How I Teach the Electoral College to Kids

states are colored red & blue on this map based on the 2020 results

Here are my notes on teaching about voting (General Election, Nov 2024):

Wed Oct 23
explain early voting

Thu Oct 24
explain voting by mail

Mon Oct 28
read Leo's First Vote! by Christina Soontornvat

Tue Oct 29
read The Next President: The Unexpected Beginnings and Unwritten Future of America’s Presidents by Kate Messner

Wed Oct 30
read Grace for President by Kelly DiPucchio (introduces Electoral College)

Thu Oct 31
tie US maps in with Letter Writing (look at postal abbreviations) & play Election Night! game (Electoral College map has been updated for 2024)

Mon Nov 4 - do more US map activities & play Election Night! game again

from Nienhuis Montessori:

Puzzle Map - The United States
United States Control Map (Labeled)
United States Control Map (Unlabeled)

United States Location Color Set
(includes 50 blank maps, color coding matches wooden puzzle)

Tue Nov 5 - convert blank US maps to electoral college maps, send home for students to color red/blue on Election Night

FREE at TpT:

Blank US Map (with Alaska and Hawai'i to scale)
I've been looking for a map like this for a long time, and it was really fun to show it to the children. It has the sizes of each state to scale. It's amazing to see this and then remember that Alaska is only worth 3 votes! That's because Alaska has a very small population.

Your number of Electoral College votes is your number of Senators (everyone gets 2) + Representatives (this is based on population).


Blank US Map with States Labeled
This is the map we will use to create our Electoral College map.

Why Democracy Lives and Dies by Math
A documentary filmmaker and a mathematician discuss our fear of numbers and its civic costs.
The New York Times - Oct 24, 2024

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

Geometry Scope & Sequence

Some quick notes about the scope & sequence of Geometry in grades 1-8 in the Waldorf curriculum!

Grades 1 - 4

The journey to Geometry begins with four years of careful Form Drawing (also used to introduce Penmanship, this is the very first block of Grade 1).

Living Lines: Form Drawing Inspiration for Steiner-Waldorf Teachers
by Henrik Thaulow

Straight Line Forms: A Recap
blog post, May 2024

Grade 5

Jamie York recommends doing "Freehand Geometry and Fifth Grade Fractions" as Main Lesson Block #1 of 3 math blocks for the fifth grade year.

If you don't have Jamie's book for grades 1-5 (the Freehand Geometry info is on page 83), you could instead download Volume 2: Freehand Form Drawing and Basic Geometric Construction in Grades 4 and 5 by Ernst Schuberth, which is available FREE as a PDF from the Online Waldorf Library.

Ernst Schuberth has written wonderful books on the teaching of geometry, but one should note that they are out of step with the progression of math skills recommended by Jamie York.

Jamie writes on page 83 of his Making Math Meaningful: A Source Book for Teaching Math in Grades One Through Five, "We recommend freehand geometry in fifth grade, and geometric drawing (with compass and straightedge) for sixth grade, whereas Schuberth lists both of these for a year earlier."

Thus, Schuberth's grade 4 & 5 book can be seen as a grade 5 & 6 book. Here are his grade 4 skills notes regarding lessons in Geometric Drawing, which we may use for this block:

"Every teacher can decide for himself where an appropriate place for geometric form drawing is in the lesson plan. For example, as a part of a form drawing block or tacked onto the end of an arithmetic block would certainly be suitable. Taking the seasons into consideration, I always found that the winter is the best time for geometry main lessons." (page 13)

"Geometry in the fifth grade is similar to that in the fourth grade in as far as it is still free-hand geometry and viewed as an extension of form drawing. The construction descriptions suggested here belong, in a narrower sense, to the mathematics lessons." (page 43)

Students are NOT given a straight edge or a compass until 6th grade!

Exercises covered in Schuberth's book:

circle
from the circle to the ellipse
points of a circle
tangents
stargazing
lemniscate
clocks
angle measurement
degrees
acute, obtuse, right, straight, and full angles
intersecting lines
vertical, straight, and supplementary angles
vertex
parallel lines
from the circle to the triangle
triangle exercises
from the circle to the square
square, rectangle, rhombus, parallelogram, trapezoid, deltoid
quadrangle exercises
light and shadow around a sphere

It's worth mentioning that the many years of Handwork that the children have done have also laid a helpful foundation for spatial reasoning! In Zen and the Art of Knitting: Exploring the Links Between Knitting, Spirituality, and Creativity Bernadette Murphy devotes an entire chapter to Waldorf schools. She describes seeing the following in a grade 5 Handwork class:

The girl making the blue and purple sock realizes, after turning the heel, that the foot's too big. She tries it on to assess the problem. Too wide, she decides. The helper teacher comes over to witness the predicament. I'm thinking of all the different things that the helper might tell the girl how to fix it, working out in my mind what I'd do if the sock were mine. The helper, though, doesn't tell her what to do or give advice.

"What do you think?" she asks the girl. "What could you do to make it work?"

The girl thinks for a moment and announces a set of decreases she could perform to counteract the mistake.

"That might work," the helper says and leaves her to her work.

What an amazing thing: to trust this young girl to figure out the solution to her problem.

Grade 6

In sixth grade we find two Geometry blocks!

The first is the history of Geometry, as found in String, Straight-edge, and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia Diggins.

My notes from teaching this book are here.



Building an Ancient Egyptian Level
blog post, Sep 2016


photos of Natalie's MLB for this block

photos of Becca's MLB for this block

In the second block, the students are given the Tools of Geometry (compass, straightedge) and taught to make detailed and beautiful geometric figures.

For this block, I highly recommend two books: Sheen's Geometry and the Imagination (which also is available FREE as a PDF from the Online Waldorf Library) and Barbara Dewey's Waldorf Geometry for Homeschoolers: Grade 6 (available in PDF format for $14.00).

In brief, his book is better for WHAT to do and her book is better for HOW to do it.


Waldorf Geometry for Homeschoolers: Grade 6
by Barbara Dewey


Geometry and the Imagination: The Imaginative Treatment of Geometry in Waldorf Education
by A. Renwick Sheen


my Geometric Drawing webpage
lesson plans for a 14 day block


how to bisect an angle, and divide a circle into 12 equal parts using only a compass and straightedge (Geometric Drawing and the Waldorf School Plan by Hermann von Baravalle, pp.14-15)

how to draw a perpendicular bisector to a given line AB (Geometry Lessons in the Waldorf School vol.2 by Ernst Schuberth, pp.64-65)

how to trisect an angle using a compass, a straightedge, and a strip of paper (von Baravelle, p.22)

Grade 7

A wonderful overview of the entire Algebra & Geometry Main Lesson Block (PDF) in grade 7, available for FREE from Jamie York!

Grade 8

The final Geometry block in middle school is the Platonic Solids.

Platonic Solids: A Main Lesson Block for Class 8
blog post, Apr 2023

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

Art History - Joseph Cornell

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 November would be Joseph Cornell. Here are some resources and my planning notes:

Joseph Cornell
1903 - 1972

Mr. Cornell's Dream Boxes
by Jeanette Winter

also

books illustrated with three-dimensional collages:

The Good-Night Blessing Book by Nancy Willard

Snapshots from the Wedding by Gary Soto

I Am Marc Chagall by Bimba Lindmann

These Shadow Boxes Are Striking. The Story of Their Origin Is, Too.
The New York Times - Jan 24, 2018

One Frame, Thousands of Snails (interactive article)
The New York Times - Oct 31, 2024

Cornell's work at nearby museums:

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, STL
Untitled (Landscape with Sheep)

---

week of Nov 4:

Mon

read Mr. Cornell's Dream Boxes by Jeanette Winter

continue with dream journals begun during Marc Chagall

week of Nov 11:

Mon

look at collection of books illustrated with three-dimensional collages

bring in small items from home to add to our Beautiful Stuff boxes (begun during Alexander Calder in Sep 2022)


Beautiful Stuff! Learning with Found Materials
by Cathy Weisman Topal and Lella Gandini

week of Nov 18:

Mon

look at Soap Bubble Set (1936) on p.199 of Childcraft, volume 13, "Look Again"

give each child a box (USPS Medium Flat Rate Box) and have them plan their scene (using found objects, nature materials, items from our Beautiful Stuff boxes; making small figures from clay; and etc.)

Thu - Pajama Day

look at interactive NYT article about Adam Elliot's "Memoir of a Snail" -- How Hundreds of Hands Brought 'Memoir of a Snail' to Life -- which shows all the details in one scene in this stop-motion film and beautifully explains that every prop, set, and character is handmade (note: this adult film is rated R so I am not recommending it for kids, nor am I showing them the preview or any other scene from the film)

spend the day building forts and making our boxes!

Sample pages from our books illustrated with three-dimensional collages:

Notes:

In November, the older children will be doing the 6th grade Waldorf block String Straight-edge and Shadow: The Story of Geometry by Julia Diggins, so making Shadow Boxes is a wonderful tie-in!

I think this month's artist will also go well with the handmade calendars which we always make in November. Our 2025 calendars will be based on How to Make a Zero Backwards: An Activity Book for the Imagination by Richard Kehl.

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