Perth, W.A's biggest city

Perth is W.A's biggest city. Many tourists come there every year. One of the biggest attractions is Fremantle(Freo). People flock to Frematle in the hot weather.

Subiaco is a pretty little place. The Subiaco Farmers Market is open every Saturday. The market sells macaroons,crepes,fruit,vegetables,meat,and dairy. The Main Street has cafes,bistros,shops,a movie theatre,and other attractions.

The Swan River is vast. On the southern side there is mini beachy spots you could swim in. In summer people hire Catamarans for a hour or so and sail up the river. The ferry across the river takes 7-8 minutes. Many activities happen on both sides of the river.

Kings Park is another big attraction. The Park is 400 hectares,including the Botanic Gardens. Kings park has a canopy walk,where part of it is glass. The view from the top of the glass segment is amazing. On one side is the Swan River,and on the other side is there are native trees. At the end of the canopy walk is a path. To the right is a fountain,which spurts up every 5 or so minutes.

Perth has a large selection of cafes and restaurants around the city. A few are: Cafe Dome,The Hilton, and the Burger Bistro. They serve yummy food and drinks. Cafe Dome is cosy. The Hilton serve excellent buffet breakfast. The Burger Bistro serve delicious burgers and yummy chips.

So why not visit Perth for a while? We Western Australians would love you to come and see what Perth has to offer!

Willowunicorn    

 

Holiday Recovery

We're back into our usual routine this week, after lots of interesting activities and outings over the holidays- the first week was really relaxing and the second week was exhausting!

Willow and Gabriel spent varying amounts of time at City Farm helping out and doing activities for the school holiday program there.  Both had a fabulous time participating in woodwork, gardening, soap making, woodwork, amongst other things. 

This week saw Willow finishing her apron finally -it looks amazing, and is just in need of an iron to finish it off nicely. (She hand sewed this).

She's now on her way to planning some slippers to make.

We finally received our JUMP workbooks, which I'm quite pleased about as it will simplify doing maths- no more copying questions out for me!  We ordered a trial pack from grade 1-8, which offered one of each workbook.  Perfect for us really, and I've been really happy with the way they arrange maths.  Just need to pair it with the online teacher guides and we're all set.

Gabriel is still working on a block on ancient Egypt and we're reading Roger Lancellyn Green's book on Egyptian Myth.  Willow is doing a musical block, looking at different regions of the world and progressing into medieval music, it ties in quite nicely with her musicianship classes, where they are looking at studying different musical pieces and learning about composers and notation.

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2025

Willow changed from doing choral classes after our first year in Perth ( at this stage she was doing choral classes and suzuki flute), and shifted over the doing the Musicianship lessons which use the Kodaly method.  We started off with a local flute teacher, but that wasn't working well for us, so we starting doing remote lessons with the teacher we had in Adelaide, then we had communication issues based off the distance, so we returned to local lessons with another teacher.  We didn't have much success with local teachers TBH- this next one was rather temperamental, and so after a break, we moved onto private singing lessons- first with a jazz singer, and later with an Opera singer.  This was all over the course of about 5 years.  

Holidays

This morning we are all enjoying a day of sitting about and doing nothing.  Sometimes I find it quite crazy that homeschooling we can end up very busy, but the good thing about it, is that it's almost always because we are doing something really fun.

Last week Gabriel and I started on learning about ancient Egypt, and we headed to the museum of WA where we found a few bits about Egypt.  There was a casting of the Rosetta stone, and some other castings.  It was nice to be able to see some copies, though the small room of Egyptian artefacts at the South Australian museum is better really.  Though a bit creepy all the same (I've never liked it since first seeing it when I was about 8.)

Last week's pyramid making

Willow finished her block on anatomy, and has moved onto studying music.  She's settling into being back home after her trip away, and has been a little worn out after so many activities and outings.  Here's some sketches from her last block.

A self portrait

The end of the week involved lots of activities.  A friend who is a magician came around for dinner, and the kids and Damien demonstrated all the magic tricks they have been learning, so it made for quite an entertaining night.  Friday we played basketball and headed out to busk in the rain.  Saturday we did our usual leisurely shopping.  Sunday we went out to the museum, had dinner and went to listen to a band and watch some dancing, and play pool.  The kids are starting to get quite good at pool, and Willow was invited to learn some dance steps.  It was a lovely way to spend the end of the week before have a holiday break. 


Got to love the blend of natural learning with more structured school work.

Willow busking with her flute.

Happenings

Willow is in Adelaide, so we're having a quieter homeschool week around here.  Gabriel has been busy working away at maths, and it seems that doing maths at home is just like at school.  If you can draw all over it, why not? 

I really like the mouse with the cheese. (spot the person throwing the cheese.)

I've been experimenting with storage solutions for vegies after watching this video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG9xYVyAnuc&feature=youtu.be
We've been having quite good success with celery, leeks, carrots and a variety of herbs.

Gabriel has started his own lego blog, partly inspired by Willow's blogging.  Now Arden is discussing his plans for a cooking and lego blog.  I was quite amused by this, and suggested that it might be about lego people cooking.

Gabriel's socking knitting is finally progressing- he cast on a few times- and had a variety of annoying little problems.  He now has a nice 1/2dozen or so rows of rib happening.

Willow headed to Adelaide to stay with family last week.  She's performing in a flute concert there.  It's been quite an exciting time for her, heading away for her first proper trip without us.  Hopefully she'll come back feeling rejuvenated.

 This is one of the mosaics that Willow has been working on at City Farm.

Finally there are some models that we made this week.

Winter Solstice

This morning Damien, Gabriel and I got up rather early, but not quite early enough to celebrate the shortest day.  We're not early risers round here, so we set the alarm for 1/2 hour before sunrise, since there's no hills to the east of us, as in Adelaide, it was already bright when we got up.  However we had a pleasant chilly start to the morning (it was only around 3degrees this morning), with candles lit, hot soup and hot tea for breakfast.  Arden slept through it, and Willow wasn't here, as she's in Adelaide.

After our breakfast feast, we made rafts, which we took down to Claisebrook to try out.  We had quite a bit of fun, chasing after the rafts.

Mini raft for Arden.

 Gabriel's raft

Setting sail

 Sunk!

We're already planning some amendments to our design.

We spent most of the rest of the day out doors.  We played some basketball, and did maths in the sun.  Seems that Gabriel might do maths faster if we're sitting outside, we're planning on doing it again next week, to see how it goes.

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2025

It's just been Winter solstice here, and we still start with an early morning.  Yesterday was very rainy, so we delayed til today, so that we were able to do our current tradition of an early morning fire on the balcony.  Sadly we didn't do damper in the embers this year, but Damien did make some delicious no knead bread.

Happenings

Willow is in Adelaide, so we're having a quieter homeschool week around here.  Gabriel has been busy working away at maths, and it seems that doing maths at home is just like at school.  If you can draw all over it, why not? 

I really like the mouse with the cheese. (spot the person throwing the cheese.)

I've been experimenting with storage solutions for vegies after watching this video.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG9xYVyAnuc&feature=youtu.be
We've been having quite good success with celery, leeks, carrots and a variety of herbs.

Gabriel has started his own lego blog, partly inspired by Willow's blogging.  Now Arden is discussing his plans for a cooking and lego blog.  I was quite amused by this, and suggested that it might be about lego people cooking.

Gabriel's socking knitting is finally progressing- he cast on a few times- and had a variety of annoying little problems.  He now has a nice 1/2dozen or so rows of rib happening.

Willow headed to Adelaide to stay with family last week.  She's performing in a flute concert there.  It's been quite an exciting time for her, heading away for her first proper trip without us.  Hopefully she'll come back feeling rejuvenated.

 This is one of the mosaics that Willow has been working on at City Farm.

Finally there are some models that we made this week.

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.