Friday, April 24, 2026

Picture Books About Death

We are coming to the end of our yearlong study of the Human Body in Science Club. I have been searching for a long time to find someone from SIU's Mortuary Science department to come in so that the children can ask their questions about death and dying, and finally found two! A 2nd year, Katy Bernard, and a 4th year (just weeks from graduation), Alexis Hamblin.

During the course of their two conversations with the children, I learned a lot. The children did too! The soon-to-be morticians were sweet and gentle.

I first became interested in "death positivity" when I attended a Zoom talk in 2022 that literally changed my life!


    A Conversation with Caitlin Doughty

    Wednesday, November 16 | 7PM | on Zoom

    Join us for a conversation with Caitlin Doughty, mortician, bestselling author, and advocate for death acceptance. Hailed by The New York Times as "a relentlessly curious and chipper tour guide to the underworld,” she’ll discuss reform of Western funeral industry practices and much more with Mark Bazer (The Interview Show).

    Caitlin Doughty is a mortician, advocate, and bête noire of the traditional funeral industry. Her educational webseries "Ask a Mortician" has been viewed almost 250 million times and her three books were New York Times bestsellers - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? She founded a Los Angeles funeral home as well as the funeral reform collective The Order of the Good Death, which spawned the death positive movement.


I have quite a few picture books about Death, and one of Caitlin's books, but Katy also brought with her some more books that she recommended. Here I'm including the full list, in case you'd like to bulk up your collection at home. Death is also one of the Philosophy topics included in Little Big Minds: Sharing Philosophy with Kids by Marietta McCarty, and I read the class a short section from her book before we began the chats with Katy and Alexis.

Marietta writes,

    On my last day with any group of child philosophers, each child has tucked into the bottom of a deep pocket the one question for which he or she would most like to have an answer. Regardless of age or locale, by far the most asked question involves the inevitability of death.

    When will I die?

    How?

    Why can't we stop it?

    What happens?

    Does anything really die at all?

    Why won't anybody talk with me about it?


The children were full of questions and glad to have someone to talk to them! The first question on Tuesday was, is it possible for someone to be accidentally buried while they are still alive? The first question on Wednesday was, can doctors can make someone who is dead come back?


Here are the books!

Picture books:


Chapter books (the last one is written for children):


Caitlin Doughty's YouTube channel is Ask a Mortician.

Let me know if you have other books you recommend!


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Posted by at No comments:

Thursday, April 23, 2026

A New Book for Our Classroom Library

My mom shared this book review with me and it definitely piqued my curiousity:

    A Kids’ Novel That Delights in Disorder
    Philip Stead’s “A Potion, a Powder, a Little Bit of Magic” gleefully ignores all the storytelling rules.

    (this is a NYT gift link, so everyone can enjoy reading it!)


Since we are doing Personal Narratives as our 4th grade Composition focus, I thought this could be a fun read aloud (we just finished Mr. Popper's Penguins) and so I checked it out from the library. YEP, it's one to buy. So I just bought it. I am really looking forward to sharing this with the children!


A Potion, a Powder, a Little Bit of Magic
Or, Like Lightning in an Umbrella Storm:
A Story Out of Order
by Philip Stead


Here is the "out of order" order of the chapters:

    In Medias Res

    13 - The Possibility of Danger

    14 - A Potion, a Powder, a Little Bit of Magic

    15 - Failing Up

    In Principio

    2 - Goatnapped

    3 - Perseverance

    Omnia Mea Culpa

    4 - Lancelot Makes a Run For It

    5 - Why Bernadette Was Always Having to Repair Her Roof

    6 - The King Loses His Balance

    7 - The Royal Bearer of Good News

    16 - A Moment of Pure Beauty

    8 - The Royal Bearer of Bad News

    9 - A Moment of Pure Despair

    Oops! Erravi!

    10 - The Tollbooth

    11 - The Tree Who Does Not Grant Wishes

    12 - Loopholes

    The End... But Not in the Usual Sense

    17 - Carelessness

    18 - Gravitas

    Fors Hoc Doleat!

    19 - The Parade

    20 - The Mountain of Regret

    What Was Left of Bernadette's Ending

    21 - Giddyup

    22 - A Potion

    23 - A Powder

    Acknowledgments

    24 - A Little Bit of Magic (and a Plain Gray Rock)

    The End

    1 - A Moment of Pure Generosity


The story also begins with a Map of the Entire Kingdom and the Cast of Characters, and ends with a place for you to write in all the Morals (which are thoughtfully punctuated by goats) that they learn along the way.


This book looks like a ton of fun! I'm sure the children will absolutely love it.

e.e. cummings broke all the stuffy rules for punctuation and capitalization... and now we have Philip Stead joyfully playing around with chapter order!


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Posted by at No comments:

Local Industry - Fruit

Our fifth Local Industry for Southern Illinois!


timing:


Zac, age 3
Greer's Lost Creek Blueberries


resource list:


art ideas:

Baking Soda Paint
Since this reaction leaves a fuzzy texture, it is perfect for painting peaches! (I like to use this template. Print it, cut it out, and use that to trace a peach shape onto your watercolor paper. Then cut out the watercolor paper shape.)

Positive / Negative Art
This technique workes really well for apples or pears!


special guest:

fruit farmer


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Eating Insects for Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, everyone!

Today I checked one thing off my bucket list by snacking on an ant lollipop. Many thanks to the family who donated it to our classroom!

Here's the TED talk I like to use for this: Marcel Dicke: Why not eat insects?


I've been interested in eating insects ever since we began to learn about it for Earth Day back in April 2012. Insects are a very healthy, humane, and inexpensive source of protein. Eating insects for protein has been common throughout the span of human history.

I well remember my daughter Leah's poster that showed two bright red circle graphs of how many people around the world eat insects compared to the United States. Sadly I don't have a picture. Everyone else is doing it... why aren't you?


The children have been working on their Personal Narrative pieces all month alongside our Local Industry topic. Persuasive writing is quite another thing, and we don't do much with it before grade 8 (developmentally, you have to be ready to do Persuasive Essays).

But I thought they would -- like Leah -- enjoy doing a poster project.

So much more fun than "persuade your parents to give you a later bedtime." I remember being given this prompt in elementary school and hating it because it wasn't authentic. There was no way. My bedtime was set in stone!

Can you persuade your parents to eat insects?


(Not into ants? If cicadas are your thing, try ‘CICADA-LICIOUS’ COOKING.)


Posted by at No comments:

Monday, April 20, 2026

Local Industry - Coal

Our fourth Local Industry for Southern Illinois!


timing:

    1810 - present day


resource list:


artifacts:

lump of coal (it's a rock... but not a mineral!)
found at a student's 1930s-era house that had a coal chute

coal chute illustration in Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion


special guest:

coal miner


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Posted by at No comments:

Friday, April 17, 2026

AWSNA

This blog post is for people who regularly visit my website, waldorfcurriculum.com.

AWSNA has service marked the term Waldorf® and recently reached out to me to request that I remove it from my domain name. Therefore, I have copied and moved my website to wcurriculum.com. Please visit me there!

Unfortunately, they currently do not allow homeschoolers or homeschool groups to license the term. Although I have had my website at waldorfcurriculum.com for 20 years, I am still required to move it.

I have set up a permanent (301) redirect, so if you type in the old domain you should automatically be sent to the new one without any problems.

Thank you!
Renee


P.S. Because I don't have a team and have never taken any classes in web design, some things may end up acting strangely on the new site. If you find a page with a problem, please leave me a message in the comments below.

Posted by at No comments:

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Local Industry - Bricks

Our third Local Industry for Southern Illinois!


timing:

    Murphysboro Paving Brick Company
    1909 - 1931


resource list:


artifacts:

vintage "Egyptian" brick


follow ups:

it would be fun to

Learn About the Telegraph!

Practice Morse Code!


This post contains affiliate links to materials I truly use for homeschooling. Qualifying purchases provide me with revenue. Thank you for your support!

Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)