Gradually getting into the swing of things.....

 So we began some structure learning at home in mid February, when the weather cooled off a bit.  I have been quite slack about making a full plan, but given we're part way through our "year 6" plan and I've been doing this so long, I  knew what I wanted to start with this year, and that was Greek Mythology.  So so far that has been Irving's and my main focus.  We started with a review of the Ancient Greek we were learning at the end of last year, and Irving has progressed onto lower case, and we've also been writing up some names of the Gods and Goddesses.  Last week we moved onto a bit of copper work, making some square shaped bowls (next time I'm hoping to do round ones) and this week I'm thinking we'll do some watercolour painting.  We've also been reading Padraic Colum's books on Greek Myth. (The Golden Fleece and The Adventures of Odyseus)

Gabriel turned 23 at the beginning of this year!

Funny to think that I started this blog back when he was 6!

Working on some watercolour painting inspired by reading Greek Mythology

Padraic Colum's "The Golden Fleece"

Copper work- Irving's on the left, mine on the right.

Irving working on his bowl.

We have also started onto some geometric drawing, which Irving is finding quite easy.  TBH I was not at all surprised by this, as he was always keen to get involved with compass and protractor when Arden was doing geometric drawing, and every now and then since he was about 5, he would go and get the tools out to draw up some circles.

After Ancient Greek studies we moved onto some physics, using Roberto Trostli's Physics is fun.  I still really like this book- the experiments are easily achievable at home, and we get good results from most of them.  The one below involved currents being created by different pigments so that it was possible to see how they flowed through the water.



We also started up some maths and grammar, but not a lot, as with it still being Summer time, I prefer to ease into that sort of work.  We have however been doing a lot of swimming, and enjoying spending plenty of time in our pool.

Arden has been at TAFE now since the beginning of Feb- studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, which he is enjoying.  Technically this is his year 12 year and thus he is at the end of his home education journey.  And so unless something very odd happens, I feel I am definitely down to just home educating one child.  Arden disagrees, on some version of this, and claims that he is not finished til the end of the year!

Irving and I have also been out and about for some excursions.  Last week was the maritime museum, and this week was Samson house in Fremantle.  We're onto a set of history excursions with the national trust- last time we did these as family weekend outings, so I'm looking forward to doing more in this manner.

Samson House in Freo

Pirates of Penzance is a family favourite around here- especially post Willow, Damien and Gabriel performing in it with the Gilbert and Sullivan society.(https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/05/pirates-of-penzance.html)  At the time Arden was quite small- maybe 7, and Irving was about 18months old.  We've listened to the music regularly over the years, but Irving certainly didn't remember the performance, so most of the family headed off to see the Western Australia Opera perform it, with our homeschooling group.  Overall it was excellent.

Now that I'm a little less time poor, I've gotten back into the habit of making fermented foods regularly.  Mostly beet kvass and sauerkraut, but a few others too from time to time.  This one was combined with paprika, and the current one is with apple.  So delicious!

Hard waste time was in March again this year, and we came across a few interesting things along the way.  We did bring home the two coffee machines- apparently there's often not a lot wrong with them, and since Irving is interested in repairs they're on our list of things to do.  I'm hoping we might get to them in the next few weeks, as well as cleaning out a coffee grinder and dismantling some scanners.  Irving has already become our printer technician, when Damien's out at work.

Arden has taken quite an interest in Formula one racing over the past year or so, so we had to get out to grill'd for an Oscar Piastri burger.

Thornton's eggs took me back to living in Glasgow, and particularly reminded my of a little Willow, who loved all things unicorn, and who is part of the reason that our blog is Unicorn Education.  :)

A few of Willow's unicorn crafts can be found at these links.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2011/08/at-home-in-perth.html

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/08/change.html

Summertime

 I seem to begin every year meaning to post our activities more regularly, and this year seems to have ended up the same.  Partly because, we have been very busy, and partly because now that I only have Irving left to home educate, I am trying to take advantage of having some small amount of time to myself again.  Amusingly Arden is very insistant that he is *still* home educated, but he isn't in that system any longer, but is busy off at TAFE, studying for his Diploma in Aviation Management.

We started off the year with a week of sailing, with Irving doing tackers 2, and he got a last minute offer to do Vacswim too, and so we also did a week of that.  It was lovely being out on the beach daily again.

We headed out to a lovely local Italian restaurant, Maruzella's for my birthday, where I got a complimentary birthday drink.  :)

We headed out to Northbridge to watch the 2025 Ausroad Cycling Nationals.

Trying out the new train line- heading out to Whiteman park.

Walking back to catch the train.

Irving doing some lego building, basing his design off a model in a recently purchased book.

Some of my recent paintings.  I haven't done a lot of painting this year- I've been busy doing some crafts again, and doing a bit more reading.

Ken Robinson and Creativity

 https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity

I love this Ted Talk *so* much.  Damien sent me a snippet from it a couple of days ago, and I decided that I needed to watch it again.  Probably I haven't seen it since 2008ish.  Right now it feels more relevant that ever IMO, given how many children go to school and end up being given some sort of label for a condition, instead of the teachers and people in their lives trying to understand what sort of people they are and helping them to find their purpose here.  

January

 So far our January has been rather quiet and fairly relaxing.  New Years saw us playing board games and hanging out as a family. And since then we've had a bunch of catch up with friends, sailing and nippers as well as reading "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" together- Arden, Irving and myself.  We've also been doing the Jim Kwik memory course on Mind Valley- with Gabriel too, and Irving and I have been trying the Quantum Jumping course. Next week will be quite a bit busier since Irving will be doing sailing lessons- tackers 2, and the following week we will be doing half the vacswim classes.  It turns out it's not possible to cancel a place!

There's been a bunch of planning and organising the last week or so.  Arden got offered a place at TAFE last week, which he accepted on Monday.  So this year he'll be studying a Diploma in Aviation Management, and so that's his year 12 and his last year  home schooling sorted!

  I thought we would be doing archery again this year, but Irving told me yesterday that he's not interested in doing more archery, and tbh we're doing enough physical activity ATM.  Sailing and swimming make life quite busy.  I've booked us into doing more woodworking classes from March.  If you've read much of my blog you'll know that we like to take the Summer easy, til things cool off more!  And another home ed friend has arranged a bunch of outings, so we've signed up for National trust history excursions, as well as the Literature centre.

Willow turned 25 this past week and it's funny to reminisce on all the changes that life has brought both because of her and our travels.  She inspired us to look at alternative education, and that as well as some other influences brought us here to home education.  We have tried so many different activities because home education and encouraging the kids pushed us outside of our comfort zone, and I'm incredibly grateful for this journey.  Being a parent and home educating has been the best thing that I have ever done, and I'm looking forward to seeing where it takes  us this year.

Willow with her teddy collection in 2001, when I was working part time and pregnant with Gabriel.

Beginnings and Endings and thoughts on Childhood

 Coming into 2025 I'm inclined to reflect on the past years homeschooling as I come to an end of the home ed journey, most likely, with my third child.  There have been so many changes over the years and so many things staying the same, in some ways.  When I became a parent this was the last thing on my mind, and I really thought that there would be some good alternative schools to meet my kids needs.  I feel this has only gotten worse in the last, approx 12years with the implementation of the national curriculum.  There are more teachers under strain, more students being failed, too many unnecessary labels because people no longer seem to understand basic childhood or human development and that these things happen over a curve, and then of course there are the people who actually require the labels, and the extra assistance but are likely lost in the noise of the misundertanding of childhood and a natural education.

As a long term Steiner inspired home educator, I have really liked Steiner's philosophy on giving children time to play and grow via imagination.  I find the Steiner school attitude too dogmatic generally, and interestingly that in reading Steiner himself,  he said that his way of doing would eventually become a dogma as we get further and further from his time.  Some of my main takeaways from reading and learning various aspects of Steiner are: stages of development- birth to 7 is all about imitation, kids copy everything and that is how they learn.  If you don't like how they are doing something, try to work out where it is coming from.  7-14 is about imagination, engaging in storying telling, play, creativity.  14-21 is about inspiration and this is the time when kids recognise their own inner shadows, and it is worth finding inspiring people and characters and mentors to guide them through darkness and into light.  21-28 is about ego and working out who one is as an individual.

Another aspect that I really appreciate in a Steiner inspired education is engaging head, heart and hands.  The head being the thinking intellectual side, the heart being the feeling, spiritual, emotional side, and the hands being the action oriented side.  A well rounded education should offer all of these things, and this is where a modern schooled education currently fails- the curriculum is stuffed too full and gives the impression that it caters to the arts and to movement, but allows the teacher very little flexibility to cater to her students as individuals within their group.

When we moved back to Australia and began permanently home educating in 2007, there were whispers of a national curriculum.  I was not impressed, living in the UK, we had chosen a Steiner school for DD24 because the papers were reporting all over the place that the national curriculum was failing our children.  When we settled into home ed, in Adelaide, and I had to understand the learning outcome style of reporting on education, it was challenging.  I had to take the idea of what was required in the outcomes and work out how what we were doing was meeting those outcomes.  As a basic idea of what this was like to navigate, an outcome could be that children learn to balance. From there it was up to the teacher to work out how their class would learn that skill- it could be skating, cycling, gym,etc.  As a newbie home education parent this was a challenge, and it must also have been a challenge for a newbie teacher.  The national curriculum told teachers what to do and when to do it, and sadly it removed the teachers ability to cater on a more individual level to their class, to garner how to meet the individual's within the class' needs.

As this has gone on the pigeonholing of students has become ever more ridiculous.  Are there any normal children left?  I find I hardly meet a person these days who has a child that is just a child.  I am intrigued by how disconnected we have become to children.  In the last few years I've come to understand children's brainwaves better, and the idea that Steiner put forth that children are in a dream like state.  Until seeing some of the recent research on this, I did not understand just how true this is.  Up til approximately 7 children are in a sleeping awake state.  The older and older they get, the more they grow out of this, their brainwaves change until they are in an adult waking state.  The under 7 stage is perfect for programming their minds and creating life long healthful habits if we treat our children well, but at least in Australia, we are not doing that.  We are asking them to be still, when they need to move and to learn proprioception, we are complaining that they are reading too late- when reading is actively connected to this awakening process,  we are forgetting the power that is in our children's readiness and trying to speed them up to suit school, instead of realising that school should be addressing our children's uniqueness and trying to identify their readiness.  It is interesting to me that instead of copying many of the Scandanavian countries styles of education, which dissuade from academic education before 7 we decided to copy a system that was reported on as failing.  One can only ask, why?

Some links on brainwaves and children (not my original reading, just a few from a brief search for this blog post)-

https://www.psypost.org/new-study-finds-theta-brainwave-activity-in-childhood-predicts-iq-at-age-18/

https://www.amandaleebrady.com/understanding-the-brainwaves-of-your-children/

https://boldscience.org/measuring-brainwaves-to-understand-how-children-learn/

https://startingblocks.gov.au/resources/parenting-and-home/your-childs-development/brain-development-in-children

https://silvamethodgb.com/why-children-learn-so-fast/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4354864/Brainwaves-predict-children-s-reading-ability.html

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29863816/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5593855/

Closing on another year

 This past term seems to have flown by and also to have been filled with a wide range of entertaining activities both at home and out and about.  What at first impression seemed to be going to be a quiet term ended up very busy.

We started off the term doing some geography- in particular looking at the areas extending out from Australia- Asia and New Zealand.  Our corresponding reading was "1421- The Year China Discovered the World" by Gavin Menzies.  Since Irving had taken to sailing, he was very interested in this book, because although it is a mixture of geography and history, it is written from Gavin Menzies viewpoint of being a submarine Captain.  As part of our geography studies we headed to Cottesloe and  checked out the sundial again.

The Cottesloe Sundial

Instructions for reading the Cottesloe sundial.

We managed to get to sailing a few weeks this term, despite the fact that sailing collided with Nippers.  After a chat with nippers, a decision was made to go sailing whenever a comp was happening with nippers, as Irving was happy to miss them.

Boats waiting for competition time.

My sketch of a catamaran.

With this new found love of boats, Irving got into building a boat from lego, machine sewing the sail and working out the ballast to get it floating.

Pirate ship with sails.

In the sink working out the ballast.

After nippers one day I made may way up the coast to our fishmonger, and had oysters.  Such a beautiful spot to stop.

At the beach for our nippers session.

Irving loves all sorts of old things, and he loves the idea of repairing them, and he had become captivated by the quill set below in a local shop in the city, so with some birthday money and some savings he saved up and bought himself this set.  He's been working on his handwriting with it fairly regularly.

Irving's homeschool market stall this year  included a few things left from last year- pottery items, a treasure bag, the plants he was preparing, and after a visit to the gem exhibition, and some handiwork with my old jewelry tools, some pendants.  We also had a very busy kitchen the day before, as he was busy making brownies.  The brownies were definitely the most popular product.

An example of one of Irving's pendants.

Practising his stall set up.

Our last main topic for the term, was Ancient Greece.  Irving had recently gotten into reading Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan had written the intro to the Greek Myth's book we had so I figured he'd find that a bit interesting too.  We read Roger Llancelyn Green's Greek Myth's first this time (we're going to read Padraic Colum in the beginning of next year.)  Since it was coming to the end of year, I took it as an opportunity to watch a couple of old movies- Jason and the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titans.  We also watched the Channel 4 series, "Home Greek Home", so he could see a bit more of what Greece is like.  Plus because he's interested in languages we did a short youtube course in Ancient Greek, where we focused on learning the alphabet.

Irving's Ancient Greek

My Ancient Greek Alphabet

Our woodwork term  had a delayed beginning and so we only ended up  with four classes this term.  We were  working on making bread boards and butter knives.  I just finished my board before the end of term, and Irving was still progressing on his.  He is doing an interesting design of a little mouse popping out of the board, that he came across in a woodwork book, that was bought for his birthday one year.

My rustic cheeseboard.

We had some excitement last week at sailing with our first experience of a lithium battery fire.  A rentable scooter was pulled out of the river, and the water caused the battery to catch alight.  Given that this is a hazard of lithium batteries, I was glad to have the experience during the day, with lots of helpful people about.  It was interesting to see how the powder extinguisher only partly quelled it.  Eventually it was taken onto the sand where it waited for the fire brigade.

Scooter on the sand.

We had a bunch of fun one off outings this term too.  One of our friends organised an end of year movie session- so we headed off to see "Wicked".  I wasn't expecting much, and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  The cinema had been upgraded too, so we all had excellent comfy reclining seats.  Then another friend arranged two educational sessions- one at the Perth Mint, and a Zookeeper 101 day, at the Perth zoo.  We had done the mint tour a bunch of times before, but Irving really enjoys the melting and setting gold session, so it was worth it.  The zookeeper 101 had a bunch of interesting behind the scenes activities- including cleaning out the kangaroo enclosure, feeding the lizards, and getting to see the storage areas for some of the animals meals.

Arden finished his tafe course this term, and also turned 17.  We headed out to ifly to do indoor skydiving for his birthday.  Just the five of us, as Willow had things to do in Manjimup, and couldn't get up here for the day.  I was a bit nervous about trying, but I was prepared to have a go.  Irving was also nervous.  Arden did a high flyer, but the rest of us stayed low- unsurprisingly he loved it, everyone else enjoyed it, and I was amazed to discover that I really enjoyed it too.  It has got to be one of my favourite aspects of home ed-trying things that I'm not usually interested in, and then being surprised at how my expectations vary from the reality of doing them.

Icecream cake and icecream for Arden.

I've been plodding away on my redbubble store, aiming to get a significant amount of designs on, after doing some research into how to get my site profitable and self sustaining.  So I achieved that goal after a very busy few months, and for now I've given myself a bit of a break from it.  It certainly has helped with how many views my shop is now getting.

I have bought my range of Irish Myth's myth mugs now.

My Irish Myth's Mug set

I bought a few of Irving's design's as gifts for family members for Christmas, after buying this one for our family, and really loving the simplicity of the design and how lovely the love heart looks at the end of the mug.  Irving's mug is here on his red bubble shop.

Irving's love heart mug

Since I've spent a lot of this year at Something French, in the city here, having a coffee and painting their patisseries, I decided to let them pick a picture and frame it as a gift.  They picked this one. I was so happy with how it looked in the black frame.  I also have it on my red bubble store.

My strawberry tart painting framed.