I don't know what happened to October either, aside from the roleplaying games continued (I have this vague idea that I will write about how roleplaying games are good for maths, drama and general language development one day).  I think we may have also started more hardcore development of my dice system.  12yo has been making suggestions and helping test mechanics.  October may have also been the month where I found out that 16yo was doing more algebra, because apparently he thinks he needs algebra for the TAFE course he's thinking of enrolling in.  Not sure how much he's done as I think he's gotten himself a new Khan Academy account instead of resetting the password for his existing one so I'll have to try to remember to check that up when I'm compiling the report for the moderator meeting.

I did not forget July, apparently we didn't do anything at all.

Or at least we didn't do anything that I took photos of.  The boys had random conversations with me and 16yo with his friends at gym about astrophysics, philosophy, life, the universe and everything and I really wish they would write this stuff down so I had proof.  14yo has been out and about with her boyfriend including going to AQWA.  I'm trying really hard to pressure them harder into writing down stuff and basically doing their own reports especially as they're doing so much stuff on their own now but still having zero luck with that.

12yo had homeschool group where he's made a couple of friends and is doing science and drama classes, and I won't usually use any photos I take there (which is not many at all) as it's hard not to get someone else in the shot.

During May, 12yo decided to  get into fruit sculpture, and made a ridiculous amount of stuff out of bananas.  Because I was really preoccupied with I can't remember what at the time, the only thing I caught a photo of was this "sword".

I did have time to make a trip to Spotlight to pick up some elastic and some fabric for 14yo to make a blanket thing that apparently only needs tying together.

I would love to say things are picking up but they're really not.  Issues are abounding, some of them standard teenage ones, some of them teenage politics I thought we might have a prayer of avoiding if we avoided using the school system (very naive thought there, because to completely avoid it I guess we'd have to exist in an insular community with only mostly like-minded individuals), a lot probably stemming from the other thing even though we're trying to both ignore it and deal with it as much as possible.

The smalls had a bit of an arty month.  12yo actually sat still long enough to twine a piece of blutack around a skewer (in fairness there was some mild distraction as he was watching Youtube at the same time and just wanted to do something with his hands while doing so) and in a completely separate session also started drawing DnD item and magic cards while waiting for a box that he'd bought to arrive.

One of the good things about The Big Reset (although the kids don't really feel it at the time) is the slow and very limited internet (my parents actually have a quota as they don't use nearly as much internet as we do or more specifically as the kids do), which means they tend to spend slightly less time on their devices.  The boys actually spent a few nights playing chess against each other and JJ, and Sprat taught them how to play a game with a Chinese name somewhat similar to Poker (the similarity that I could pick up being that you had similar collections of cards you could use).

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.

Comp season is one of our quieter periods and between that and juggling school transportation and crammed work days we got even less done than usual.  I was going to put together a compilation video of all the routines but some combination of my phone and computer has been giving me an inordinate amount of trouble has made getting photos and videos off it way harder than it should be in this day and age and I've given up on that for now.  That is one of the main reasons why I'm so horribly behind on hs misc.

10yo spent some pocket money on a crystal growing kit from Australian Geographic and grew it.

As February was ending I suspected Term 1 was going to be a write-off for the boys and unfortunately I wasn't wrong.  An additional and unforeseen problem with the school run was that even though it's short it seems to be further destroying my problem shoulder, so I really didn't want to drive anywhere, which given the time restrictions caused by school and the amount of pain I was in basically meant we got stuck with the Scitech homeschooling lessons I'd booked at the beginning of term, and me imposing 10am-12noon as "no non-educational videos and games" time if we were staying home.  They could still use their screens but had to be doing Khan Academy or making something, or doing any off-screen activities.

October started out with 11yo's bestie staying for the weekend and them asking if we could wander around Perth for a bit after visiting a store they wanted to browse.  9yo requested my phone to take a couple of photos of things that interested him:

The city has been trying to do more fun and interesting stuff so we tend to find random things whenever we go there.  At the time they were celebrating the arrival of spring so there were these random bird cages there, which were apparently great for photoshoots.

We didn't do much.  There was a lot of Horrible Histories and David Attenborough documentaries on Netflix, a lot of anime, a lot of discussion of character stereotypes.  13yo went through a period of refusing to go to bed, and when confronted on why, good-naturedly joked well he is a teenager, he needs to be rebellious about something.  I suggested that the stereotypical teen rebellion thing tended to happen because the children in question felt like they had no control of their lives due to spending large chunks of their day in school, then have to give up even more time on homework, and in order to make sure they're getting the study stuff done the parents are obliged to restrict the fun stuff.  He and his siblings however had due to the style of homeschooling we do, almost all the time in the world to do as they liked, and if he felt that bedtime or something else was cramping his style then he could simply bring it up and we could have a chat about it and either tell him why it