-t Suffix

I often choose our spelling words based on mistakes I find in the childrens' rough drafts, but sometimes an error inspires an SWI investigation instead!

Today I edited a paper that spelled "asked" as "askt." We went over the word sum together (ask + ed ---> asked) but it also got me thinking.

When is < -t > the correct suffix?

So this morning for SWI we did an investigation to see what words the children could think of, and discover whether we could find any patterns.

sleep / slept

keep / kept

weep / wept

sweep / swept

creep / crept

kneel / knelt

mean / meant

leap / leapt

deal / dealt

dream / dreamt

learn / learnt

smell / smelt

spell / spelt

spoil / spoilt

We did notice that for most of these words, the initial vowel sound is long and then it changes to short when the base is shortened and < -t > is added. Also, for all of these words -- except learn, smell, spell, and spoil -- that initial vowel sound is a long e.

We realized that when this suffix is added to a word with the < ea > digraph, the < ea > spelling is preserved.

We also recognized that < -ed > is becoming a more acceptable suffix for all of these words except sleep and keep (for ee) and mean (for ea).

Now the children want to keep track of the publication dates on books that are using the newer form, so we can see when this cultural shift happened. (Besides old books, I do find some of these spellings are more common in British English.) And why are those few specific words resisting the change?

Examples:

Winter poem by Judith Nicholls
crept

A Considerable Speck poem by Robert Frost
smelt, dealt, crept, swept, slept

found in Poetry of Earth edited by Adrienne Adams, p.23

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Art History - Yoko Ono

In my 2025-2026 school year plan, I decided that our January artist study would be Yoko Ono. (Here's the complete list of all the artists we've learned about so far.) So now let's dive into some resources and my planning notes:

Yoko Ono
1933 -

also

Yoko Ono page at Wikipedia

Yoko Ono page at tate.org.uk

articles at the New York Times

Is the Yokossance Finally Here?
Apr 8, 2025

John Lennon Came to My School When I Was 8. Or Did I Imagine It?
Jan 21, 2025

Following Yoko Ono’s Anarchic Instructions
Feb 15, 2024

Yoko Ono: One Woman Show: 1960–1971
MoMA (includes recordings of her voice)

Painting To Be Stepped On, 1960-61

Touch Poem for Group of People, 1963

Bag Piece, 1964

Cut Piece, 1964

Grapefruit, 1964

Morning Piece, 1964-65

Apple, 1966

Half-a-Room, 1967

A Box of Smile, 1984

To See the Sky, 2015

Instructions for Paintings, 1961-62

"Forget It"

All About Yoko Ono's Husbands: Toshi Ichiyanagi, Anothony Cox and John Lennon

Plastic Ono Band, 1968

Bed-In, 1969

---

week of Jan 5:

Mon

Philosophy discussion, Is It Music?

here are my notes from this lesson in 2016, where I wrote down some of the children's comments... they are wonderful to read!

week of Jan 12:

Mon

look more closely at the instructions on the wall behind Yoko Ono at the start of that video... and consider whether we were completely misunderstanding her performance... it's not Music; it's Art
”Scream. 1. against the wind 2. against the wall 3. against the sky”

read blog post From a Whisper to a Scream: Following Yoko Ono’s Instructions

discuss the idea of "instruction pieces" as art

decide to turn the dogwood tree into a Wish Tree and invite parents, friends, and neighbors to add wishes to it

“Make a wish. Write it down on a piece of paper. Fold it and tie it around a branch of the wish tree. Ask your friend to do the same. Keep wishing.”

Yoko Ono is our January artist because I put them in order of birth... but it turns out very well to do a Wish Tree at the start of a new year!

"Wish Tree" (digital version)

week of Jan 19:

Mon

week of Jan 26:

Mon

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Illinois Exotic Species Coloring Book

Looking through my resources for the Southern Illinois block (grade 4 Local Geography, History & Industry), I came across this lovely coloring book.

Printed on nice heavy card, these beautiful illustrations come with helpful information on the back. Some of them would work very well in other blocks too, such as "Night Crawler" for Zoology, "Queen Anne's Lace" for Botany, or "Teasel" for Fibers & Clothing (teasers were an early tool used to card wool).

Here is the complete list:

Dame's Rocket

Eurasian Watermilfoil

Rusty Crayfish

Buckthorn

Japanese Beetle

Musk Thistle

Ruffe

Round Goby

German Yellowjacket

European Starling

Rock Dove

House Sparrow

Reed Canary Grass

Gypsy Moth

Chinese Mantis

Goldfish

Common Carp

Daphnia

Zebra Mussel

Asian Tiger Mosquito

Mute Swam

Multiflora Rose

Night Crawler

Kudzu

Asian Longhorned Beetle

Teasel

Garlic Mustard

Purple Loosestrife

Honey Bee

Wild Parsnip

Multicolored Asian Lady Beetle

Queen Anne's Lace

Monk Parakeet

European Corn Borer

Norway Rat

House Mouse

Ring-necked Pheasant

The book's introduction clarifies the difference between an exotic species and an invasive species.

Written by Michelle Garland, Carolyn P. Nixon, and Philip L. Nixon
Illustrated by Carolyn P. Nixon and Loren Kirkwood

Infinity Street

Just realized that I needed to write one thing down before I returned all my Nonny Hogrogian books and started work on Art History plans for Yoko Ono.

The Cat's Midsummer Jamboree by David Kherdian

And this has to do with teaching place value in math. Waldorf does this in 2nd grade and I -- because I'm also trained in Montessori -- use the Montessori color coded materials for place value in my Waldorf classroom.

Including the Infinity Street lesson!

from the simple family... all the way up to septillion

If this lesson is new to you, start here:

Introducing the Equals Sign ("Is the Same As") and Infinity
Jul 2020

How I Teach Place Value
Sep 2020

A Distraction of Prefixes
Dec 2024

I use Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Lloyd Moss for an introduction to the names of the higher families (trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, nonet).

Looking at musical terms is especially helpful for clarifying that the base is actually < sext > and not < sex > when representing six!

The Cat's Midsummer Jamboree could also be used in this way, and may be a little more thought-provoking. The cat begins by playing his music alone. As each animal joins him, the group grows and gets a new name.

cat with a mandolin

+ toad with a harmonica - duet

+ fox with a flute - trio

+ badger with a drum - quartet

+ skunk with a violin - quintet

+ goose with a bassoon - sextet

When they encounter a raccoon playing an accordion, the group grows larger once more. But David Kherdian stops using mathematical terms:

"The cat called up, 'Come with us, and we will have a jamboree.'"

It would be interesting to say to the children, instead of a jamboree, what should they call their group to show that it now has seven members?

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Puddle Question: Class Pets

Today we did a very interesting statistics Puddle Question. (Here is all the information on Science Puddle Questions and Math Puddle Questions.)

This prompt is from the Grade 3 Math book.

I was really interested to see the children's mathematical thinking, ie. how well they were able to collect, represent, and interpret data.

But what struck me the most was their philosophical thinking: how flexible they were with the concept of "pet" and how sensitively they responded to a child who was pet-less due to the recent death of her cat.

Of course then I realized that, because they opened the concept of "pet" up so far, they had much more complex data to represent in their reports... which actually did strengthen their mathematical thinking in the long run!

To begin the activity, you are supposed to give each child an index card.

The teacher guide then says to have the students write their current pet(s) "or the words no pets" on their card.

Each of the children then reads aloud what they put on their cards while the other students take notes, and then all of the index cards are displayed for people to refer back to while they put their report together.

The first question that came up was pet sitting. One child is pet sitting two fish and a snail for her neighbor. Does this count as a pet? We decided yes, but I noted that the children may need to find a way to represent in their data that those pets do not actually belong to that family.

The second question that came up was pets that had passed away. The teacher guide specifically says "current pets" so I said no.

Then the little girl who was (to an adult) pet-less raised her hand and asked about "non-living" pets such as a special stuffed animal. I remembered having a pet stick as a child. And then someone else asked about imaginary pets. Ultimately, I decided, "if it's a pet to you, write it down on your card."

Zac, age 1, finding a really great stick!

My son Zac, now age 10, wrote down that he had three pets. One rabbit (living), one rock (non-living), and one bird (imaginary). I had no idea he had an imaginary pet bird.

Allowing that little girl to have a pet crayon instead of a dead cat was so warm and kind on the part of the class! And then the children had all sorts of different sections and color coding and keys on their charts and graphs, in order to represent the more complex categories of information.

I have noticed that because we encourage open-ended thinking here, they find a lot of traditional assignments to be too confining. Here someone very calmly decided to give herself a 3 1/2 on the rubric!

We also used this activity as a chance to talk about drawing conclusions, and I read Poofy Loves Company by Nancy Winslow Parker at snack time.

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Charcoal Burners

Zac and I are continuing to read Swallows and Amazons on our vacation, and I just discovered a lovely chapter about Charcoal Burners. It's chapter XIII, and is very helpfully called "The Charcoal-Burners"!

There's also a little bit about them in the previous chapter, "Leading Lights":

Suddenly high in the darkness they saw a flicker of bright flame. There was another and then another, and then a pale blaze lighting a cloud of smoke. They all looked up towards it as if they were looking at a little window, high up in a black wall. As they watched, the figure of a man jumped into the middle of the smoke, a black, active figure, beating at the flames. The flames died down, and it was as if a dark blind were drawn over the little window. Then a new flame leapt up and again the man was there, and then that flame died like the others and there was nothing but the dark.

I mention this excerpt (and the following chapter, of course) because charcoal is a subject that we study in middle school in Waldorf. Chemistry, in grade 7, would be the most likely time. In fact, I recently talked with a 7th grade Waldorf teacher in Ireland that made char cloth with his class.

If you study the American Revolution in grade 8 (The Age of Revolution), charcoal would fit in perfectly here as well. Who can forget the 1776 song between Abigail and John Adams about saltpeter and pins?

The three ingredients for black powder are sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter.

Of these, you have to mine sulfur, but you can make charcoal and saltpeter yourself with a little know-how!

Besides having a story you can use to tell children about charcoal burning, visuals are also nice. So I thought about the living history programs done by the BBC. Zac watched the first three of these when he was nine.

TV Shows - age 9
Secrets of the Castle (medieval France under King Louis IX, 1230s & 40s)
Tudor Monastery Farm (England, Tudor period, King Henry VII, 1500)
Tales from the Green Valley (Wales, Stuart period, King James VI/I, 1620)

We have not yet done the other three, but I watched them on my own:
Victorian Farm
Edwardian Farm
Wartime Farm

Because charcoal burning was such a key profession, they often mention it in these programs. For Tales from the Green Valley, it is in the May episode (3:54:05 - 4:01:37).

It is also covered in Edwardian Farm, in a longer segment which I can't seem to find right now! If someone knows of a link to it, please let me know.

Fun fact: Swallows and Amazons also has a lot of sections in it about reading a barometer, so I've addded them to my Barometer blog post!

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Making Christmas Crackers

Our second holiday craft project for the vacation (be sure to check out tiny gift boxes made from greeting cards, if you missed it) is Christmas crackers!

This is our newest favorite holiday tradition! Tomorrow we will put one on each plate set out for the Christmas meal, so that everyone can have the fun of pulling their crackers and then wearing their paper crowns at dinner.

Here are the instructions from Diane in Denmark, plus my photos and tips.

Zac and my mom are in the kitchen doing holiday baking (pumpkin pie, apple crisp, pecan pie squares) and I am making the Christmas crackers!

Here are the supplies:

cardboard tubes (whole and half), snaps, paper crowns, jokes

tape, curling ribbon, wrapping paper scraps, knife, scissors, treats

You can use toilet paper tubes for this (this bamboo toilet paper has nice sturdy white tubes) but they don't hold as many treats, so I've been using the cardboard tubes that curling ribbon comes on. They are lovely and fat.

toilet paper tube (top)
curling ribbon tube (bottom)

I made six crackers today.

(The half tubes are just for shaping the crackers; they aren't consumed.)

You can use all kinds of treats to fill your crackers. Paper crowns and jokes are traditional. We also like to put in lots of candies. I usually do a big shop at TJ Maxx or HomeGoods and go through their holiday food aisles and look for everything that is in individual packaging. Each cracker only holds about 6 candies, so we definitely over-shop.

Tip #1: Taste all the candies in advance! (I think this is Zac's favorite part.) One time we got a fancy Limoncello candy that was extremely nasty.

Tip #2: This craft is a lovely use of large-ish wrapping paper scraps. The paper needs to be wide enough to fit all the way around your center tube, and long enough for your center tube and the two half tubes plus a bit more.

To fit my tubes today, I used pieces that were about 9 inches x 15 inches.

Once you have your wrapping paper cut, get your remaining supplies ready. First, tape the snap (if using) into your center tube.

Then add the paper crown, Christmas joke, and little treats!

Now lay the center tube onto your wrapping paper, with a half tube carefully in place on either side, and tape the wrapping paper to the center tube only. That's because you'll be removing the half tubes later.

Next, roll the wrapping paper in place around all the tubes and tape it in place (for this, put tape on the wrapping paper that is around the center tube as well as the half tubes). Now, before you slither out the half tubes, you'll want to scrunch the wrapping paper a bit right there at the joins.

That is to prepare it for the ribbon, which will be coming in just a moment.

Now tie the ribbon tightly in place.

Tip #3: Don't place the ribbon too close to the end of the tube, or it will tear on the stiff cardboard edge when you pull it tight.

Tip #4: Before tying a knot in the ribbon, slip the half tube out a bit and check to see that the hole is not too big still. It will feel tight but may not be tight. And if it's not tight, beware. We had a sneaky lemon drop slip out!

You want it to look like this:

Now do the same with the other end, curl the ends of your ribbon, and step back and enjoy the results of your handiwork!

These are really fun and easy to do, and you can make them for all sorts of holidays and celebrations, including Valentine's Day, Easter, and birthdays!

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