Needle Felting the Math Gnomes

I have a friend who is looking for a first needle felting project for herself... and also learning about math in Waldorf 1st/2nd grade and wanting a set of math gnomes... so what could be more perfect for a beginning project?

I suggested the following three resources and am putting together a care package for her right now!

Making Magical Fairy-tale Puppets
by Christel Dhom, translated by Ronald Koetzsch & Anne Riegel-Koetzsch

Making Math Meaningful:
A Source Book for Teaching Math in Grades One Through Five
by Nettie Fabrie, Wim Gottenbos, and Jamie York

Putting the Heart Back into Teaching: A Manual for Junior Primary Teachers
by Stanford Maher and Yvonne Bleach

(If you ever see this book for sale, BUY IT.
And please join my efforts to get it put back into print.)

There are many helpful books for Waldorf math in the early grades and I'll list them and write a review of each in another post. But these books are perfect for this little project and really, to be honest, they are all you need for those first few years of math.

Back to the FELTING! For colors, you'll of course be making the king so you would probably want royal purple, a golden crown, curly beard wool, and lots of little bits of colors to make him a splendid robe, but for the gnomes themselves you just need plain white batting for filling, as well as Green (Addition - Phlegmatic), Blue (Subtraction - Melancholic), Yellow (Multiplication - Sanguine), and Red (Division - Choleric). You might try the Rainbow Jewel wool sampler from A Child's Dream Come True.

For gnome beards, English Leicester is a nice wool.

For your gems, you can use the little flattened glass marbles that people put in aquariums and flower arrangements, $5.99 for a pound (approx. 110).

1 Lb - Mixed Colors Glass Gems

To go with my Waldorf lending library, I finally got myself a special treat: book pockets and library cards. I lend books for a month at a time. Please contact me if you'd like to become a consulting client. I'm happy to share what I have with others!