Winter Break!

Well unsurprisingly the last 5weeks have flown by!  We had a few jobs to do around here, in particular getting the carpet cleaned in all the bedrooms created a little chaos, but it's nice to have our home feeling refreshed after a thorough clean!  Everyone around here has jobs to do, and in some ways the little ones (Arden and Irving) are easier to direct to tasks, as Damien and I have more realistic expectations of where and how they can help, than we did with the older two, and they are accustomed to the idea that everyone has to help out to make our home feel loved and be liveable.  So we pulled all the furniture out of all the bedrooms, got the carpet cleaned and moved everybody into different rooms!  Was a bit of a job, but satisfying at the end when everything looked and felt so nice!

We headed off the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre's performance of "The Arrival", this time at UWA.  We had seen this before, but we love Shaun Tan's books and figured it would be worth seeing again.  It was the first time for Irving to see it, and he was entranced!  We had a little walk through UWA's gardens (I do love it there!)

We have an enormous old suitcase filled with lego, and I thought that it was time we started sorting it (we made quite a bit of progress but still have to finish).  The amount of blocks has been making it hard for everyone to rebuild models, so I started putting things into coloured boxes.  We managed to get one of our oldest sets rebuilt...The Knight Bus!

And whilst on the Harry Potter theme, Gabriel decided that he is interested in reading Harry Potter in Latin, and the first book arrived in the post recently!
"Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis".

We managed to get down to Elizabeth Quay for some iceskating again this year, we had been all intending to go, but we left booking a little late.  Personally I preferred the ice-skating being in the cultural centre, where we could sit and watch the skaters more easily, but the rink is a better size at the Quay.  Also we missed the very early sessions, when we could get up whilst it was still cold and feel like we were somewhere wintery!

Otherwise over the break, I've managed to get a little sewing in (working on my first pair of trousers-linen ones for Gabriel), taking in a skirt, learning about pattern drafting, adding embellishments to some pants that I had that are starting to look a bit sad!  So I've been pleased to clear out my pile a bit...still some stuff left there and a few days left, so hopefully more will get done!  Plus Gabriel's trousers aren't quite finished!  I ran out of thread, just as I got to the hems and sewing the belt loops!  :/  Gabriel and I had hoped to get through the pair he'll make during the break, but instead we're only just starting them.  On a positive not I feel like I know the process of making them well enough that it should go fairly smoothly.

Irving and Arden and I have also done a few walks, bike rides, bit of scootering and skateboarding and catching up with friends.  We'd been a bit slack with getting Arden riding a bike, he had a balance bike when small, but we hadn't got around to him pedalling, so we finally got that sorted, and spent some time alone the river.  Plus of course given the time of year that it is, we got wellies out and went splashing through puddles!

Checking out the water draining.

Puddles at the Park.

Stopping off for a drink!  (Plus had to take wellies off to be comfy!)

Umbrellas in preparation for rain, and heading out for a walk with Willow!

Relaxing in the various seasonal weather!

Time Constraints

I must admit that now that we have come into Irving's 4th year of life I was hoping that I would have more time to post on this blog a bit more regularly, and some of the time I can manage it, and other times this year, I feel like we are off doing something, supporting Willow on her uni experience or having family time.  We are finally on our winter break, and it is lovely to be able to take it a easy for a bit, and also enjoy the very mild winter that we have been experiencing.

Arden and I did some history walks around the city, earlier this past term, including an art deco tour of Perth and a Boom and Bust trail. 

Fabulous art deco building on Wellington st, was once a school.  We had a chat about going to school in such a beautiful old building, and talked about trying to imagine all the girls leaving school  (it was a girls' school).

We liked this gate.

We imagine that it once went up the hill, and to St. Mary's cathedral, but now it is barricaded and looks into the carpark!

We enjoyed a few coffee stops on our outing...part of the fun IMO.  Matcha lattes have been going down well around here!  :)

This was a nice surprise.

We discovered this hidden garden on our walk, on the way to trying to find the back view of Bishop Hale's house.  Even after living her 6years now, the city still has some unexpected surprises.  It did feel a bit like an elite hideaway, given that it is tucked down the back of bank offices, and was totally deserted since it was the weekend when we went through.

And at the very back of the garden, we could see Bishop Hale's house, which is now a restaurant.  Made us wonder about what other beautiful homes might be once been along the terrace and in the area.

We had been intending to get to Tranby house during this last block, but that still hasn't happened, and so will sit on my to do list for a while I imagine.  The last block that Arden did was focusing on animals, and some of their processes.  Arden did a bit of study on cuttlefish (I had not idea they were so fascinating- can change colour and shape!), Giraffes and Siberian tigers.  Plus we had some discussions about humans and sex and babies, and he did a self portrait. For Sex and babies we are big fans of the BBC's Human Body Series, and Willow and Gabriel grumble now when I show it!  I used it twice as preparation for the kids for home births (the younger two were born at home), as I like that it gives a bit of insight into birthing at home and avoids the horror stories that some women experience (which IMO is not a healthful introduction to birth and babies for small people).

Arden's self portrait.

Arden managed to finish his embroidery project and I need to help him to create it into a pillow now, and we took a break from formal maths, as he is a bit ahead, and we spent some time looking at the Wooden books mathematical series.  He also has been spending some time getting familar with his new wooden piccolo.

Gabriel has been working on doing some sketches of Games Workshop miniatures for his  art this term.  He will be progressing on to modelling and designing his own.  His sketches are coming along beautifully.

Gabriel has been improving his time management and we are now discussing his progress twice a week.  Beginning of week to see what he's up to,and at the end of the week to review his progress.  He is currently working on writing in the style of an epic, and is also planning an essay on the Trojan War.

Arden and Irving and I went down to WAAPA to see Eneksis in their free lunch time concert, we saw some of it, however Irving was finding it a bit difficult to settle this time.  A lovely lady, kept an eye on Arden so he could watch all of it, and then we spent a little time in the nearby park again, and we took a look at the fish pond.

Irving has been taking a little interest in writing and numbers, and is starting to get a bit easier to play games with.  Turns out he is quite adept with mazes too!
Some copywork by Irving.

Damien and I went down to see Willow perform in WAAPA's Life as a Cabaret performance recently.  She only had a small part as a volunteer and diploma student, but it was fabulous to get to see her in a show again, and doubly fun as it was probably the first child free wedding anniversary Damien and I have had since before Willow was born....though as she pointed out not quite child free!  She has also been doing a lot of drawing, and writing now that she is on  holidays, and has recovered from her weekend volunteering at Supernova.

This is a recording from Oratorio, when Willow performed in it earlier this year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsY1YDIpBLs

Willow's drawing

 
Willow has finally made it in Australia!

I was a little tempted to buy Willow this baby bib.  At the time of her birth I did not like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Damien found the name in an old story....sadly he doesn't know where!  Anyhow at the time of her birth there were very few Willows ( we liked that it means liberated in old English), and now she keeps being asked if she was named after Willow on Buffy, and unfortunately for her it was just not the case! 

I have finally finished sewing myself a bag, and now have 2 nice bags!  For years and years, I've had fairly sad bags for carrying all sorts of children's treasure, and as with my decision to be clean with my fourth child (no more smudgy marked pants for me!), nice bags seemed to be in order...even if they do still end up with interesting collections!

Bag no. One.

Bag number two

I also made another bra recently, and am thinking of trying a silk one next.

This past week has seen us busy giving the house a clean over, celebrating Irving's 4th birthday and heading off to see Shaun Tan's "The Arrival" performed by Spare Parts Puppet theatre.

Candles and Cake for Irving's birthday

Wandering through UWA on the way to see the Arrival.

Enjoying the mild winter at Elizabeth Quay with the family.

-

2025

Irving has just done a series of Shaun Tan classes at the Literature centre.  We have gone out of our way, over the years, to attend various activities that relate to him, as he is such an interesting artist, and storyteller.

Some other posts with Shaun Tan related excursions.

Tales From Outer Suburbia.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2013/10/journeys.html

Rules of Summer.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2017/10/fishes-family-learning.html

The Arrival again.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2017/07/winter-break.html

Hilariously I am back in a needing new bags stage.  All of my lovely bags started falling apart and I have had such a busy year, that I have not made any effort to do anything about it.

Adventures Of A Homeschool Graduate

Hello everyone! How are you all?

It's been a while since I've posted, but it appears that mum has been giving a few small mentions to what I've been doing at waapa. But why don't I give you my own update on it all?

Currently I'm in the process of exams. I've survived the first half of the semester! I've heard a lot of horror stories about studying at university and none of them have really materialised.
 I've been having a lot of fun though. I've already performed in two shows, I have a third coming up in under a week, and I've made quite a range of interesting friends. Of course, I've been doing much more than performing and socializing.

 The main thing I've noticed so far is that university isn't too different from homeschooling.

• Learning is self driven
     It's not quite the same as homeschooling, but quite a lot of the learning is self driven. Sure, I have to sit in a history class for an hour and listen to the lecturer talk about whatever era we're in now, but because it's only an hour there's a limit to what we can be told. Which leaves the opportunity to answer my own questions by googling and looking in the library.



• The lecturers will tell you about their passions
     In my experiences from being homeschooled, if I wanted to learn about a specific topic I would find someone who knows a lot about that topic and loves it. I've done that with voice acting - I emailed people who did it, asking for their experiences and for tips... I even ended up going to a studio to watch some voice acting in action.
     It's the same with the lecturers. The history lecturer was delighted when I told him I wanted to know more about music history, and gave me a list of his favourite history books. The music theory lecturer is also a flute tutor, and gave me a few practising techniques. If I'm looking for information on a certain topic, chances are someone there can inform me on it.

    Of course, there's the main big difference with the "socializing" (fun fact - "social" originally meant "devoted to/related to home life") side of things. Instead of going out and just making friends along the way, there's the school mentality where everyone has to have a friend.
   So there's a lot of acting from everyone. It's quite annoying. It's hard to see who people actually are underneath the persona they've come up with. Some people don't act, and most of them tend to be the people who were homeschooled for a year or two.


  It's being an interesting journey. My exams will be over this week, and then I'll be starting semester two in July. And maybe I'll be doing bachelor next year.

If people would like to hear more about being a homeschool graduate in university, let me know. I can give up dates on what I'm doing, my thoughts on certain subjects.

~Willow

History of Perth Plus

Arden, Irving and I have been continuing to get around the city and visit some historic locations and learn about the history of Perth.  We finished our geography section of this block with a walk to Herrison Island, where we visited that kangaroos again, and sat on the riverbank for a snack and continued reading, "Seven Little Australians."  We did some research into Yagan's story, since we also visited his monument on the island, and looked into the changing landscape of the city given the removal of many of the wetlands that once existed.

Last week we moved onto using some of the City of Perth's tourism walks to learn about settlement here, and we started with covicts and colonials.  This tied in nicely to our visit to Fremantle Prison (which we hadn't done since Arden was very little, so it was interesting to go through again; Irving also largely enjoyed it).  We are thinking of heading back to do another of the tours later in the year.

Looking through the corridor to the cells

A cell...more modern.  :/

The Anglican chapel.

Out front of the prison; some of the residences.

Entrance to the prison. (Was finally closed down in the 1990s after the dreadful conditions were made public!)

Heading back towards the centre of Fremantle.

Stopping off for hotdogs at Wassup Dog after our busy day.

Our view from Wassup dog.

We've all been learning about currency and money and the difference between the two and looking at how money has changed over the eras, and how gold has been used throughout time.  This series, Hidden Secrets of Money was our starting point and has been quite enlightening.  We ran into an Australian mint currency exchange in Forrest Place, where it was possible to get new coins, and Arden was keen for some, so he exchanged old currency for new.

He has been busking regularly for quite some time now, to learn about saving currrency, donating and having a bit to spend, but this week he was quite pleased to receive some macaroons from a market stall holder. This was a bit of a new event for him.  Amusingly sometimes Willow has been better at imagining random odd objects and receiving them. 

Irving has been dismantling things regularly for quite some time....all of the others around here had largely given this up by 2-3, so last night I was contemplating that we might need to get some cheap objects from the op shop to work on pulling apart and putting together again, to turn it towards something constructive...so today we removed some cupboard handles to clean the doors, put them back on again after, and clean the latch on my empty essential oil box and put it on again...all the while getting in the habit of putting the screws and bits in a container so they don't get misplaced.  It certainly engaged him for a while, and I'm hoping that with encouraging the idea of putting the bits together it will make our misplacing useful bits happen less...Next thing we need to develop is tuning instruments, as he keeps retuning the violin and guitars!

Arden and Gabriel both got some lovely new instruments from a local instrument maker who works in jarrah.  Gabriel is working on learning to blow through a reed currently, on his xaphoon, and Arden got a mini-size flute (was meant to be a piccolo but is probably a touch large), all the same Arden is quite pleased with his new instrument.

Willow has had a bit of interesting events happening recently, a film she was an extra in, "Hounds of Love" is finally in the cinema, and we will hopefully get to see it, and see if her scene made the film.  She also volunteered to help out in a WAAPA performance, as she thought that her circus skills might be helpful, so now she has a small part in "Life is a Cabaret".

I have been doing quite a bit of sewing, working on another bag, tidying up some bits that needed repairs in my pile, and then adding some detailing on this skirt I bought of ebay before I started wearing more old-fashioned clothes.  I took the skirt in earlier in the year, to make it more comfortable by giving it a waist, and then inspired by Evelyn Wood's youtube make overs, I added these details onto the bottom of it.

We also headed off to see Don Quixote as a ballet at His Majesty's recently.  I really enjoyed the fight scene, and loved that it was possible to see the influence of fencing on this style of dance.  I was also a bit excited to be wearing my lovely new velvet dress that I had purchased off Evelyn Wood's site in her sale section.  I haven't had quite such a lovely dress since having kids I think!

April

This past month has seen a lot of events happening, as well as us having a pleasant but too short Easter break.

Willow was preforming in her Uni Choir, Oratorio, at WAAPA, so  we headed out to see her sing.  Irving was quiet for 3/4 of it, which I was pretty happy with, and although grumbling towards the end, of course complained when it was over.  Afterwards Arden, Irving and I did some exploring around the nearby park whilst Gabriel headed to the city to busk.

The choir also did a full performance at St Mary's Cathedral, and as everyone but Damien had seen Willow sing at WAAPA, he went by himself to see her sing in Oratorio.

Some of Willow's music work from this past week.  One of my favourite parts of home ed, is that eventually some of what they can do, and are working on is just totally beyond you as a parent.  This is her uni work from last week, and whilst I learnt music with her up to a point, once Irving was born it was harder for me to keep apace, and only recently have I been doing extra music again.

Gabriel and Arden also did some workshop classes at Perth Zoo, which resulted in us having a rather full day out.  Arden's class focused on conservation, whilst Gabriel's focused on evolution.  We caught the ferry over the river of course, and as the weather was so lovely, it was a very relaxing ride.

Damien and I headed to the Joondalup festival with the littler ones for the first time, and although the festival is quite small, we really enjoyed it.  We found it a little more creative than the Fringe in some ways, and we particularly liked the community involvement, which we think is very lacking in Fringeworld.

Trying out the cloud at the Joondalup festival.

Over our Easter break we got out to see a few bands in Perth, and eat icecream at our favourite gelataria.  We divided into groups for our Easter shopping this year, with everyone (bar Irving) contributing some money towards chocolate and everyone helping to hide them and hunt for them.  Damien went with the older kids to an entrepreneur workshop for kids, which everyone found generally interesting, and has encouraged some thoughts about running businesses.  Willow, Gabriel and Arden all headed out to the movies by themselves, and it felt interesting to be transitioning Arden into the idea that he can go out with the older two.  He is of course feeling impatient to be getting out by himself!  Other than also catching up with friends I finally got a little sewing done, I would have liked to have done more, but the holidays seemed to fly by this time.

Using up scraps;pocket squares for Damien.

More scraps;bowties!

Planning a vintage Butterick shirt.

The cuffs! complete with vintage ricrac and buttons!

I'm currently preparing a simplicity pattern for Gabriel and I to work on.  We will be sewing him trousers; he will be doing navy cord and I will be working on olive linen.  I'm not sure he'll get to wear them for very long, as he is growing and growing right now, but I'm sure someone else around here will if he outgrows them quickly.

I also picked up Gabriel a copy of the Canterbury Tales to read this term, but we decided to rearrange our plan, and use Beowulf as our text instead.  He is still undecided on his focus for ancient history- but plans to make a decision after working on his timeline this fortnight.  We did a variety of writing styles last term, and he seems to have an aptitude for poetry, though isn't particularly inclined to write generally. 

Arden and I are reading "Seven Little Australians" by Ethel Turner, and I am contemplating reading the later books in the series for Arden.  We've started a block on geography and local history, and had a short start to the term last week, given ANZAC day was on Tuesday.  We headed out later in the week on a walk from the City to King's Park, observing the lay of the land and getting a sense of elevation and direction, so that we can draw our own topographical map of our local area.  We took the walk quite slowly, as Irving was walking the whole way too; we were all quite tired by the time we got to the end of the Kokoda track and headed along Lover's walk back to get a bus to the city.  Especially after in an inspired moment Irving helped us to miss 3 buses, followed by another 4!

Leaving the city, we got a bit distracted at Elizabeth's bookstore, and we had to buy "The House of Arden" by E. Nesbit when we found it there.  It was just a bit exciting to find a book with Arden's name in the title, and by one of my favourite children's authors.  Though my list of preferred children's authors might actually be quite long!

The stairs up to the Kokoda track.

Examining the old lake at the bottom of the track.

Lover's walk.

The view at the bottom of the walk.

We have a few outings planned this block, and the weather is being so beautiful that they should be lovely.