Friday, January 15, 2021

My First Lazure Project aka Selling Extra Curriculum Materials on eBay

This slow-paced background story takes place over a span of fifteen years!

2006

    January - February
    long discussion in our Yahoo group about lazure how-to & links
    (Yahoo has now closed all groups but the notes are on my website)

    I'm determined to learn lazure so that I can be a real Waldorf mom



2018 (twelve years later)

    March
    do-it-yourself lazure kit from Charles & Karen Andrade is at my door

    ok! now I can check something off of my Waldorf bucket list!

    March - November
    I procrastinate because I'm scared I will mess it up

    in fact, for months I don't even open the box

    this turns out to be a big problem because packed in the little box the brushes are not being stored correctly and so the bristles get warped
    (they should be stored standing up on the bristles, not lying down)

    November
    I buy Dick Bruin and Attie Lichthart's new book, Painting at School: A Handbook for Elementary and Secondary Education in Waldorf Schools and discover that it has information about lazure in it, which gets me excited again. "Rudolf Steiner's color recommendations for school buildings," pp.67-71, explains how to do the technique and gives the color schemes recommended by Steiner for the Goethe School in Hamburg (1925), the Stuttgart barracks (1922-1923), and the London school (1925).


    Painting at School
    by Dick Bruin & Attie Lichthart


    I finally decide to move Zac out of his bedroom and lazure it
    (this is a safe project because it's the smallest room in the house; also it's my Winter Break so I have two weeks off from teaching and I'm confident I can get it done)

    Thursday, December 27
    patch hole in wall

    Saturday, December 28
    sand patch, wash walls, tape around windows, doors, and trim


2019

    for the month of January
    prime Zac's walls and the black marker scribbles... over and over

    lazure must be done on a background of ABSOLUTELY PURE white

    I'm frustrated because I'm not getting it done very swiftly and, meanwhile, Zac has no bedroom

    Thursday, January 31
    ultimately I take off painter's tape and just move Zac back into his pure white bedroom

    February - August
    Zac, who is three years old, writes on the walls of his primed pure white bedroom, so we paint it Orchid House (from Valspar) and turn it into the Science Room for our homeschool co-op, Little Bluestem. I move Zac into my bedroom so that I can monitor him. When he stops writing on the walls of rooms, he can have his own bedroom again!

    One day while I'm teaching, Zac (still three years old) gets into the lazure supplies, because I left them out in the hallway, and opens the little bottles. Much of the paint ends up on the floor and is wasted.

    Sunday, September 1
    I decide that a bedroom, even a tiny one, is too ambitious of a project since I'm apparently terrified of lazure. I go looking for something smaller. I choose the one odd partial wall in our downstairs stairwell. This will be easy to get to and needs painting anyway, since it is currently covered with muddy fingerprints.


2021

    Monday, January 4
    I decide that I am probably never going to lazure anything, so I add the paint (which is almost exactly like Stockmar concentrated watercolor paint) to the art room shelves and I put the brushes away in the attic. Just on the off chance that I will want them someday...



So, much of my life goes like this. I collect things eagerly -- like any other teacher and homeschooling mom -- and then there is a large discrepancy between what I own and what I actually use. Yet, many of the things I have would be useful to someone else! Lazure brushes are expensive and beautiful. They are not ever going in the trash. I feel the same way about the rest of my curriculum things, but there's a lot I don't use that I either bought, or someone donated to me, or I got several copies of it from back when the Lending Library was going strong (I have lots of duplicate books).

And therefore my New Year's Resolution is to spend January and February deep cleaning and organizing ALL of my teaching things and selling on eBay what I do not need. This includes my Library, all of my file cabinets, and my Art Room, Handwork Room, and Science Room.

It's a big job but COVID is the perfect time to do it. And, since I fall in the category of people who buy everything online that they possibly can, only pick up their groceries at the curb, and have not seen their family or had a haircut since last February, I will be shipping everything USPS Priority Mail in Flat Rate Shipping boxes that do not need to be weighed.

I can pack it all up neatly and carefully, pay for the shipping and schedule a pickup online, and set it out on my doorstep. Easy!

So my plan is to NOT write any blog posts until this job is done and to use this post as a place to update what I have listed on eBay in case anyone is interested in any of the auctions. I will put things together into lots, bundles, and kits, so even if you get a book you'll get a few bonus things with it that may be useful for a lesson. I will keep this list strictly up to date and if I know where something came from -- and it's still available -- I'll include the link to it. That way if you miss out on an auction you still know where to find it. And if I change my mind later and want to buy it again, I can! Enjoy!



My goal is to tidy & organize for 3 hours a day and list 3 auctions a day.
I used to be able to sell things on my Yahoo group but time marches on...


First Grade

Auction #293957532060


Auction #293963781375


Second Grade

Auction #293959103223

    unabridged volume of Aesop's Fables
    plus chopsticks and two dishes for acting out "The Fox and the Stork"


Auction #293963821677


Third Grade

Auction #293957489265


Auction #293963757587


Fourth Grade

Auction #293957389780


Sixth Grade

Auction #293959058012


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

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Favorite Toys and Board Games - age 5 1/2

I really enjoy looking back at the notes I made when Zac was one and two, to see what he liked to do best each month. It is amazing how quickly they change! And if you have to get a present for a grandchild or a friend's child later on, it is nice to remember what they find fun at that age.

Now Zac is 5 1/2 and really in that Bridge time between Kindy and First Grade. So I thought I'd write down again what he's doing and enjoying. He wove his first correct potholder yesterday. He's loved to stretch the loops across the loom for years but now he actually understands and can do the over/under rhythm for weaving and is also creating patterns with his colors. So that's exciting! He also likes to sew on his piece of burlap and really wants to help me weave on the Nine Norse Worlds tapestry I'm weaving.


Zac likes board games... always has... and he's into more complicated memory games as well as visual/spatial strategy games. We have lots of games that don't require reading. And I just introduced Wildcraft, which he was really excited about because he has seen the big kids playing it!

Here are his current favorites:


I know he's also old enough for Kraul's lovely game Shadows in the Woods (which I'm going to give him on Candlemas). I've been looking at this one in Nova Natural's catalogue since the girls were little. I can't wait to play it!


There are also a few games that he could probably handle but I'm going to wait until First Grade so that they feel new and exciting. These are Mancala, Qwirkle, Bingo (with numbers, and the bingo cage and balls), and Racko.


Some things from Early Childhood that are still going strong: building with blocks (Grimm's Large Stepped Pyramid and the Rally Building Blocks set), the Cuboro marble maze, play kitchen foods, dolls (his favorites are the four fairies from Magic Cabin), wooden animals, and the big basket of play silks.


Sensory bins are still big, as is the mud kitchen and the water pump outside, and he loves his little plastic animals that are allowed for sensory play and bathtime. I am not in favor of plastic overall but there's no way wooden animals are going in a bin of shaving cream! Sometimes plastic has its place.

He's really into his wooden trains, Legos, and K'nex. I rotate these three things. The Legos and K'nex both came from other families but he loves them so much I ended up not saying no. I didn't let the girls have any plastic at all, but I've softened a bit with Zac.

He absolutely adores his Fagus trucks. We have quite a large collection by now because I have gotten several each year... we have the car carrier and two wooden cars (zippie and speedie), the fire engine, the trash truck, the tractor, the hay wagon, the horse trailer, the front end loader, and the telescoping loader. He has now graduated to the more tricky ones with the strings. We get our Fagus trucks from Nova Natural.

Of course all kids love art, and Zac is no different. Drawing, painting, clay.

Plus he really enjoyed making the 2021 Calendar project with me and watching me write the holidays and birthdays after it was finished. I also wrote in all of the numbers, of course, except the straight line number 1 which I let him write at the start of each month. I wanted to show him now that letters and numbers start in the air and go down to the ground. I have noticed that children who try to teach themselves to write want to start their letters and numbers on the ground... maybe because they are trying to line things up correctly? But it's a bad habit to get into. Penmanship is something you have to watch like a hawk and nip things in the bud before they lock in via muscle memory.

Favorite toys from the 12 Days of Christmas were his new Fagus trucks, the front end loader and the telescoping loader (especially nice with those were the felt "slingshot ammo" balls, since they make great cargo for scooping and dumping), as well as Quixo and Pylos, Tickle Bee (a vintage game from my childhood which I finally tracked down on eBay), the giant squid, and the Fairy House kit I made him. The Fairy House kit was full of blank peg dolls, tree blocks, lots of little nice things like tiny ceramic tiles and corks and acorn caps and cinnamon sticks and shells, and the Grimm's Large Rainbow Stackers and the Large Semicircles (I got those from A Toy Garden).

I, completely accidentally, gave him the exact number of peg dolls as there are arches in the rainbow and he lined them all up to match. We also have the Rainbow Forest Set of Trees and they are just the same number and same colors. Now he wants to paint each peg doll in a matching color to its rainbow arch! I think we will actually dye them with food coloring, the same way I dyed the pieces for the Montessori Sentence Analysis material, so I got a fancy food dye kit for mixing precise colors.


Zac loves to sweep, dust, and help cook. He likes to bring the trash can and recycling bins up from the street, bring in the mail, and get the newspaper. He walks the dog in our yard (the dog is tiny... half Chihuahua and half Yorkshire Terrier) several times a day and plays with him constantly since there are no other children here. He also likes to feed and pet the rabbit.


Camden Rose Childs Broom
Rainbow Broomcorn, 36", Cherry Handle



Minidoka Lambswool Duster
12", Australian Wool


Outside Zac loves working with child-size garden tools, and anything with digging or climbing or balancing or running or swinging. He's climbing trees and building forts constantly, and I got a huge delivery of mulch at the start of the school year and he loves to sit on the pile and just dig in it endlessly.

We are just about to start with riding a two-wheel bike. Riding without training wheels is one of the indicators of being ready for First Grade. So is tying your shoes, which he can do. I made one of those nifty little egg carton things to teach him. I punched the holes with a yarn needle, and finger knitted two long pieces in two different colors and tied them in the back.

Signs of First Grade Readiness (PDF)


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

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