Summer Holidays

It seems like Summer has disappeared very quickly round here.  My normally speedy home education planning took far too long, due to chasing Irving around, but was finally finished just over a week ago (Yay!).  So now we are largely sorted for the coming years work for yr 10, yr 8 and yr 2.

This year we are focusing on getting Willow's music at a consistent level so that she can look at entry into WAAPA in the next couple of years.  So for her, this years curriculum is *very* music heavy.   She's already working on her music, and is doing well at being self directed and motivated.

Gabriel and Arden are yet to start work- as usual we are waiting til the worst of Summer is over (and everyone's birthdays). We still have two birthdays left for the Summer with Gabriel's the last one in a couple of weeks.

To complement Willow's music curriculum, and just because we like going to performances, we've been busy getting to lots of Fringe performances and are looking forward to some of the Perth Arts festival shows.  There's so many great things happening that it can be a bit hard to pick, but we felt it was particularly important to get to all the operas this year, given Willow's interest in classical voice, so we are off to see Madama Butterfly in the Arts festival, as well as two Baroque Orchestras.

One of our friends has also been doing computer portraits on the screen near PICA, in the Cultural and Centre and both Damien and Arden have had a turn being drawn on the big screen.

Damien

Arden

Over the New Year, we decided to get out of Perth, and we headed for our first trip down South.  We stayed with some friends in Walpole.  We headed off to the tree top walk, and visited the giant Tingle tree and the circular pool, as well as going fishing and visiting Denmark.  I *really* liked Denmark, it reminded me of the things that I miss about living in Adelaide.

I also completed my first machine sewing project recently, which I was very pleased with.  I was making some tap shorts, form a vintage pattern which I found online at Vera Venus and adapted. 

I've also been enjoying opening the freezer to get my home made butter out as needed all Summer.  It's so lovely to have a stash of butter awaiting me, from my preparations last winter.  :)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Cursive First

In the process of  my last meeting with my moderator, we were discussing why I decided to teach cursive first with Arden.  I suggested that I could send her some links on it, and found a few more that are interesting.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170829020016/http://donpotter.net/PDF/cursive-first.pdf

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2025 

My original post on teaching cursive.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2014/07/cursive.html

2014

We've recently had our annual review, which as usual I'm pleased is done, and we've pretty much finished our work for this year- Willow and Gabriel are just finishing off a few extra things. It's been very hectic chasing around our almost 18month old Irving, and doing yr 9, yr 7 and yr 1, but there's been lots of lovely work done and some really enjoyable events this year.

So after a very hectic term and year we are finally finished.

Arden finished his first knitting project earlier in the year.  A purse for his doll.  It was knitted with pure wool and then wet felted, and finished with a button.  We didn't really need to wet felt it, as Arden's knitting was very beautiful.  Often little people make a few mistakes here and there, and the wet felting helps to finish it off nicely.

Arden has been working at his cursive and print this year, with the focus on cursive.

 

I've been learning to write right handed at the same time!  The top is left, the bottom right.

 

Arden has been very lucky to go busking with some friends of ours this year.  He's been loving busking the harmonica, and has been experimenting with lots of instruments.

Gabriel finished knitting his socks.  He's become adept at following the patterns and has finally really settled into knitting well.

Willow finished her doll off finally.  She's being well loved by Irving :)

 

And she finished her weaving project: a small blanket!

She was lucky to get an opportunity to make a harp.

She also got to attend a recording session of voice overs, and get an idea of what it's like to be a voice actor.  She's also joined the Gilbert and Sullivan society with her Dad, Damien, which she is loving.  She's really enjoying getting to perform and sing on the stage again.

There has been a lot of interesting excursions and activities this year and particularly this term.  We've been to Herdsman Lake and the Literature Centre and learnt about beekeeping.  We've done lots of circus, jujutsu, basketball and dancing.  We've been to the ballet a few times (last performance is this week) and we won an incursion to the balllet (thanks ballet WA :) !) where we discovered that ballet originates from fencing! Not surprising when one thinks about it.

Anyway it's been a very full and interesting year.  With everyone progressing along nicely, and lots of fun and work along the way!

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2025

I've continued learning to be right handed, and my writing is now reasonable albeit slow.  It seems to have had the positive affect of improving my left handed writing too I think.  I never liked my left- handed "cursive" as it was a weird mess of real cursive and "linked up letters" as the Government/school called what they introduced to us.  For some reason instead of letting us finish off cursive, since we'd already started it, they had to change everyone over to the new system, at the same time.  I've been quite purposeful with my right hand, in trying to develop an attractive cursive style, and I think this is starting to blend over to me other side, which I did not expect.

Also the above is a good illustration of the silly way schools teach things.  Implementing with poor timing, and changing things because it would be easier for some, of course we can dumb everything down, but then the children who would thrive with the challenge of something more difficult are ignored then too.  The only people who are really served in this system are those that are in the middle, "average", and how many kids really fit that mould?

This is how cursive  was mostly likely removed as the main way we teach writing ( more on cursive here).  Which seems to have progressed to beginning with printing, and then moving to cursive, and now there are people that wonder why we need to write at all.  Sadly they are completely ignorant of the fact that doing complex finger based activities and developing dexterity strengthens the brain, and learning to write is as much about that as it is about the writing itself.

Alternatively much is done for the convenience of the teacher, because TBH it is a challenge to manage children.  They are in various levels of "asleep" mode compared to an adult, and so getting them to learn in  structured group is not natural to their current mode of being.  I share some links in this post about children's brainwaves.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2025/01/beginnings-and-endings-and-thoughts-on.html

We had a few fun filled years in the Gilbert and Sullivan society, whilst Willow was on her journey to getting into WAAPA.

Pirates of Penzance performance can be found here.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/05/pirates-of-penzance.html

Iolanthe can be found here.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2016/06/iolanthe-has-take-over.html

She still has her harp; it was another one of those excellent one off learning opportunities that we came across over the years.  Since Irving was very young, she did the class independantly, and managed most of the work herself, with some minor assistance.

Cursive

Over the years I've read a number of articles discussing the benefits of learning cursive and its importance in creating synapses and cross brain connections.  All of my children have taken a preference to doing a fancier style of cursive, and generally speaking I have taught cursive around the age of 9, or in around class 4.

This year, however, I am teaching Arden, cursive at the age of 6 in class 1.  Last year, to cover government requirements we did letters and worked on printing and some basic reading.  We also happened to read "The Secret Garden" again.  In the process of reading it, in particular a passage where Mary and Dicken's sister are speaking, it occured to me that Mary could do cursive but *not* print.  In the section that I was reading Martha (Dickon's sister) says that he can read print, but not cursive, and Mary says that she thinks that she may be able to print.  Previously I had always taken it that Mary hadn't learnt to write yet.  Anyway, for some reason I interpreted it the other way this time, that she could write, as in do cursive, but not print.  So I did a bit of research, and found that it was once usual to teach cursive first.

Anyway Arden is loving learning cursive, he says that it's easier than print and it certainly seems to have improved his ability to print.  We did a month of daily cursive, and now we are doing a cursive session once a week, but the aim is to make most written work cursive.

Here is Arden's most recent work.  His sentence was inspired by "The Highway Rat" by Julia Donaldson.



Here is a little bit more interesting reading on cursive.

Outings

We're currently on holidays- we decided that we like having a longer break during winter, so we've taken four weeks this time.  Turns out it is very useful, when we've ended up with so many events on!

We all went to see Spare Parts puppet theatre perform "The Little Prince", which is one of our favourite books around here.  The  puppet show was nicely done we thought, but we thought it was a little sad, how the kids couldn't just run with the imagination in it, and had to box it into reality.  The whole "that's not real" type of thing. 

We also had a homeschool excursion to Wilkinson's homestead in Gosnells, and took a walk along the Canning River.  The Homestead outing covered a good range of topics, fruit picking, making do and olden days school.  The kids all liked getting old fashioned names.  It was a very wet day, and we were lucky that it stopped raining before the end, so that we could pick some lemons and oranges to bring home.

Willow and Gabriel both performed in their Circus' schools latest show- Clowns vs Ninjas.  It was quite entertaining, and Willow certainly enjoyed the Ninja role.  She likes lego Ninjago, so the Ninja theme appealed to her very much.

Arden was excited to go for his first try at iceskating.  The rink was rather small and quite busy, but with the little people session it was still fairly good for space.

Arden and I have been on a few bird watching nature walks- around King's park, near the River and at Herdsman Lake. 

Observing ripples in a giant puddle.

Down at Herdman Lake.

Constructions

Some school work from earlier this year. Arden's first knitting project.  It has since been wet felted, and is awaiting being used for a craft project.

Gabriel's lego construction of one of Leonardo da Vinci's contraptions.

 Arden experimenting with tangrams.

We purchased a sewing machine earlier this year, and it has finally come out of the box, so Willow, Gabriel and I have been experimenting with it.  Gabriel and I have just been doing some lines.  Willow has been making little purses.

Tau

Hallo hallo!

How is everyone? Had a good week? :)

 On Saturday morning I made a lovely Tau - although most people would call it a Pie (or Pi). However, I call it tau because pi needs to be multiplied by two to make it a whole, while tau is just a whole. So that would mean a pie is actually half a Tau. Understand?

 I made some pastry on Friday (500 grams of flour, 250 grams of butter, and some salt and about a cup of water), and then on Saturday morning I put the oven to about 200 and then started browning the mince. I added some stock to the mince, then put in the carrot and potato that I'd diced into it.

 I halved the pastry and rolled out one to fit the tray. I rolled out the other half and cut a bit off to make the Tau sign.
 When the filling was ready I scooped it into the tray and ate what couldn't fit for breakfast. I put on the top of the Tau and added the Tau sign, then popped it in the oven whilst I got ready to leave for my circus class. When I had finished getting ready I turned off the heat and left the Tau in the oven.

 When I got home it was perfect, and I had a piece of it. It was so good cold, I don't want to have it warmed up!!

 Well, it was soon gone come Sunday evening. Here's the pictures of it:

Let me know if you make your own Tau! (or Pi!!)