Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Homemade Calendars - 2025 Edition

We love making handmade calendars each year and giving them as gifts to family and friends (see The Maths of Practical Life: Clocks & Calendars)!

This project is particularly helpful for first graders, especially those who may still be writing their numbers in Backwards Land.

We write letters so much more often than we do numbers, and many times there's not the muscle memory for how a number should go. For the older children, it's just a chance to have fun and to make a lovely handmade gift!

This year we are focusing on collage, and doing mindbending and creative prompts from Richard Kehl's book How to Make a Zero Backwards: An Activity Book for the Imagination. Here are my notes as we go along!

Other topics of study this month are The Story of Geometry for the older students (11-13) and An Introduction to Grammar for the younger (8-10).


Jan - Mixed-Up Animals

set out three trays on the floor to help corral animal parts!


Feb - Trading Cards

cut down jumbo card stock tags to make the "trading cards"

make 3 or more cards, then mount them on the page

for this project, the children used colored pencils

except for Zac, who used wallpaper samples!


Mar - Sky, Handle, Shoe


Apr - Flowers from Their Names


May - Sky Shop


Jun - Magic Names


Jul - Carnival Front


Aug - A Visit to a Strange Land


Sep - An Eye Chart


Oct - Basic Ideas


Nov - Bottom and Top


Dec - Picture Magnet


front cover - Self-Portrait


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Tuesday, November 5, 2024

How I Teach the Electoral College to Kids


states are colored red & blue on this map based on the 2020 results


Here are my notes on teaching about voting (General Election, Nov 2024):

Wed Oct 23
explain early voting

Thu Oct 24
explain voting by mail


Mon Oct 28
read Leo's First Vote! by Christina Soontornvat

Tue Oct 29
read The Next President: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of America’s Presidents by Kate Messner

Wed Oct 30
read Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio (introduces Electoral College)

Thu Oct 31
tie US maps in with Letter Writing (look at postal abbreviations) & play Election Night! game (Electoral College map has been updated for 2024)



Mon Nov 4 - do more US map activities & play Election Night! game again


Tue Nov 5 - convert blank US maps to electoral college maps, send home for students to color red/blue on Election Night

    FREE at TpT:

    Blank US Map (with Alaska and Hawai'i to scale)
    I've been looking for a map like this for a long time, and it was really fun to show it to the children. It has the sizes of each state to scale. It's amazing to see this and then remember that Alaska is only worth 3 votes! That's because Alaska has a very small population.

    Your number of Electoral College votes is your number of Senators (everyone gets 2) + Representatives (this is based on population).


    Blank US Map with States Labeled
    This is the map we will use to create our Electoral College map.


Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math
A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.
The New York Times - Oct 24, 2024



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Sunday, November 3, 2024

Geometry Scope & Sequence

Some quick notes about the scope & sequence of Geometry in grades 1-8 in the Waldorf curriculum!


Grades 1 - 4

The journey to Geometry begins with four years of careful Form Drawing (also used to introduce Penmanship, this is the very first block of Grade 1).


Grade 5

Jamie York recommends doing "Freehand Geometry and Fifth Grade Fractions" as Main Lesson Block #1 of 3 math blocks for the fifth grade year.

If you don't have Jamie's book for grades 1-5 (the Freehand Geometry info is on page 83), you could instead download Volume 2: Freehand Form Drawing and Basic Geometric Construction in Grades 4 and 5 by Ernst Schuberth, which is available FREE as a PDF from the Online Waldorf Library.

    Ernst Schuberth has written wonderful books on the teaching of geometry, but one should note that they are out of step with the progression of math skills recommended by Jamie York.

    Jamie writes on page 83 of his Making Math Meaningful: A Source Book for Teaching Math in Grades One Through Five, "We recommend freehand geometry in fifth grade, and geometric drawing (with compass and straightedge) for sixth grade, whereas Schuberth lists both of these for a year earlier."

    Thus, Schuberth's grade 4 & 5 book can be seen as a grade 5 & 6 book. Here are his grade 4 skills notes regarding lessons in Geometric Drawing, which we may use for this block:

    "Every teacher can decide for himself where an appropriate place for geometric form drawing is in the lesson plan. For example, as a part of a form drawing block or tacked onto the end of an arithmetic block would certainly be suitable. Taking the seasons into consideration, I always found that the winter is the best time for geometry main lessons." (page 13)

    "Geometry in the fifth grade is similar to that in the fourth grade in as far as it is still free-hand geometry and viewed as an extension of form drawing. The construction descriptions suggested here belong, in a narrower sense, to the mathematics lessons." (page 43)

    Students are NOT given a straight edge or a compass until 6th grade!

    Exercises covered in Schuberth's book:

      circle
      from the circle to the ellipse
      points of a circle
      tangents
      stargazing
      lemniscate
      clocks
      angle measurement
      degrees
      acute, obtuse, right, straight, and full angles
      intersecting lines
      vertical, straight, and supplementary angles
      vertex
      parallel lines
      from the circle to the triangle
      triangle exercises
      from the circle to the square
      square, rectangle, rhombus, parallelogram, trapezoid, deltoid
      quadrangle exercises
      light and shadow around a sphere


It's worth mentioning that the many years of Handwork that the children have done have also laid a helpful foundation for spatial reasoning! In Zen and the Art of Knitting: Exploring the Links Between Knitting, Spirituality, and Creativity Bernadette Murphy devotes an entire chapter to Waldorf schools. She describes seeing the following in a grade 5 Handwork class:

    The girl making the blue and purple sock realizes, after turning the heel, that the foot's too big. She tries it on to assess the problem. Too wide, she decides. The helper teacher comes over to witness the predicament. I'm thinking of all the different things that the helper might tell the girl how to fix it, working out in my mind what I'd do if the sock were mine. The helper, though, doesn't tell her what to do or give advice.

    "What do you think?" she asks the girl. "What could you do to make it work?"

    The girl thinks for a moment and announces a set of decreases she could perform to counteract the mistake.

    "That might work," the helper says and leaves her to her work.

    What an amazing thing: to trust this young girl to figure out the solution to her problem.



Grade 6

In sixth grade we find two Geometry blocks!

The first is the history of Geometry, as found in String, Straight-edge, and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia Diggins.


In the second block, the students are given the Tools of Geometry (compass, straightedge) and taught to make detailed and beautiful geometric figures.


Grade 7

A wonderful overview of the entire Algebra & Geometry Main Lesson Block (PDF) in grade 7, available for FREE from Jamie York!


Grade 8

The final Geometry block in middle school is the Platonic Solids.


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Friday, November 1, 2024

Art History - Joseph Cornell

Our Specials schedule this year is

    Mon - Art History

    Tue - Philosophy

    Wed - Structured Word Inquiry

    Thu - Letter Writing


In my Art History 2024-2025 blog post, I decided November would be Joseph Cornell. Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Joseph Cornell
1903 - 1972


Mr. Cornell's Dream Boxes
by Jeanette Winter


also

books illustrated with three-dimensional collages:


These Shadow Boxes Are Striking. The Story of Their Origin Is, Too.
The New York Times - Jan 24, 2018

One Frame, Thousands of Snails (interactive article)
The New York Times - Oct 31, 2024


Cornell's work at nearby museums:


week of Nov 4:

Mon


week of Nov 11:

Mon


week of Nov 18:

Mon

    look at Soap Bubble Set (1936) on p.199 of Childcraft, volume 13, "Look Again"

    give each child a box (USPS Medium Flat Rate Box) and have them plan their scene (using found objects, nature materials, items from our Beautiful Stuff boxes; making small figures from clay; and etc.)


Thu - Pajama Day

    look at interactive NYT article about Adam Elliot's "Memoir of a Snail" -- How Hundreds of Hands Brought 'Memoir of a Snail' to Life -- which shows all the details in one scene in this stop-motion film and beautifully explains that every prop, set, and character is handmade (note: this adult film is rated R so I am not recommending it for kids, nor am I showing them the preview or any other scene from the film)

    spend the day building forts and making our boxes!



Sample pages from our books illustrated with three-dimensional collages:

Notes:

In November, the older children will be doing the 6th grade Waldorf block String Straight-edge and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia Diggins, so making Shadow Boxes is a wonderful tie-in!

I think this month's artist will also go well with the handmade calendars which we always make in November. Our 2025 calendars will be based on How to Make a Zero Backwards: An Activity Book for the Imagination by Richard Kehl.


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Monday, October 21, 2024

Early Voting Information

Election Day is Tuesday, Nov 5 from 6 am to 7 pm. If you'd like to vote early, here are the options in our county (elections.il.gov and jacksoncounty-il.gov)


Jackson County
Jackson County Clerk’s Office

1001 Walnut St
Murphysboro IL 62966

every weekday
Oct 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31
8 am to 4 pm

Nov 1
8 am to 4 pm

Nov 2
8 am to noon


Jackson County
Carbondale City Hall

200 S Illinois Ave
Carbondale IL 62901

Oct 21, 22, 23, 25
9 am to 3 pm


Jackson County
SIU Student Center

1255 Lincoln Dr
SIU Campus
Carbondale IL 62901

Oct 24
9 am to 3 pm

Oct 30 & 31
10 am to 5 pm

Nov 1
10 am to 5 pm


Yes, you can vote at the SIU Student Center on Halloween before you go trick and treating! How cool! NO excuse or reason is required to early vote.


Special Note: The Illinois State website and the Jackson County website info did not match, so I called the County Clerk's office to get confirmation of the correct dates & times. So I am confident that all of the above is correct!

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Indigo

In Feb 2019, the last time I taught the Fibers & Clothing block, we had a special guest for dyeing with indigo. I've never had the courage to set up an indigo vat (eek!). We went over to SIU to meet with Dr. Sedonia Sipes, who taught us about shibori (the Japanese art of folding the fabric before dyeing) and helped us dye our items with indigo. All of those photos are here.


This time around, we also had a special guest for indigo dyeing but it was an even shorter trip. During a party, I discovered that my next door neighbor had an indigo vat! (Yes, this is what I do at block parties apparently. Network with people, and set up future field trips and special guests.)

So we walked through the crepe myrtle bushes to her yard and she taught us how to do it.


Thursday Oct 10

Our lesson in shibori! Each child got a cotton tote bag to dye as they wished.

Some children used rubber bands, some children used clothespins, and some had a combination of both in their design.


Thursday Oct 17

Day 2! It's time to dip our folded tote bags in the indigo dye bath!

gloves are essential!

soak your items in water first, so that they dye evenly

the items will come out bright green at first (left),
then will shift to blue (right) as the dye reacts with the air

holding back a friend's long hair so it doesn't go in the dye!

During recess, I washed each tote bag in my Art Sink and then removed all the rubber bands and clothespins. Here are the before and after pictures.

Note: The bags with the teal color on them had been folded and wrapped up so tightly that oxygen simply hadn't gotten to all of the fabric quite yet! As we watched, they shifted to the true indigo blue color.

Lastly, I ran the bags through the washing machine with a little bit of mild laundry detergent, and we hung them out on the clothesline to dry! Many thanks to Ms. Jasmine for doing this extraordinary project with the children!


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