Photos - Clocks & Roman Numerals

Our main lesson block schedule was a little bit unusual in October because one of my first grade students went on a trip to Europe and we didn't want to begin the new topic without her! So week 8 (starting Oct 23) was the last week of the "Clocks & Calendars" block for the older children but it was the first week of the "Quality of Numbers" block for the younger children.

Of course, Clocks and Roman Numerals are topics that go extremely well together, and the older children appreciated the chance to review them.

In the Waldorf Quality of Numbers block, children learn their Roman and Hindu-Arabic Numerals through stories, riddles, games, movement verses, art projects, and more. We call it the Story of Calendula and Plantain, because I set up a tableau where two children got lost in a mysterious world and had to discover and match up all of the secret symbols in order to find their way home.

I typed up complete notes for the stories and activities for this block and put them here: Quality of Numbers Booklist - 2023.

Other blog posts related to our work this week:

Resources for Teaching About Clocks

Science Club: Pumpkin Racers

Art History: Louise Bourgeois

We wrapped up our Thornton Burgess read aloud and began Charlotte's Web by E.B. White at lunchtime. Our snacktime picture books this week were all related to Roman Numerals: Sun Bread by Elisa Kleven (the number one), "Snow White and Rose Red" from Tales from Grimm translated by Wanda Gág (the number two), and "Jack and the Beanstalk" retold by Joseph Jacobs and The Three Little Pigs retold by Paul Galdone (the number three).

We also read From Seed to Cattail by Lisa Owings for our calendar art, a section of the Galileo chapter of Mathematicians Are People, Too: Stories from the Lives of Great Mathematicians by Luetta and Wilbert Reimer for our pendulum experiments, and Ticktock Banneker's Clock by Shana Keller.

Here are some photos from week 8:

the tableau, ready for its big reveal

Calendula and Plantain
and the frisky squirrel (peeking out from behind a tree)

the mysterious forest of rainbow trees

the great white bear who helps them find their way back home

each day a different card is hidden under the sand

the daily riddles

each day's story always has a clue to the riddle

starting booklet #2 of The High Frequency Word Project
(the Structured Word Inquiry approach to sight words)

this was perfect for today because "an" is an old word meaning "one"

https://www.thehfwproject.com

calendar art

they used the light table to turn their photographs into watercolor paintings

they're beautiful!

the Checker Board for long multiplication

discovering a square number (6x6)!

the Checker Board is a very popular material
it's so hands on and concrete yet it leads children wonderfully into the long multiplication algorithm

the Small Bead Frame for addition and subtraction

when the children have heard the story and solved the riddle, they use the shell to move the sand... and reveal the new secret symbols

in Waldorf education, the children always add new content to their main lesson book the day AFTER the lesson, so that they have more time to reflect on it and move it to long term memory

so today we reviewed the numbers 1 and I, made Sun Bread, did watercolor paintings of the sun, and added the number one to the main lesson books

dividing up the breadmaking jobs

our sun after it was formed

the poem that inspired our artwork

sun artwork using both watercolor paints and watercolor pencils

our dough rose and it is ready to bake!

warm and golden right out of the oven

thank you to Cody for bringing in his pocket watch for the children to see after reading the Benjamin Banneker book

we explore how Banneker enlarged his sketches of the pocket watch gears to make a full-size mantel clock (with gears hand carved out of wood)

Dr. Eureka

the second juggling lesson!

Zac and I head down to Giant City State Park after school to find collect nature materials for our last few pieces of calendar art

Shagbark Hickory for Nov

Cattails for Dec

so that the sight word lessons are fun for the older children too, I first write up each word using the International Phonetic Alphabet

they some time to try to figure out what it will be

luckily we have all this Pumpkin Racer hardware on hand, perfect for our Galileo-inspired pendulum experiments!

all you need is a length of string, an S-hook, some washers, and a scale to measure the mass

building piggie houses with Teifoc bricks & child-safe mortar

we paint the cattails with baking soda paint so that they will have the perfect fuzzy texture

visiting our pumpkins at the Pumpkin Glow

in our Saturday session, a piece of art inspired by Louise Bourgeois's
10 am Is When You Come to Me

Saturday is also when we have our Great Little Bluestem Pumpkin Race!

the city-wide one was rained out so we just held our own

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