Michaelmas 2025

Happy Michaelmas, everyone!

This traditional English quarter day is an important holiday in the Waldorf school calendar, and a well-loved tradition in our homeschool co-op. Here are notes and photos from today, as well as notes from previous years:

In the morning we read The Dragons Are Singing Tonight, a fun book of poems by Jack Prelutsky.

In the afternoon we read Saint George and the Dragon, beautifully retold from Spencer's The Faerie Queene by Margaret Hodges. We also built a splendid castle of foam bricks in the yard, donned costumes, and acted out the story!

If you happen to need the full text of CANTO XI, I have it in a blog post.

The cast list includes Una, the Red Cross Knight, the dragon, the king & queen, and the townspeople. For the third and fourth reenactment, one of the children narrated the events (instead of me doing it)... and you'll see that we also sometimes had two dragons. It's the most popular part!

I will forever be grateful to Ms. Anna
for her donation of these foam bricks!!

In Handwork this year, we are making these adorable knitted baby dragons (new skill: kfb) using a sweet pattern from Waldorf Handwork Educators.

In the past we've done the knight peg doll sewing kit from A Child's Dream. Here's one of those knights fighting the Ostheimer Dragon!

Celebrations from previous years:

2023

Wrapping Up Our First Month's Topics

2022

The Faerie Queene (1596) by Edmund Spenser

2021

Michaelmas 2021

Dragon Classical Music

2020

Saints / Election / Presidents Week 1

2019

September - Michael and the Dragon

2018

October - Michael and the Dragon

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

Techniques of Problem Solving (TOPS)

I love the Techniques of Problem Solving Decks. I have been working very hard on collecting these lovely but out-of-print decks of word problem cards and now have the complete set for grades 1 through 9! Each has 200 cards.

Grade 1 - one star
Grade 2 - two stars
Grade 3 - deck A
Grade 4 - deck B
Grade 5 - deck C
Grade 6 - deck D
Grade 7 - deck AA
Grade 8 - deck BB
Grade 9 - deck CC

I also have the Elementary Gifted Deck for Grades 3 - 6...

AND found the Secondary Gifted Deck for Grades 7 - 12 (Aug 2022).

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

"Every Kid Outdoors" Pass

It's already the first day of Autumn! If you missed it, and your child qualifies this year, it's definitely time to sign up for the Every Kid Outdoors Pass.

Got a Fourth Grader?
Your Family Can Visit Every National Park for Free.

Through the Every Kid Outdoors program, any fourth grader can get a pass that admits their entire family into national parks, preserves, or historic sites for an entire year, for free. Here are all of the details:

Annual 4th Grade Pass

Cost:
Free, non-transferable, valid for the duration of the 4th-grade schoolyear though the following summer (September-August).

Available for:
U.S. 4th-graders (including home-schooled and free-choice learners 10 years of age) with a valid Every Kid Outdoors paper pass.

How to obtain:
Paper passes can be printed from the Every Kid Outdoors website and can be exchanged for the Annual 4th Grade Pass at federal recreation sites that charge entrance fees or standard amenity fees (day use fees). Digital versions of the paper pass are not accepted. Here are all the rules & instructions.

Less Than

How genius is this??? This isn't my idea; I saw a graphic while doing a Google search. But I'm so excited to share it with my older students, once they get past the Crocodile Game and need to know which symbol is which.

For younger students, Nienhuis Montessori has a really nice Colored Bead Bar Activity Set. We have some little <, > magnets that go well with this, and containers with sets of bead bars from 1 to 10. They use the material to solve the problems and then write them in their graph paper notebooks.

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

Apple Books

Our neighboring town has an Apple Festival every September and that got me thinking about Apple Books! Here is what I have here:

The Zieglers and Their Apple Orchard
by Alice Flanagan

sweet, simple, takes place in Illinois

Apples
by Jacqueline Farmer

I skip right to the apple history & etymology

Miss Hickory
by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

charming classic chapter book (Newberry winner, 1947)

Granny Smith Was Not an Apple: The Story of Orchardist Maria Ann Smith
by Sarah Glenn Fortson

the amazing story behind the Granny Smith apple
(read before Miss Hickory or its final chapter will not make sense)

Apple Cake: A Gratitude
by Dawn Casey

the perfect blessing for a harvest meal, includes recipe!

The Chart of Varieties in Jacqueline Farmer's book reminded me of a project that Natalie did in Kindergarten, back in 2007 (see my Sweet Yummy post). A new variety of apple had just been developed at the time -- Honeycrisp -- and her teacher gave the children each a sample of it and asked them to describe it and explain what they would name it. What a great idea!

In looking back through my photos that my phone tagged "apple," I found all kinds of things:

Apr 12, 2016

needle felting the half sweet / half poison apple from Little Snow-White

Sep 17, 2018

washing fresh fruits & veggies in Early Childhood

Dec 19, 2018

carving McIntosh apples into candleholders for our Advent Spiral

Oct 13, 2021

reading "The Star House" from Suzanne Down's book of Autumn Tales
and finding the star inside the apple!

Two more options:

If you want a very simple wordless picture book, I suggest Apples by Nonny Hogrogian. And if you want a detailed Botany picture book with many closeup pictures of development (most in black & white), I recommend The Apple and Other Fruits by Millicent Selsam. It also discusses the pear (pp.30-35), peach (pp.36-41), plum (pp.42-43), cherry (pp.44-45), orange (pp.46-47) because they develop in a similar way.

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