Jumping Forward in Time: A History Booklist

My 13 year old, Becca, is looking at applying to a private school and we have come up against one main curriculum mismatch. This is the scope & sequence of the History curriculum. In Waldorf, children learn Jewish mythology in grade 3 and Norse mythology in grade 4. They start the fifth grade year with the mythologies of India, Persia, Mesopotamia and Egypt, then transition from mythology to true History later in grade 5 with ancient Greece. They then do ancient Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as the Middle Ages in Europe in grade 6. Grade 7 brings the child to the Age of Exploration and the Renaissance & Reformation. Grade 8 begins with the Age of Revolution and then the child is brought up to the modern era.

"We are to bring the children to the present day. The last day of eighth grade history should end with that day's morning newspaper [emphasis added]. A tall order!"

Dorit Winter, from p.90 of her contributing essay, "The Chariot of Michael," in And Who Shall Teach the Teachers, available to download for FREE at the Online Waldorf Library

As Carrie writes in the Parenting Passageway blog, this is sometimes arranged to take two years, with the child coming to Current Events by the end of the ninth grade year. Otherwise, it is a LOT of content!

If you're looking for more resources for the Waldorf scope & sequence, Christoph Lindberg's Teaching History: Suggested Themes for the Curriculum in Waldorf Schools is available to download for FREE as a PDF from the Online Waldorf Library.

In the school we are looking at, the seventh grade class is currently on Andrew Jackson and they'll spend the rest of this year and next year on American History. They end seventh grade by arriving at the Civil War.

So Becca is left with a huge task: to get from the Renaissance & Reformation to the Civil War. FAST.

Happily, Becca loves to read!!!

We are starting with the big picture, with her reading cover to cover A Child's History of the World by V.M. Hillyer. This vintage classic was my absolute favorite book as a child (and one which I talk about here constantly).

She's also already read King George: What Was His Problem?, which helps.

We also have a vintage textbook which I picked up at a sale and have never ever used. Apparently I bought it just for this purpose! It is called Short American History by Grades: The Story of the Nation, Part Two by Everett Barnes and it looks like it's been reprinted now that it is out of copyright. The copyright in my book is from 1908.

I will start her after the end of the Revolutionary War and have her read chapters 3, 4, and 5.

From there, we are going to supplement the textbooks with a booklist of historical fiction arranged in chronological order. Here are my thoughts. Please feel free to chime in if you have recommendations!!!

The Puritan Twins
by Lucy Fitch Perkins - Massachusetts 1638

The Witch of Blackbird Pond
by Elizabeth George Speare - Connecticut 1687

The Fifth of March: A Story of the Boston Massacre
by Ann Rinaldi - Massachusetts 1768

The Sign of the Beaver
by Elizabeth George Speare - Maine 1768

Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley
by Ann Rinaldi - Massachusetts 1772

The Chester Town Tea Party
by Brenda Seabrooke - Maryland 1774

My Brother Sam is Dead
by James Lincoln Collier - Revolutionary War

Fever 1793
by Laurie Halse Anderson - Pennsylvania 1793

Carry On, Mr. Bowditch
by Jean Lee Latham - Napoleonic Wars

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!

Yoga Stories

In Yoga class students worked in pairs to create stories which they could act out by doing the corresponding poses. It was so much fun! Here are the two which they wanted to publish:

A cat and a cow found a table. The cow walked away but the cat jumped onto the table. Once she was there she saw a book with a boat and a tree by a dock. The cat thought about how tall the table was, for to her it was as tall as a mountain. She felt like a furry warrior or a goddess. Then she got bored and jumped on a chair and then to the ground.




The Frog

There was a frog who wanted a bug so he went to a tree. There was no bug so he went over a bridge and into a boat. In the boat there was a warrior doing goddess squats in front of a candle. The frog got out of the boat and saw a dog next to a mountain. An eagle came down and told the frog where to find a bug. So he did. Yum!

There are several fun yoga stories like this in Fly Like a Butterfly: Yoga for Children, written by a Montessori educator. I purchased this item in 2005 and am still using it with my youngest child. This book is also available for families to borrow as part of my curriculum Lending Library.

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!

#15 The Immune System

Main Lesson Book
We began, of course, by reviewing the previous lesson, The Integumentary System. Students completed their summaries and illustrations for their main lesson books.

Day One Story & Exploration
I took my story for The Immune System from The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects Illuminate How the Body Works.

The chapter is called "Diseases & Immunity." I required that the older students take notes during the lesson.

We began by reading pages 106 and 107, and I explained to the students that there are several types of cells in your blood and drew the shape of a red blood cell, a white blood cell (which I told them looks like a Koosh ball), and a platelet on the board and explained the general role of each.

I stopped at the end of the first paragraph on page 108 and we did a quick and easy demonstration of how germs travel. Glitter!

How Germs are Spread
This picture says it all...

Before I showed them the glitter I asked the group what craft supply drives adults crazy because it gets everywhere. In fact, on my art shelves this item is labeled Adults Only. They all got to guess before I revealed what was in my hands! I put some glitter on each child's hands and then told them to go about their business as they normally do while we continued the lesson. At the end of the lesson I asked them to notice where the glitter had traveled to. Apparently I wipe my hands on my pants all the time. I was very sparkly!

We read the rest of pages 108 (Charge! How Your Immune System Goes to Battle) and 109 (Hey, I Don't Feel So Good). I drew a picture of antibodies and antigens like puzzle pieces on the board, which was helpful when we went on to allergies and vaccinations later in the chapter.

We then read the rest, which was pages 110 (Germs Shot Down) and 111 (Caring for Your Immune System). Since there are so many components to the immune system, we immediately did the nomenclature three-part cards from ETC Montessori. I laid out and matched the pictures and definitions, and passed out the vocabulary cards to the group. As I showed each picture and read each definition, the child who had that vocabulary term came forward. Be forewarned: this is the most complex set out of all of them!

Day Two Review & Exploration
Our Yoga teacher, Ms. Lindsay, started the morning's yoga class by explaining to the group how much doing yoga helps the immune system. There are a lot of positive benefits!

We did the Make Your Own Immunity Slush Drink recipe from page 113 of The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects.

The immune system can be challenging to illustrate! I shared Natalie's MLB illustration for the immune system as an example. She drew some of the cell pictures from the nomenclature and identified the different types of cells.

I also offered several additional activities for children to do for the Skin, because it's part of the Department of Defense as well (as it is called in The Story of the Great River). We did the Make Your Own Fingerprint Kit from pages 72-73 of The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects, we made DIY Exfoliating Coffee Coconut Bars, and I arranged for Ms. Kelly to also come in and do melt-and-pour soaps with my group Monday as their next Art project.

Coffee Coconut Exfoliating Cubes

Ingredients:
1 cup espresso ground coffee
1 + 3/4 cups coconut oil
2 tbsp pure shea butter
1/4 cup sugar
a few drops vanilla essential oil (optional)
Ice cube tray or soap mold

Place the shea butter and 1 cup of the coconut oil in a glass jar and heat in the microwave until just melted, but not hot (about 15-20 seconds). If the shea butter is still solid, stir the oil for a few minutes to melt it down. Combine the oil mixture with the coffee grounds and sugar in a small bowl and mix thoroughly. Add a few drops of the vanilla essential oil, if using, and mix.

Fill the ice cube cups halfway with the coffee/oil mixture (about 2 tsp each, depending on size), and place the tray in the freezer.

Once frozen, remove from the freezer and melt the remaining 3/4 cup of coconut oil. Pour the melted oil over the frozen coffee cubes, and place back in the freezer. Allow to freeze completely before removing the cubes from the tray. Store the cubes in the freezer until you’re ready to use one!

For me, this recipe takes three ice cube trays.

There is plenty of good work in even a simple activity like the Immunity Slush Drink (which we doubled), from working as a team to share the tasks fairly, to placing ice cubes in a ziploc bag (put a folded towel underneath) and hammering them, to squeezing the lemons and measuring the juice, to counting how many students want to try it and setting out the paper cups, to dividing the slushie fairly between the cups, to writing the name of each classmate on a cup and distributing them.

Finally, I also had a non-fiction article called The Science Behind the Flu Shot for my older students. This free article is specifically written for kids and includes comprehension questions at the end.

Main Lesson Book
Students began to draft their summaries and illustrations for The Immune System.

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!

#14 The Integumentary System

Main Lesson Book
We began, of course, by reviewing the previous lesson, The Muscular System. I also purchased a few turkey necks from the grocery story and showed them to the students raw (with the muscular system still on them). Then we boiled them during the course of the school day and took the cooked meat off of them in the afternoon so that we could see and feel the vertebrae clearly. I find it is almost impossible for students to picture exactly how a vertebra has a hole in it and how the entire series has the same hole so that they line up on top of one another and the spinal cord goes down the middle if they don't see it for themselves. We pulled the spinal cord out of each vertebra as we separated them, and looked at it up close. Fascinating!

One of the turkey necks was particularly interesting because part of a soft white tube was left attached to the neck. We were trying to decide whether it was the air tube (trachea) or food tube (esophagus). Since it didn't appear to be lined with muscles, we decided it must be the trachea. We know that it is smooth muscle tissue along the walls of the esophagus that moves food down to the stomach through peristalsis, whereas the lungs inhale and exhale because of the diaphragm muscle and this is located way down at the bottom of the chest cavity.

By the way, if you want to actually make a dinner out of the turkey necks instead of just boiling them, try this Smoked Turkey-Lentil Soup.

Last time I taught this block I used the suggestion in Thomas Wildgruber's book Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools: Classes 1 to 8 for for modeling (out of clay) and drawing (with pencil) the vertebrae. It was really difficult and I would NOT recommend this for any child under grade 8!

Wildgruber himself notes that "Vertebrae are very complex forms. To practice spatial perception of them, first in three and then in two dimensions, is a demanding task, and requires previous experience in the 'modeling' aspect of black and white drawing (see Chapter for Class Six)."

Students completed their summaries and illustrations for their main lesson books.

Day One Story & Exploration
I took my story for The Integumentary System from Linda Allison's book, Blood and Guts: A Working Guide to Your Own Insides.

The chapter is called "Skin: The Bag You Live In." I required that the older students take notes during the lesson.

We began by reading pages 11 (Climate Control) and 12. We did the Quick Cool activity on page 12. Then we read page 13 (It's Not the Heat -- It's the Humidity).

Next we read pages 14 (Skin Deep), 15 (Cleavage Lines, Birthday Suit), 16 (Keeping in Touch), and 17 (... Like the Back of Your Hand).

We read pages 18 (Special Events, Hair) and 19 (Developing Hairlessness, Color, Flesh?) and I explained to my students that Crayola used have a crayon color called "Flesh" which was a light pink-tan. Now, of course, this is considered wildly inappropriate (although I notice that Magic Cabin still has a color like this in their pure wool felt collection) and there are special collections of skin tone colored pencils so that you can get the shade just right. We have the one from Prismacolor, which is called their Portrait Set.

We finished by reading page 20 (Hairy Facts, Nails).

Day Two Review & Exploration

We reviewed the parts and function of the muscular system by looking at the nomenclature three-part cards from ETC Montessori. I laid out and matched the pictures and definitions, and passed out the vocabulary cards to the group. As I showed each picture and read each definition, the child who had that vocabulary term came forward.

I saved some of the activities for the Skin for the next system (The Immune System), since our skin can also be seen as part of that system as well.

Main Lesson Book
Students began to draft their summaries and illustrations for The Integumentary System.

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!

#13 The Muscular System

Review
We began, of course, by reviewing the previous lesson, The Skeletal System.

(Note: I also purchased sets of human x-rays and animal x-rays to have on hand in the classroom throughout the remainder of this main lesson block.)

Day One Story & Exploration
I introduced the topic of the Muscular System by having us move along to the song "Walking Notes" by Hap Palmer's Rhythms on Parade. This got us warmed up and was also a great way to reinforce what my students had been learning in music class!

I took my story for The Muscular System from Linda Allison's book, Blood and Guts: A Working Guide to Your Own Insides.

The chapter is called "Muscles: Your Mighty Movers." I required that the older students take notes during the lesson.

We began by reading pages 37 (System of Squeezers, Muscle Teams), 38, and 39 (Inside a Muscle). We did the Muscle Landmarks activity on page 41.

Then I read pages 42 (Three Kinds of Muscles, All or Nothing, Tone) and 43 (Tired Muscles).

Day Two Review & Exploration

We completed the rest of the chapter from Blood and Guts, reading pages 44 (Lever Lifters, Muscles You Forgot You Had) and 45 (Face Flexing). We did the Calisthenics for Your Face activity from page 45. Then we read page 47 (The Ties that Bind, Human Rubber Band, Amazing Facts).

Next we reviewed the parts and function of the muscular system by looking at the nomenclature three-part cards from ETC Montessori. I laid out and matched the pictures and definitions, and passed out the vocabulary cards to the group. As I showed each picture and read each definition, the child who had that vocabulary term came forward.

We also looked at the The Muscular System page in our atlas of the human body, the Wall Chart of Human Anatomy.

I gave students several additional options for activities. Students could also choose whether to combine the Skeletal and Muscular Systems or present them separately in their main lesson books.

I shared a few poems from Bone Poems by Jeff Moss which I thought could be a fun addition to a MLB. Natalie chose "206" when she did her MLB; this year I had a student choose the limerick about the patella.

I also had available the materials to make the Model Arm activity from page 39 of Blood and Guts (make sure you have on hand two empty cereal boxes per child, some long balloons for making balloon animals, and a hammer and finish nail) as well as the Make Your Own Working Model Hand activity from page 45 of The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects Illuminate How the Body Works (this requires a glue gun).

Students were also able to view and compare cardiac muscle and skeletal muscle under a microscope from our set of 25 prepared microscope slides.

Main Lesson Book
Students began to draft their summaries and illustrations for The Muscular System.

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!

#12 The Skeletal System

Main Lesson Book
We began, of course, by reviewing the previous lesson, The Urinary System. Students completed their summaries and illustrations for their main lesson books.

Day One Story
We spent an entire week on the combination of the skeletal and muscular systems. For an introduction on Day One, I had Leah dissect her freshwater perch specimen (from our Intermediate Dissection Kit from Home Science Tools) during morning work time. Fish were the very first animal to evolve to have bones! Students were able to watch this dissection if they wished.

In the afternoon I read Bones: Skeletons and How They Work by Steve Jenkins.

Day Two Story & Exploration
I took my story for The Skeletal System from Linda Allison's book, Blood and Guts: A Working Guide to Your Own Insides.

The chapter is called "Bones and Body Plan: The Shape You're In." I required that the older students take notes during the lesson.

We started with pages 21 (Bone Dry?, Bone Hard), 22 (Bone Formation), and 23 (Amazing Facts). I searched pharmacies and hardware stores near me but was unable to buy 6% hydrochloric or muriatic acid. However, someday I would really like to do the Knot a Bone activity on page 23. If anyone knows of a source for these chemicals, please let me know!

Next we read page 24 (Kinds of Bones, Joints) and I got the Steve Jenkins book back out and we looked again at the full-size illustration of the human elbow joint. We did the Landmarks activity on page 25. Then we did the Inside a Long Bone dissection activity on page 27.

Next we read pages 28 (Body Plan), 29 (Primate), and 30 (Basic Vertebrate Shapes). We did the Make Your Own Flexible Spine activity from page 58 of The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects Illuminate How the Body Works. I highly recommend using empty spools of thread for this and having extra powdered sugar ready!

We also looked at my MRI from November 9, 2006 and I showed the students my disk bulge between L1 and L2. We talked about all different kinds of disk injuries including bulges, slipped disks, and pinched nerves.

Finally, we did the Make Your Own Joints activity from The Human Body: 25 Fantastic Projects Illuminate How the Body Works. This is really hard to do with floral foam (which was a disappointment since I had been waiting years to do this activity). I recommend only doing the saddle joint. We found it fine to cut the foam with regular dinner knives. I got dry foam cylinders from Walmart. The shape is called a "mug plug" and comes in a two pack (you need one two pack per saddle joint). They measure 2.6 x 3.7 inches.

Day Three Review & Exploration
We started by reviewing the saddle joint and looking at our model. This joint is located in only one place on the human body -- the base of the thumb -- and it's the reason your thumb is opposable. To see the importance of this joint, I had the students spend one hour doing the Great Thumbless Survival Test activity on page 30 of Blood and Guts.

After the hour was up, we discussed how it went. I had great fun watching a student play Yahtzee thumbless!

We reviewed the parts and function of the skeletal system by looking at the nomenclature three-part cards from ETC Montessori. I laid out and matched the pictures and definitions, and passed out the vocabulary cards to the group. As I showed each picture and read each definition, the child who had that vocabulary term came forward.

We also looked at the The Skeletal System page in our atlas of the human body, the Wall Chart of Human Anatomy.

Main Lesson Book
Students began to draft their summaries and illustrations for The Skeletal System.

This post contains affiliate links to the materials I actually use for homeschooling. I hope you find them helpful. Thank you for your support!