Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Art History - Romare Bearden

In my Art History 2024-2025 blog post, I decided January would be Romare Bearden. Here are some resources and my planning notes:


Romare Bearden
1911 - 1988



My Hands Sing the Blues:
Romare Bearden's Childhood Journey
by Jeanne Walker Harvey



Romare Bearden: Collage of Memories
by Jan Greenberg



Me and Uncle Romie:
A Story Inspired by the Life and Art of Romare Bearden
by Claire Hartfield



Li'l Dan, the Drummer Boy:
A Civil War Story
written & illustrated by Romare Bearden



The Block
poems by Langston Hughes, artwork by Romare Bearden



Romare Bearden 2025 Wall Calendar

I also bought the 2011 Wall Calendar


also

Art History Kids - February 2021

    The Dove (1964)

    Jazz Village (1967)

    Tomorrow I May Be Far Away (1967)

    City Lights (1970)

    The Blues (1975)

    Quilting Time (1986)

    Week 1 Project, p.16 - A Family Portrait Collage

    Week 2 Project, p.26 - A Collage That Features Your Passion

    Week 3 Project, p.32 - A Collage That Shows Your Community

    Week 4 Project, p.34 - A Collage Series


Martin Luther King, Jr. - Mountain Top (1968)
National Portrait Gallery

The Art of Romare Bearden: A Resource for Teachers (PDF)
National Gallery of Art
print pages 1, 4, 6, 10-13, 20-23, 30
activity: Write a Poem Inspired by Collage

MMA - Georges Braque (Cubism)



Using Art to Create Art: Creative Activities Using Masterpieces
by Wendy Libby
p.11 - art movement (Cubism, Surrealism)
p.12 - "Collage of a Person" activity
p.13 - sample piece of art, Serenade (1969)
p.14 - mini biography
p.15 - "Neighborhood Collage" activity
p.16 - "Collage of Faces" activity


Grid journaling slowstitch style
YouTube video from k3n clothtales

"Printing with threads and yarns" lessons from Jayne Emerson's course
(Gel Printing on and with Textiles)


The Encyclopedia of Artists


volume 1, pp.30-31
New Orleans: Ragging Home (1974)


Bearden's work at nearby museums:

    Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, STL
    Black Venus (1968), on display from 01/09/2025 - 07/21/2025


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 Jan 6:

Mon

    AM - "Collage of a Person" activity
    from Using Art to Create Art, p.12


    PM - "A Family Portrait Collage" activity
    from Art History Kids, p.16


Tue


week of Jan 13:

Mon

    design our own papers for collage using "Printing with threads and yarns" techniques from Jayne Emerson, set them aside to dry


Tue

    design additional collage materials using "Printing on threads and yarns" techniques from Jayne Emerson, set them aside to dry


Wed

    "A Collage That Features Your Passion" activity
    from Art History Kids, p.26


week of Jan 20:

Mon


Tue

    learn about Cubism

    read Picasso and the Girl with a Ponytail by Laurence Anholt

    see Picasso's work in 1950

    Bearden traveled to Paris in 1950 and spent about seven months there. He met both Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque!

      At the end of his visit Bearden did not want to leave. His friend, the cultural critic, essayist, and novelist Albert Murray, said, “Romie spent the whole day buying paper...all kinds of drawing papers—rice papers, special sizes and surfaces, different colors. His eyes got more and more moist the later it got.” One reason Bearden turned to songwriting in the 1950s was in hopes of raising funds for a return to Paris.

      from National Gallery of Art packet, p.30

    "Cut-Paper Portrait" activity (Pablo Picasso lesson plan)
    from Using Art to Create Art, p.166


Wed


week of Jan 27:

Mon

    AM - revisit Bearden's work and look at the influence of Cubism

    "Collage of Faces" activity
    from Using Art to Create Art, p.16


    PM - "A Collage That Features Your Passion" activity
    from Art History Kids, p.26


Tue

    "Write a Poem Inspired by Collage" activity
    from National Gallery of Art packet, p.23


Wed & Thu

    "A Collage Series" activity
    from Art History Kids, p.34


In addition to the Art History lesson for my regular school group (age 7-13), I'll have a Monday afternoon Art History class for early childhood (age 5-7). I think the "littles" will love Romare Bearden!


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Monday, December 30, 2024

Art History Kids 2025 Lineup

I'm currently working on doing all of my lesson planning for January, and I'm really looking forward to studying our new artist, Romare Bearden! I'm largely using the curriculum notes from Lotus Stewart at Art History Kids. Bearden was the featured artist in The Studio for February 2021.

When you join her website (which is a monthly subscription), you also get access to the archives, with lots of lesson plans and artist studies! Click here and scroll down to find a list of over 50 archived artists!

I love her work and was so surprised when teaching Art History became a new favorite subject! Here's MY artist list for 2022-23, 2023-24, 2024-25, and 2025-26.

Lotus has also reached out to me and we are planning on collaborating on lesson planning in the future. I'm really excited!


Today she came out with HER list of artists for 2025:


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Saturday, December 28, 2024

The Gyrator and the Weather Tree

Zac and I are celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas with a gift or special activity each day.

In the morning he reads the riddle that I write and put in the middle of the ring, and uses the clues to find a hidden present or note about what we are doing. As the years go by, the riddles have gotten harder and harder!

Yesterday he got to make a lantern, and in the evening we got together with friends and did a Lantern Walk and a Solstice Spiral. It was a beautiful night, and a favorite way to celebrate the cycle of the seasons.

He made the lantern using the instructions I typed up a few years back: What Do You Do with Old Birthday Candles?

It was quick and came out really well. Then when we lit the candle inside, we discovered that the wings glowed in the light!

I got lots of other ideas on that Lantern Walk as well. One friend adhered dried Autumn leaves to the outside of her lantern, over the tissue paper base, and it was beautiful! Another covered her jar in salt, which sparkled!

I just love to see all the little lights bobbing along as people walk through the nighttime forest!


This year we also celebrated the Winter Solstice by visiting the Gyrator sculpture (behind Giant City Lodge) for the first time. I was so excited! This sculpture has a circular cutout through which the sun's rays pass at solar noon (here are the times for Makanda IL). On the Equinoxes and Solstices, the beam of light lands perfectly on a bronze plaque on the ground.

There also a ring at the top of the sculpture, through which you can always see the North Star.

http://www.vectortheartoffabricating.com/1990-gyrator-by-stephen-luecking/


The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper

I had been wanting to go for years, ever since my friend Trish told me about it, and this year we finally did! The Gyrator would make a great field trip for the next time I teach about Astronomy.


There are a few more special seasonal traditions I'm looking forward to! On New Year's Eve, we do ceromancy with the Fortune-Telling with Wax - New Year's Activity Kit from A Toy Garden. It's really fun to pour the melted wax in cold water and see the shape it takes as it hardens. Is it a mushroom? Is it a bird? Then you use the little booklet to decode your future.

https://atoygarden.com/products/fortune-telling-with-wax-new-years-activity-kit


On New Year's Day, we set up the Weather Tree (PDF) from All Year Round: A Calendar of Celebrations. We did this for the first time back in 2007! In the past we have always done the little kid version of this, where we colored in a leaf based on the weather (snow, rain, sun, etc).

Fun Fact: If you miss a day, timeanddate.com has historical data!


But now that Zac is in Third Grade, and Measurement is our big Math focus, I think I'd like to do it with Temperature.

Reading a thermometer is the hardest of all the measurement tools, since each one can have a different scale. That's not true with clocks or rulers! So it takes a TON of practice.

It would be super easy to check the temperature every day at noon (we do that anyway, before we go out to recess!) and have the color key represent ranges of numbers instead. That would help the third graders practice reading a thermometer; a different child could be in charge of it each day.

There are seven leaves in the key, so we could have seven temperature colors, and then just leave it white if it's below freezing.

    32 or lower - white
    33-39 - silver
    40-49 - purple
    50-59 - blue
    60-69 - green
    70-79 - yellow
    80-89 - orange
    90 or higher - red


I could also write the actual temperature in my plan book each day, so that we could then find the average temperature for each month. When I student taught at the Campus School of Smith College, Mrs. Szymaszek kept a list of the daily temps and the children calculated the average every month and graphed it. In Waldorf, finding averages (mean, median, mode, and range) is part of the 6th grade Business Math block... as is making and reading a graph. So that could be a special job for the older children!


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Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Joyce Sidman's Science + Poetry

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I survive by listmaking.

I constantly have a million teaching ideas pinging around in my head, and it's imperative that I put them down on paper; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get to sleep at night. I also teach nearly every subject and nearly every grade, and so I need to have teaching notes ready for almost anything.

When I was making my Distraction of Prefixes post, and looking up quintain (a jousting term), I saw in the lower corner of my computer screen that quintain is also a poetry term. I immediately thought of Joyce Sidman, who loves to play with many different poetic forms.

In searching through all her poetry books in hopes of finding an example of a quintain, I re-remembered how much amazing Science information she puts in with her Poetry. For example, I found a poem about the Painted Turtle hibernating below the mud... which would have been perfect for when we did that chapter in our Advent book, All Creation Waits. I wish I'd known!

click to enlarge

So...

It is time for a list. Here are the poem titles and the science notes that accompany them.


Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature's Survivors

perfect for the Timeline of Life (Montessori Second Great Lesson)
scale for timeline on endpapers: 1 cm = 1 million years

First Life (a diamante) - bacteria

The Mollusk That Made You - mollusk

The Lichen We - lichen

untitled - shark

Scarab - beetle

Diatoms - diatoms

Gecko on the Wall - gecko

The Ants - ant

Grass - grass

Tail Tale - squirrel

Crow - crow

Fluff Head - dandelion

Come with Us - coyote

Baby - human


Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night

Welcome to the Night - raccoon

Snail at Moonrise - woodland snail

Love Poem of the Primrose Moth - primrose moth

Dark Emperor - great horned owl

Oak After Dark - tree

Night-Spider's Advice - orb spider

I Am a Baby Porcupette - porcupine

Cricket Speaks - cricket

The Mushrooms Come - mushroom

Ballad of the Wandering Eft - red eft / red-spotted newt

Bat Wraps Up - tree bat

Moon's Lament (an ubi sunt) - moon


Butterfly Eyes and Other Secrets of the Meadow

In the Almost-Light - dew

Morning Warming - grasshopper

Shhh! They Are Sleeping - rabbit

He - fox

Bubble Song - spittlebug

Sap Song - xylem & phloem

Heavenly - milkweed

Ultraviolet - butterfly

Letter to the Sun

Letter to the Rain

Peel Deal - snake

Don't I Look Delicious? - toad

Always Together - goldfinch

An Apology to My Prey - red-tailed hawk

The Gray Ones - deer

We Are Waiting (a pantoum) - trees


Song of the Water Boatman and Other Pond Poems

Listen for Me - spring peeper

Spring Splashdown - wood duck

Diving Beetle's Food-Sharing Rules - predaceous diving beetle

Fly, Dragonfly! - green darner

In the Depths of the Summer Pond - food chain

A Small Green Riddle - duckweed

Aquatic Fashion - caddis fly

Song of the Water Boatman
and Backswimmer's Refrain - water boatman, backswimmer

Travel Time - water bear / tardigrade

The Season's Campaign - cattails

Into the Mud - painted turtle


Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold

Dream of the Tundra Swan - tundra swan

Snake's Lullaby - garter snake

Snowflake Wakes - snowflake

Big Brown Moose - moose

Winter Bees - honeybee

Under Ice (a pantoum) - beaver

Brother Raven, Sister Wolf - raven, wolf

Vole in Winter - vole

What Do the Trees Know? - trees

Chickadees's Song - chickadee

The Whole World Is Melting - springtail

Triolet for Skunk Cabbage - skunk cabbage


That is all I have so far. When the library reopens after Boxing Day, I can go check and see what Francine has. I know I'm missing the following titles:

Hello, Earth! Poems to Our Planet
Just Us Two: Poems About Animal Dads
Eureka! Poems About Inventors



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A Distraction of Prefixes

Zac's current bedtime story is Adam of the Road by Elizabeth Janet Gray (1943 Newbery winner). Yesterday I ran across a word I didn't know: quintain. A jousting term, it clearly comes from the Latin word for five.

So this got me thinking about prefixes, and distracted me from what I'm supposed to be doing (which is wrapping Christmas presents). When we do the Infinity Street lesson in the grade 2 Column Algorithms & Place Value block, I always have to cover lots of number prefixes. It would be nice to have a list of related words that I could refer to, organized and ready to go.


Introducing the Equals Sign ("Is the Same As") and Infinity


We have houses and mailboxes up to septillion, and slips of paper with the names of all of the families up to novemdecillion

    Simple
    Thousand
    Million
    Billion
    Trillion
    Quadrillion
    Quintillion
    Sextillion
    Septillion
    Octillion
    Nonillion
    Decillion
    Undecillion
    Duodecillion
    Tredecillion
    Quattuordecillion
    Quindecillion
    Sexdecillion
    Septendecillion
    Octodecillion
    Novemdecillion


I like to give them the slips of paper after septillion and have them figure out how to put them in order! When it comes to talking through the prefixes, you can refer to the months of the year as a way to help but this can get surprisingly tricky since September is no longer month #7, October is no longer month #8, etc. I remember finding this irritating when I was a child!

They find out the reason for this in grade 3 Clocks & Calendars, so you can plant the seeds of, "I wonder..."

I have actually found Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin by Lloyd Moss to be extremely useful, especially for clarifying that the word is < sext > and not < sex > when representing six (trio, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, nonet).


Here is what I have so far, and I'd be happy to add your suggestions:

Million

    'milli' means a thousand; a million is a thousand thousands

    millimeter, milliliter, milligram

    millipede

    millefiori (in glasswork)


Billion


Trillion


Quadrillion

    4

    quadriceps

    quadriplegic

    quadrilateral

    quadrangle (in architecture)

    quadrant (in coordinate graphing)

    quadruple

    quadruplet
    It's So Amazing!, p.55


Quintillion


Sextillion


Septillion


Octillion


Nonillion


Decillion


Actually, having gone all the way through this list several times, I think I'm changing my mind about these being prefixes. The shared word part in so many of these numbers is < -illion >, which seems to be acting as a suffix.

Which means that bi, tri, quadr, quint, sext, sept, oct, non, and dec are bases and not prefixes here? Could these be compound words? I wonder...

In quintet, sextet, septet, octet, and nonet, < -et > is very clearly a suffix!

If < -et > is a suffix, then < quint > is a base, i.e. quint + et ----> quintet

Etymonline describes < bi- > simply as a "word-forming element." Hmm.


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Monday, December 23, 2024

The Benefits of Learning How to Wrap Presents!

Zac, age 4


The year Zac was 4, I got him a measuring tape for Christmas and he eagerly measured everything in sight! Measurement is fun!

Measurement is also hard, when you're doing it for real and not for pretend, and it requires a lot of practice. It's the math focus in the Waldorf curriculum for children age 9, and we've been doing many real life measurement projects lately to help them get lots of authentic practice using these skills.


April 2024

Planting a Three Sisters Garden
using Native American Gardening by Michael Caduto & Joseph Bruchac

all my notes are here


May 2024

Building a Cob Oven
using Build Your Own Earth Oven by Kiko Denzer

all my notes are here


March 2025
Planting a Dye Garden
using A Dyer's Garden by Rita Buchanan

Building a Pipe Loom
using Kids Weaving by Sarah Swett


May 2025

Building a House
using Housebuilding for Children by Lester Walker

These projects have been on my bucket list for 20 years! Finally, I set aside the time to do them instead of just looking longingly at the book covers.


Of course, you don't have to do something as ambitious as build a working heddle loom out of PVC pipe to do measurement with your child!


You can simply teach them how to wrap their own Christmas presents!

Stuffing something in a gift bag with a bit of tissue paper is NOT wrapping.
If something is round, or an odd shape, put it in a box and wrap the box! There are a surprising number of skills involved in wrapping a present, and Waldorf Handwork Educators wrote a lovely post about it.

Yes, it takes time. It took two adults (me and Cody) several hours on Tuesday to help 11 children wrap their parent gifts. But it is so worth it!!

Speaking of WHE, I am really excited for their upcoming Feb conference! The theme is Growing Together: The Power of Community Handwork. This includes class-wide and school-wide handwork projects, as well as those that are open to the whole community. Because I teach in a mixed-age environment, I love the idea of creating group projects that work for all ages. Many thanks to WHE for giving me a scholarship so that I can attend!


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