Thursday, June 21, 2012

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.

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.





Saturday, June 2, 2012

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 Paraic 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.