Wednesday, November 20, 2024

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Our lunchtime read aloud right now is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. For those who are wondering, it's a complete coincidence that we are reading this right at the same time the Wicked movie is coming out!

I'm not recommending the movie (or the musical) by sharing this book with the children.

Actually, it's because I purchased some wonderful 1992 blank notecards for our Thursday Letter Writing and thought the children would enjoy hearing the book before we cracked them open to see the artwork on the cards. They are new old stock (NOS) which means that they are brand new even though they are vintage!

I do love the Oz books and have all fourteen, if a child wants to continue reading the series after we finish the first one. I may also show them one of the silent movies at one point, because none of my students have ever seen a silent film. I think they would be astonished!

(There are actually several silent films from the world of Oz. Turns out that the Oz Film Manufacturing Company -- founded by L. Frank Baum and making silent movies he wrote and produced -- was an independent film studio from 1914 to 1915. It made only a few pictures before it was absorbed by Metro Pictures, which later evolved into Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.)

For the silent movie links, see my previous post Silent Movies.


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Friday, November 15, 2024

Scytale, Scytalae

I have a running blog post with all of my notes from our current Science Club topic, Spy Science, but some special activities also get posts all their own! I did this with Periscopes & Prisms. Now it's time for Scytale, Scytalae.

    singular "scytale"
    /ˈskɪtəliː/
    skittle-ee

    plural "scytalae"
    /ˈskɪtəleɪ/
    skittle-ay


    background:

    Wikipedia article

    The Ancient Greek Scytale

    DIY Scytale Cipher video


    teaching notes:

    have a variety of cylinders available!

    a long wide tube is best (such as a 2 1/2 to 3 inch mailing tube); broom handles also work well; knitting needles do NOT

    you will also need wide ribbon (approx. 1 inch) and an ultra fine point Sharpie (so your writing doesn't smudge)

    use ribbon that is neither slippery (satin), nor plush (velvet), nor textured (grosgrain)

    demonstrate how to wrap, write, unwrap, rewrap, and read a message (and how it absolutely doesn't work if you use a tube with a different diameter)

    pair children up and have them send and receive messages

    have them decide if the person receiving the message would like to know which diameter cylinder was used... or not! some children like to know which tube to use and some prefer to hunt about and test

    begin to wrap the ribbon around the tube -- and make sure you are happy with the spiral -- before taping down the start of it

    before unwrapping the ribbon to give to your partner, underline the 1st letter (helps with orientation when decoding)

    this cipher is tricky and would be hard do to with a large group! we had 8 children and that worked well

one letter on each turn of the ribbon, leaving spaces between words

when you unwrap the ribbon, it just looks like a mad jumble of letters!

yikes!
you have to rewrap it carefully -- and on the same tube -- to read it

success!

Monday, November 11, 2024

Cursive Message of the Day

Children thrive on predictable rhythms, and we use a lot of them in our school year! Here are just a few examples:

Monthly Farm Visits
We had a great time today at The Log Cabin Ranch!

Weekly Letter Writing

Daily Mad Minutes


Another fun daily routine is the Cursive Message of the Day! This encourages children to work on their cursive workbooks (here is our favorite series) and it's fun!


NEW in the Cursive Message of the Day, I'm using Montessori Command Cards as the message. The children have to read the message and complete the task ("Bring me a red pencil" "Look out the window"). They love it!

It's also fun to create Command Cards for your beginning reader, if you have a 1st or 2nd grader at home. It's sooo satisfying to correctly decode the words and complete the task! Here are some simple ones I like from Etsy.


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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).


Calendar Artwork

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 Shop

colored pencil w/collage


Apr - Flowers from Their Names

a colored pencil prompt


May - An Eye Chart

This was surprisingly difficult for the children! I wouldn't do this one again.


Jun - Magic Names


Jul - A Visit to a Strange Land

a great use for the frames that come around board game pieces!

these are from the BINGO games by Lawrence King


Aug - Sky, Handle, Shoe


Sep - Basic Ideas


Oct - Bottom and Top


Nov - Carnival Front


Dec - Picture Magnet


front cover - Self-Portrait


2025 Blank Calendar Pages


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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:

Tue

    look at collection of books illustrated with three-dimensional collages

    give each child a blank box (USPS Medium Flat Rate Box)

    fold and tape box together, paint interior as desired, let paint dry
    (note: wallpaper samples make wonderful flooring for boxes!)

    bring in small items from home to add to our Beautiful Stuff boxes (begun during Alexander Calder in Sep 2022)


    Beautiful Stuff! Learning with Found Materials

    by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gandini


week of Nov 18:

Mon

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

    give children time to plan their 3-dimensional scene and find or make any objects needed (including found objects, nature materials, items from our Beautiful Stuff boxes; making small figures from clay; 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!

"A Bedroom for Cats"
AR, age 6


Other pieces of art we made included

    "A Room at the Hotel Cursive"

    "The Cozy Café"

    "Totoro"

    "Fishing"

    "The Ocean"

    "My Beach"

    "First Time Fishing"

    "Cat Playroom"

    "Cats in My Backyard"

    "The Throne Room"

    "Eclipse"

    W

    EO



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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