting geometric maths thanks to Vi.

Willow's hexaflexagons.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2014/05/hexaflexagons.html

Willow's Tau Pie.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/search?q=pi

Doodles.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2019/08/term-2-highlights.htm

More hexaflexagons.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2020/09/term-2-lockdown-and-winter-solstice.html

After some more searching I have discovered that Vi Hart moved to vimeo.  This is a really amazing resource for art/maths/music.  She covered quite a diverse range of areas in her mathematical doodlings.
https://vimeo.com/vihart

Whilst trying to find out what had happened to her and her work I discovered that her Dad works in geometric sculptural designs and he has some interesting resources too.

https://www.georgehart.com/

Basketball week 1

This morning Willow and Gabriel went for the first basketball training session, with a group of homeschoolers. It was a bit early for us, as we tend to be rather casual, in the mornings, but Willow and Gabriel loved it, and I really like the coach's technique, it very much reminded me of Willow and Gabriel's swimming instructor in Adelaide. Warren (the basketball coach) talked and explained about ideas, and how to apply the ideas to playing. It seemed to me to give a more cohesive feel to the instruction.

 Over the last couple of weeks we've been working on a variety of things around here. Gabriel finished his local history-geography block, and has now moved onto Ancient history. We've been doing lots of map drawing with both of these blocks, and had some fun outings with the geography block. Last weekend we headed down to Rockingham, and caught the ferry to Penguin Island. It was amusing to see quite a few people walking from the mainland to the island- although apparently one needs to be careful of the tide. Plus the island was covered in seagulls! They were everywhere- and nesting- so they were not happy to have humans around, and there was often a lot of squawking. We saw one wild penguin, which was lucky, as they are usually out fishing during the day.

View from Penguin Island

A seagull

Map of Atlantis- Gabriel's ancient history block- discussing the search of Atlantis is it a myth or is it real?

Japanese Imperial symbol- Gabriel's form drawing

Willow has been working on her 'wish,wonder and surprise' block, so there has been lots of reading and lots of writing.

 She has also been completing some knitted chooks for her circus teacher, who ordered some from her, the weekend Willow and Gabriel had a stall at city farm.

Otherwise there has been some snowflake making for her geometry and nature block- not that we ever see snowflakes here.

And she's been notating a musical piece we've been listening to on youtube.

Otherwise, we've been rather busy, as there have been quite a few organised activities. Willow and Gabriel spent a day at City Farm, last week, for their school holiday activities. There were all sorts of things happening- mosiacs, wood work, circus skills, gardening, cooking. Both of them enjoyed the range of activities- and Willow came home having learnt to mosiac, and Gabriel came home with a wooden drum, that he made.

-

2025 

Not all that long after this Willow started volunteering at City Farm, helping out a local artist.

One of the mosaics she worked on is in this post.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2012/06/happenings.html

She also volunteered at Supernova as a mid-late teen.  She got some great life experience out of these opportunities.  Including volunteering at the Melbourne Supernova in 2019.  She ended up being a PA for various celebrities for a few years, and she really enjoyed the role.  It seemed to help that we had a been a significantly media/screen free family, as she didn't really know the celebrities and so wasn't star-struck by them.