We took a fishing trip to Jurien but once again were not able to go out in the boat due to the howling winds.  The boys went fishing off the jetty, JJ caught a blowfish and the same seafull four times.  I caught some godrays and the kids checked out a sundial.  There wasn't enough sun to see what time the sundial thought it was, 11yo tried to take a guess based on the position of the sun while explaining how the sundial worked to 6yo.

We've had dramas with the big two for the last few months simply refusing to do their bookwork and occasionally also refusing to do anything I could use in place of that (including things that they get enthused about such as making their own books or building models, sounds too much like hard work and they'd much rather play games and chat with their friends on Skype all day).  We've had some serious chats about entitlement and how no matter what they decide to do in life, no matter how much they enjoy it, at some point there is going to be a hard slog.

Our year started fantastically with being able to go to a performance of The Lion King Broadway Musical courtesy of mother in law who bought us tickets.

We were up in the nosebleed section so couldn't see fine details of costumes or clear facial expressions but got an awesome view of everything going on on the stage and around the theatre (as the performers didn't restrict themselves to the stage).

December is always an odd time of year due to having to wind up kids activities, business for the year and organising whatever is going on for Christmas so I rarely have much homeschooly to write about.

The kids had their gymnastics end of year performance, the theme was "Back to the 80s".  Costumes were fantastic, the performances were great and I completely failed at taking any good photos.  The Christmas party followed directly afterwards including a visit from Santa.

At some point 6yo figured out how the juicer went together and proceeded to chop up apples to juice.  I came out when I heard the knife rhythmically chopping on the bench.  He was using it safely so I put down the chopping board, told him he needed to use that rather than cutting directly on the bench and supervised from a distance.

Fallen a bit behind on the regular homeschool blogging! I actually started this one in early December but didn't quite get around to finishing it so here it is now.

We started playing Ingress (we're Resistance) and have so far discovered a myriad of portals in familiar places and three new parks.  One of next year's goals is to try to go visit a new area at least once a week.  We also met up with a bunch of local players at Pioneer Park and they gave us stuff, and 10yo gave one of them a Jarvis virus that he'd managed to pick up from one of the green portals we'd hacked.  We've been doing a lot more walking as a result which is a nice bonus as we do quite a few activities already.

One of them was a familiar one at Frye Park in Kelmscott.  The kids had been to it once before and we revisited it as there were some portals there, and met up with some friends.

Might try to do these as monthly things rather than semi-random ones.

Firstly, we are chick central again.  About three clutches with 7-10 chicks in each one.  Chappie's family want some of the naked necks.  This was the first lot.  Idiot hen had gone next door to brood, kids heard the cheeping and went next door to investigate.  Neighbour was astonished as she hadn't even realised they were there behind the shed, and just as well they'd only hatched that morning as she'd been dogsitting and the dog had left earlier in the day.

The picture of them is as day olds, they're now a week or so and feathering up.

According to 6yo 2d shapes have "whip" and "lengf" and 3d shapes have "whip, lengf and dep".

Another collection of stuff that I usually don't get around to posting at the time either due to being in the middle of something or because it was a little thing.

Banana and toothpick sculpture made by 10yo

Apple and toothpick sculpture made by 10yo

Do you know how hard it is to do a coast to hills transect with three kids under 12?

Not that hard actually if you go with their interest levels.  I would have liked them to observe how the vegetation and soil changed as we went from the eastern outer metro to the coastal part of the Wheatbelt.  They were mostly interested in getting to the beach so we just ended up pointing out sand dunes that were covered in vegetation and having quick chats about why the vegetation is important for holding the sand together, and how the soil colour changed from browny-red clay to sand to white sand.

8yo has made it into the "Sunflowers" group which is a group of Level 2 girls who the coaches decide are good enough for competitions.  Level 3 is the official competition level for the PCYC clubs (I have no idea about in general) so the Level 2 girls get to go along to the comps for fun and get a medal based on their overall scores.  8yo participated in her first comp and got a silver.