Gnome Roam at Giant City State Park

Yes, folks, it's time again for the Gnome Roam!

They did this last year and it was such a hit they are doing it again! This event will run from Dec 1, 2024 to Jan 31, 2025. Visit each of the 7 trails at Giant City State Park (there are 8 trails total, but there's no gnome on the 2-day Red Cedar Backpacking Trail) to find an image of a gnome holding an item recommended for winter hiking.

Write down the item, the trail name, and the date (they move them around throughout the 2 months) and/or take a selfie of yourself with the gnome.

Go alone or go with friends!

Find all 7 gnomes within the two month time frame, bring your proof into the Giant City Visitors Center (open daily from 8 am to 3:30 pm), and take home your super cool and FREE Giant City Gnome Roam patch! Have fun!!!

Art History - Arshile Gorky (Vostanik Adoian)

Our Specials schedule this year is

Mon - Art History

Tue - Philosophy

Wed - Structured Word Inquiry

Thu - Letter Writing

In my Art History 2024-2025 blog post, I decided December would be Arshile Gorky. Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Arshile Gorky
(born Vostanik Adoian)
1904 - 1948

Gorky's life was a difficult one and there are not ANY children's picture books about him. Instead we will be using books about war and being a refugee:

The Day War Came by Nicola Davies

Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed

The Cat Man of Aleppo by Irene Latham and Karim Shamsi-Basha

Last weekend I attended the "Dancing in the Well: Art for Healing Trauma" conference, and I plan to use some of those activities in our exploration of Arshile Gorky and his work.

teacher background information:

Rethinking Arshile Gorky by Kim S. Theriault
Penn State University Press

The Artist and His Mother painting (1926-36)
Whitney Museum of American Art

Arshile Gorky: Double Life, Double Portrait
National Gallery of Art

the original photograph of Gorky and his mother

Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective
Tate

Arshile Gorky
Wikipedia

also

Art History Kids - The Studio - April 2021

The Encyclopedia of Artists

Gorky's work at nearby museums:

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, STL
Golden Brown Painting (1943–44)

I recommend joining Lotus Stewart's Art History Kids website (The Studio) and getting access to her past lesson plans. I like her work, and find it's really helpful to have so many ideas that I can use as a jumping off point.

---

week of Dec 2:

Mon

story - Four Feet, Two Sandals by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed

discuss the word < refugee >
refuge/ + ee

Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge

additional evidence for the -ee suffix
(referee, employee, attendee, mentee, trainee, trustee, grantee, honoree, nominee, awardee, auditee, attackee, captee, detainee, escapee, giftee, addressee, visitee, callee, photographee, recordee)

painting focus - "Garden in Sochi"
image p.7
discussion p.26

do Week 4 activity "Abstract Memories"
12" x 18" ivory construction paper, chalk pastels, cotton swabs

Wed

first read quote from Gorky about "Waterfall" on page 13 of Encyclopedia of Artists, vol. 3 and then look at the painting

do "Intuitive Art" activity from Dancing in the Well conference

week of Dec 9:

Mon AM

story - The Day War Came by Nicola Davies

painting focus - "The Artist and His Mother"
images from NGA blog post, "Double Life, Double Portrait"
discussion p.24

original photograph (1912)
painting (c. 1926–c. 1942)
painting (c. 1926–1936)

do Week 2 activity "Paint from a Photo"
watercolor paper / brushes / rinse water jars / painting boards and a Yarka Semi-Moist Watercolor 8-Pan Set for each set of three students

Mon PM

story - read They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel

repeat discussion and activity from earlier in the day

Tue

story - The Cat Man of Aleppo by Irene Latham and Karim Shamsi-Basha

do "Collaborative Poem" activity from Dancing in the Well conference
(this was very energetically draining for the children; I wouldn't do it again)

week of Dec 16:

Mon AM

story - Leah's Pony by Elizabeth Friedrich (Great Depression)

painting focus - "Study for Mechanics of Flying"
image p.6
discussion p.25

connect WPA with CCC (and Giant City State Park)

Mon PM

story - I'll See You in My Dreams by Mavis Jukes

answer questions about airports and flying in a plane

look at examples of local murals (Carbondale Public Library, 609 S Illinois Avenue, 108 E Oak Street, 800 N Wall Street, and more)

do Week 3 activity "Travel Mural"
large roll of white paper, Filana block beeswax crayons, crayon rocks

Tue

story - A Boy Named FDR: How Franklin D. Roosevelt Grew Up to Change America by Kathleen Krull

if children have questions about polio,
Six Childhood Scourges We’ve Forgotten About, Thanks to Vaccines
The New York Times - Dec 13, 2024


for students who are interested in learning more about the Great Depression, I also have


Six Days in October: The Stock Market Crash of 1929
by Karen Blumenthal

Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp
by Jerry Stanley

interesting side note and article about Sanora Babb (for adults):
She Shared Her Notes with John Steinbeck. It was Her Novel’s Undoing.
The New York Times - Oct 18, 2024

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Mathematicians Are People, Too!

Yesterday I was updating my notes for Spy Science and I realized that I've never done a post listing all of the mathematician biographies in the "Mathematicians Are People, Too! Stories from the Lives of Great Mathematicians" series by Luetta and Wilbert Reimer. So here goes!

Mathematicians Are People, Too - vol. 1

"Pyramids, Olives, and Donkeys" - Thales

"The Teacher Who Paid His Student" - Pythagoras

"The Man Who Concentrated Too Hard" - Archimedes

"A Woman of Courage" - Hypatia

"Magician or Mathematician" - John Napier

"Seeing Isn't Believing" - Galileo Galilei

"Count on Pascal" - Blaise Pascal

"The Short Giant" - Isaac Newton

"The Blind Man Who Could See" - Leonhard Euler

"The Professor Who Did Not Know" - Joseph Louis Lagrange

"Mathematics at Midnight" - Sophie Germain

"The Teacher Who Learned a Lesson" - Carl Friedrich Gauss

"'Don't Let My Life Be Wasted!'" - Evariste Galois

"Life on an Obstacle Course" - Emmy Noether

"Numbers Were His Greatest Treasure" - Srinivasa Ramunujan

Mathematicians Are People, Too - vol. 2

"There's Only One Road" - Euclid

"A Fortune Shared" - Omar Khayyam

"Lean on the Blockhead" - Leonard of Pisa (Fibonacci)

"The Conceited Hypochondriac" - Girolamo Cardano

"The Stay-in-Bed Scholar" - René Descartes

"An Amateur Becomes a Prince" - Pierre de Fermat

"The Gift of Sympathy" - Maria Agnesi

"The Shy Sky Watcher" - Benjamin Banneker

"The Computer's Grandfather" - Charles Babbage

"The Mystery of X and Y" - Mary Somerville

"The Overlooked Genius" - Neils Abel

"Conducting the Computer Symphony" - Ada Lovelace

"The Lessons on the Wall" - Sonya Kovalevksy

"The Compass Points the Way" - Albert Einstein

"The Master Problem Solver" - George Pólya

Back in 2010, I did a biography project with my students called the Bio-Cube. They loved it! (See my Bio-Cube & Famous Mathematicians post.)

While we were doing the Bio-Cube project, one student asked me if there were any mathematicians still alive today! I realized that because we had been talking about mathematicians from throughout history, the children were under the impression that they only lived long ago. So we promptly invited a mathematician in as a special guest (Dr. Jessica Libertini, who is currently an Associate Professor at West Point). When she came in, they interviewed her and made a Bio-Cube about her right there on the spot!

Bio-Cube Planning Sheet (PDF)

Bio-Cube Template (PDF)
or use any blank cube net

Interestingly, one of the Bio-Cube sides is "significance." Since Jessica was still alive, there was really no way to know her greatest lifetime achievement. The children decided to leave that side of the cube blank!

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The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Our lunchtime read aloud right now is The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. For those who are wondering, it's a complete coincidence that we are reading this right at the same time the Wicked movie is coming out!

I'm not recommending the movie (or the musical) by sharing this book with the children.

Actually, it's because I purchased some wonderful 1992 blank notecards for our Thursday Letter Writing and thought the children would enjoy hearing the book before we cracked them open to see the artwork on the cards. They are new old stock (NOS) which means that they are brand new even though they are vintage!

I do love the Oz books and have all fourteen, if a child wants to continue reading the series after we finish the first one. I may also show them one of the silent movies at one point, because none of my students have ever seen a silent film. I think they would be astonished!

(There are actually several silent films from the world of Oz. Turns out that the Oz Film Manufacturing Company -- founded by L. Frank Baum and making silent movies he wrote and produced -- was an independent film studio from 1914 to 1915. It made only a few pictures before it was absorbed by Metro Pictures, which later evolved into Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.)

For the silent movie links, see my previous post Silent Movies.

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Scytale, Scytalae

I have a running blog post with all of my notes from our current Science Club topic, Spy Science, but some special activities also get posts all their own! I did this with Periscopes & Prisms. Now it's time for Scytale, Scytalae.

singular "scytale"
/ˈskɪtəliː/
skittle-ee

plural "scytalae"
/ˈskɪtəleɪ/
skittle-ay


background:

Wikipedia article

The Ancient Greek Scytale

DIY Scytale Cipher video




teaching notes:

have a variety of cylinders available!

a long wide tube is best (such as a 2 1/2 to 3 inch mailing tube); broom handles also work well; knitting needles do NOT

you will also need wide ribbon (approx. 1 inch) and an ultra fine point Sharpie (so your writing doesn't smudge)

use ribbon that is neither slippery (satin), nor plush (velvet), nor textured (grosgrain)

demonstrate how to wrap, write, unwrap, rewrap, and read a message (and how it absolutely doesn't work if you use a tube with a different diameter)

pair children up and have them send and receive messages

have them decide if the person receiving the message would like to know which diameter cylinder was used... or not! some children like to know which tube to use and some prefer to hunt about and test

begin to wrap the ribbon around the tube -- and make sure you are happy with the spiral -- before taping down the start of it

before unwrapping the ribbon to give to your partner, underline the 1st letter (helps with orientation when decoding)

this cipher is tricky and would be hard do to with a large group! we had 8 children and that worked well

one letter on each turn of the ribbon, leaving spaces between words

when you unwrap the ribbon, it just looks like a mad jumble of letters!

yikes!
you have to rewrap it carefully -- and on the same tube -- to read it

success!

Cursive Message of the Day

Children thrive on predictable rhythms, and we use a lot of them in our school year! Here are just a few examples:

Monthly Farm Visits
We had a great time today at The Log Cabin Ranch!

Weekly Letter Writing

Daily Mad Minutes

+ Sep/Oct +
- Nov/Dec -
x Jan/Feb/Mar x
÷ Apr/May/Jun ÷

Another fun daily routine is the Cursive Message of the Day! This encourages children to work on their cursive workbooks (here is our favorite series) and it's fun!

NEW in the Cursive Message of the Day, I'm using Montessori Command Cards as the message. The children have to read the message and complete the task ("Bring me a red pencil" "Look out the window"). They love it!

It's also fun to create Command Cards for your beginning reader, if you have a 1st or 2nd grader at home. It's sooo satisfying to correctly decode the words and complete the task! Here are some simple ones I like from Etsy.

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Homemade Calendars - 2025 Edition

We love making handmade calendars each year and giving them as gifts to family and friends (see The Maths of Practical Life: Clocks & Calendars)!

This project is particularly helpful for first graders, especially those who may still be writing their numbers in Backwards Land.

We write letters so much more often than we do numbers, and many times there's not the muscle memory for how a number should go. For the older children, it's just a chance to have fun and to make a lovely handmade gift!

This year we are focusing on collage, and doing mindbending and creative prompts from How to Make a Zero Backwards: An Activity Book for the Imagination by the artist Richard Kehl. Here are my notes as we go along!

Other topics of study this month are The Story of Geometry for the older students (11-13) and An Introduction to Grammar for the younger (8-10).

Calendar Artwork

Jan - Mixed-Up Animals

set out three trays on the floor to help corral animal parts!

Feb - Trading Cards

cut down jumbo card stock tags to make the "trading cards"

make 2-4 cards, then mount them on the page

for this project, the children used colored pencils

except for Zac, who used wallpaper samples!

Mar - Sky Shop

colored pencil w/collage

Apr - Flowers from Their Names

a colored pencil prompt

May - An Eye Chart

This was surprisingly difficult for the children! I wouldn't do this one again.

Jun - Magic Names

Jul - A Visit to a Strange Land

what pictures would you need to get around in a place where you don't know the language?

a great use for the frames that come around board game pieces!

these are from the BINGO games by Lawrence King

Aug - Sky, Handle, Shoe

colored pencil w/collage shoe

Sep - Basic Ideas

a useful list of prepositions (PDF)

Oct - Bottom and Top

given ONLY the bottom of an image, draw what you think the top might be

it can be fun to go back and compare them!

Nov - my own idea
envelope with a letter from the child listing all the things they're thankful for

Dec - Picture Magnet
a present inside a present! 5" x 5" cardstock, laminated for extra durability

front cover - my own idea
a photograph of the child dressed in their costume from this year's class play

2025 Blank Calendar Pages

Jan 2025

Feb 2025

Mar 2025

Apr 2025

May 2025

Jun 2025

Jul 2025

Aug 2025

Sep 2025

Oct 2025

Nov 2025

Dec 2025

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