I usually don't do December and January unless interesting things happen as December is usually write-off month (too many end of year things happening for anything to be effectively planned and even if it could be planned we'd be exhausted as normally around the end of year things we just want to chill) and January is planning month (because my organisational skills are that atrocious that I need an entire month to plan).

I thought I'd already done August Homeschool Miscellany but apparently I'd done July and collected photos for August but not actually written the post.  Oops.  So everything ended up getting grouped as I've been struggling this year.

It's no accident that October was left out, apparently we didn't do anything that I could include.

Goolugatup Heathcote Museum

We initially heard that there was a museum in the building of the Heathcote Cultural Precinct when we attended a relative's birthday party there.  The precinct was a mental institution in the 1920s for mildly afflicted people and was one of the pioneering ones that broke away from the methods that seem to result in buildings being haunted.

What we didn't know was that the museum was really, really tiny (one room) and we had to wander through the art gallery to get there.

I wrote July HS Misc pretty late at night and completely forgot I had told @bearone I would do this one (which is "the next one" from my last one XD) with explanations as to how our crazy shenanigans can translate into stuff to soothe the Education Department.  Was going to edit the original post but it got a bit messy and I started rewriting the entire thing so thought it might be somewhat safer to do a "companion" type post.  And I'll be somewhat recycling the photos from that post (though I think I'll just screenie the sets to make my life easier), so watch out for the fake wounds again.

WARNING: there are fake wounds made of Vaseline, flour and red food colouring about halfway through this post.

Broke the habit!

For now.

My head is still all over the place and and trying to get and keep organised is presenting its usual massive challenge, exacerbated by the fact the children have been staggering being exhausted for no apparent reason lately (a possible reason is growth spurts, because they're lethargic and sleep a lot and suddenly they're bigger, especially the boys).

July was pretty cruisy but as everything is pretty much back to normal (I think we're still meant to be social distancing as the marks in checkout lines and the enlarged aisles in bigger stores are still present but seeing as we've never had community transmission ever more and more and more people seem to be forgetting/ignoring this) we've been doing more.

The garden has been doing fantastic and my little nephew keeps asking to come over so he can raid.

I think I've inadvertently set that precedent I was trying to avoid x_x I blame covid.

During the period of "self isolation" (we were advised to not go out unless it was for essential purposes such as grocery shopping but full lockdown was never enforced), aside from occasionally trying to push bookwork (which is always destined for failure when everyone hates it so much), we all ended up just doing our own thing. 

For 15yo it was endless gaming and random dives into rabbit holes on various topics which he would then come out to discuss with us (mostly current affairs though we've also had some crazy discussions on philosophy and ethics that I've usually handballed to JJ because he's done a lot more of those things, most recent ones being stem cell research and the morality of the same actions in different contexts).

13yo spent a lot of time writing fanfics, learning video editing, drawing, making cosplay items and engaging in various shenanigans.

If you know that I only clump months if at least one of them has been quiet/lazy what does this tell you? XD

_{I also did it at the end of last year I hope that didn't set a precedent >_>}

Everything kind of completely fell apart in October.  12yo had caught everything under the sun in Term 3 and so had missed a fair chunk of it.  At the beginning of Term 4 she continued insisting that she loved school and still wanted to go, but two weeks in I could count on one hand the number of times she had actually gone.  She kept insisting she was "sick" or "too tired" but would always be better just in time for gymnastics.  Things eventually came to a head when we had a massive blowout as I told her if she was really that sick then she was not going to gymnastics so she could recover properly and she told me to pull her out of school so she could go to gym (a threat I'd made a few times previously but hadn't done because I give too many chances).  I tried to get her to be reasonable and told her she could go to gym, and then she had to go to school for the rest of the week.  If she wanted to quit after that she was to tell me on the weekend and I

The mess that has been this year continued along with my sustained failing to manage one in school and two out.  I've ended up palming most of the school-related stuff off to JJ, which has mostly been parent/teacher meetings and he's supposed to be helping her with homework and doing the admin stuff too but somehow I'm still getting stuck with that (guess the 12yo is just used to me dealing with most things).

10yo got into making paper planes again, he was happily off on his own once I'd reminded him how to make them.  As he was occasionally cutting our printing paper into squares for some of the plane designs, he decided not to let the off-cuts go to waste and started making smaller and smaller planes.  I think he remembered doing something similar last year.

We were still on Christmas Island for most of January so it was still mostly geared towards being with family.

The teenager made the decision some time this month that he needed to be more responsible and started voluntarily practising basic life skills.  One involved cooking up a batch of sausages for lunch (plus both boys just felt like sausage sizzle apparently), and while he was about it he decided to experiment with steaming some of them.