tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16944746998026176862024-03-28T23:28:33.713-04:00SwitzeriteWaldorf curriculum conversations...
Integration and places of intersection of Waldorf ideas with traditional approaches, homeschooling, Montessori and Reggio methods, and academia. Linked to waldorfcurriculum.com. Amazon Affiliate links are included in both my blog and my website.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2403125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-79455113528710423572024-03-16T12:50:00.001-04:002024-03-16T12:50:02.096-04:00Lines of SymmetryAfter sorting all the Board Games, the next task has been to declutter my Art Room and the Math & Science Room, where things tend to pile up. I was extremely fortunate a few months ago to receive a very large donation of math curriculum materials from the estate of Dr. Ann Karmos. She held a PhD in Educational Psychology and she spent 33 years at SIU teaching Math Teacher Preparation in the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-30119979521860090042024-03-11T13:14:00.015-04:002024-03-23T08:28:52.412-04:00Fun with Board GamesToday is the first day of my Spring Break and I'm using it to sort through all the board games we haven't played yet this year. I'm making three piles: give away for sure, keep for sure, and test.
Overall, I'm looking to see which ones go in the Board Game closet, which are antique or sentimental or I want to just be for me and Zac, which ones I want to give away, and which games I Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-23593792522686133842024-03-02T09:18:00.045-05:002024-03-28T10:53:51.786-04:00Art History - Dame Zaha HadidIn my Art History 2023-2024 blog post, I decided March would be Dame Zaha Hadid. Here are some resources and my planning notes:
Zaha Hadid1950 - 2016
also
The Legend of the Persian Carpet by Tomie dePaola
Building Zaha: The Story of Architect Zaha Hadid by Victoria Tentler-Krylov
Architecture for Kids: Skill-Building Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-8384147220473824972024-03-01T11:43:00.000-05:002024-03-01T11:43:56.812-05:00Happy Leap Day!Thursday Feb 29 was an exciting and busy day.
#1 - The children presented their Early Human reports to parents and grandparents during Living History Day. It was a wonderful event!
#2 - We had snack (including tasting all the Hunter-Gatherer foods) and played a round of Poetry for Neandertals.
#3 - We recalled the biography that we read Wednesday for our final figure Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-7821828349146015742024-02-25T12:47:00.000-05:002024-02-25T12:47:57.016-05:00Silkworm Field TripA fabulous addition to our study of Sister Mary Corita Kent in Art History! We got a behind-the-scenes tour with the owner and each of the children got to silkscreen their own shirt!
Make Meatballs Sing: The Life and Art of Corita Kent
by Matthew Burgess
Bob starts by introducing us to the graphic designers
we visit offices, storage spaces, and equipment Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-11400234977722061792024-02-25T12:08:00.003-05:002024-02-25T13:01:58.107-05:00Photos - Shelters & Capital Letters week 2Week 12 for us was the last week of November. The Bobcats continued their Capital Letters I block and the Bongos continued their Shelters block. We also had a wonderful field trip to Silkworm to experience silkscreening... just like Sister Mary Corita Kent. Thank you to David for setting this up!
Here are some blog posts that go with our studies this week:
WaldorfUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-86303478011687907412024-02-02T18:09:00.008-05:002024-02-02T18:20:59.070-05:00Photos - Shelters & Capital Letters week 1Here I am on February 1st pondering the wrap-up of our January topics!
For the older children, January was the Montessori Fourth Great Lesson (How Written Language Came to Be) plus an introduction to Structured Word Inquiry (SWI), which will now continue as a weekly special subject.
For the younger children, January was the remainder of the Capital Letters. Because I got COVID in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-90405434254874996782024-02-01T13:48:00.016-05:002024-03-03T10:20:45.621-05:00Harlem Renaissance PartyWe had such a good time learning about Jazz Artists last year (Our List of Jazz Artists post) and my returning students are excited to share some of this music with their classmates! There are also lots of new people to learn about. We will be reading Faith Ringgold's book Harlem Renaissance Party next week to kick off the topic.
Here is the complete list of people Ringgold includes in Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-58460694545777053912024-01-25T20:37:00.005-05:002024-01-25T20:46:33.813-05:00The Listening Circle: Activity and FREE CardsIn our Nonviolent Communication lessons, we are working on Power 6: The Power to Listen. Wednesday's activity was extremely powerful and I wanted to share it. It's called The Listening Circle (page 140 of The No-Fault Classroom) and we used a deck of picture cards from The No-Fault Game.
I am here to tell you that this activity was amazing. The children did this with so Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-46219448798839898902024-01-22T18:23:00.006-05:002024-01-24T15:54:42.109-05:00Observations vs. ThoughtsIn our Nonviolent Communication lessons, we are working on Power 5: The Power to Observe (see The No-Fault Classroom / The Alien Lessons post).
We are training ourselves to make completely neutral observations... as opposed to thoughts, which also include judgments and interpretations. Beginning with observation is the first step in resolving a conflict using NVC. Today's lesson was "Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-19922578272577228512024-01-21T11:56:00.003-05:002024-01-23T11:55:18.616-05:00Fourth Great Lesson - ExtensionsIt is so much fun to teach the Story of Written Language (in Montessori schools, this is called the Fourth Great Lesson and is done every year with children ages 6-9). The essential components are the story of written English, since this is what we use in school. These include cave paintings, Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphs, the alphabet (Sinaitic, Phoenician, Greek, Roman), Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-49459798124576777772024-01-12T15:09:00.003-05:002024-01-12T15:17:28.510-05:00This Week in PapermakingRight now the older children are doing a block on the Story of Written Language and the younger children are doing a block on the Capital Letters. Know what goes with both topics? Papermaking!
On Tuesday, we read The Rainbow Goblins by Ul de Rico (V is for Valley, Z is for Zig Zag) and tore up seven different colors of construction paper and added in some plain white paper from the Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-34317347857771786902024-01-12T09:43:00.006-05:002024-01-13T10:04:43.001-05:00Silent MoviesWhen I was a child I eagerly collected all 14 titles in the Oz series. Each year I would proudly walk into the little bookshop in Carbondale, my Christmas money in my hand, and buy two or three books until I finally had them all!
Now the bindings on my old Del Rey editions are starting to break, so I will probably repurchase the set in 100th anniversary editions:
The Wonderful Wizard of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-17910960480711108142024-01-09T18:34:00.004-05:002024-01-09T18:48:39.903-05:00How to Sew Up a Cross-stitch PincushionIn Waldorf grade 4, the Handwork theme is cross-stitch. Unlike purchased counted cross-stitch patterns and kits, Waldorf children create their own symmetrical designs. You can do one line of symmetry, two, or even four!
plant-dyed silk embroidery floss
plant-dyed wool felt
6 count Aida cloth
Of course, children can also create patterns of their own design, like Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-69428354968856199992024-01-06T09:50:00.012-05:002024-01-22T09:52:36.448-05:002024 Story of Written Language BooklistThe Montessori Fourth Great Lesson -- How Writing Came to Be -- is the first topic for the Bongos in January. From there we will move into Structured Word Inquiry (SWI), which is a spelling curriculum that takes a linguistics-infused approach, blending phonology, morphology, and etymology into how you explain spelling to children from the very beginning of their instruction. For more on SWI, IUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-13514141462592654782024-01-05T09:55:00.050-05:002024-03-24T12:02:29.548-04:00Art History - Faith RinggoldIn my Art History 2023-2024 blog post, I decided January / February would be Faith Ringgold. Here are some resources and my planning notes:
Faith Ringgold1930 -
also
https://www.faithringgold.com
Harlem Renaissance Party blog post
Art History Kids - The Studio - February 2019
Josephine Baker, Still Moving
The New York Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-38238715693733279592024-01-04T20:06:00.035-05:002024-03-28T20:57:31.485-04:00Science Club - Building Cardboard BoatsOur Jan / Feb / Mar / Apr topic for Science Club is building our entries for the annual Great Cardboard Boat Regatta held at SIU's Campus Lake!
Waldorf curriculum-wise, this project goes with the Building and Measurement themes of Third Grade math. Here are some of my notes:
Session 1Thu Jan 4
find out student prior knowledge about the Cardboard Boat Regattaask students Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-3019715392257464082024-01-03T17:08:00.000-05:002024-01-03T17:08:29.591-05:00Introduction to Rounding I put together a blog post of FREE TpT Worksheets for Rounding back on December 6, 2020 so check it out if you're looking for more resources.
Some math skills you need to practice abstractly because there aren't that many real-life instances of them. Rounding is a perfect example! I will introduce Estimation in grade 2, but I wait on Rounding until grade 3. The Waldorf Third Grade Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-57610394210999581462024-01-02T19:11:00.002-05:002024-01-02T19:14:15.878-05:00Educational Game: Gnoming A Round If your child comes home and tells you that they're learning about negative numbers, that means that they are now playing Gnoming A Round!
This fun card game is great as a simple introduction to the concept of having less than zero. Jamie York suggests explaining this to children using the example of a bank account balance being overdrawn... as opposed to a number line, which is Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-5754650997737987892024-01-01T17:42:00.003-05:002024-01-01T20:21:16.823-05:00Is It Music?One of my favorite Philosophy lessons!
Our artist for December, Yves Klein, is most famous for his nearly 200 monochrome paintings in International Klein Blue, but that wasn't his entire exploration of reductionism. Klein also presented "The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility: The Void" in 1958. "The Void" was an entirely white Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-10811975955644554732023-12-31T11:09:00.003-05:002024-01-04T09:30:36.674-05:00More Books for the In-Between TimeI have a special shelf in my chapter book area for the "in-between" books. These are books that look and feel like chapter books but they have large print and are still meant for beginning readers. Besides Spike: The Story of a Whitetail Deer (and series) and Picta the Painted Turtle (and series), here are the other titles I have on the lefthand side of that shelf:
Coyotes by Wilfrid Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-63682614944017361692023-12-30T18:23:00.004-05:002024-02-02T09:47:52.768-05:00"See and Read" SeriesI'm always on the lookout for excellent early reader book sets to invest in for our school. I've written before about The Magic Belt series for those kids who crave fantasy (and the progressively harder sets that come after that, which continue the adventures of Zak and Finn). For kids who prefer nonfiction, I love vintage Science I CAN READ / Nature I CAN READ books.
Now I have a new Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-83305464216720854352023-12-28T11:06:00.003-05:002023-12-28T11:22:59.256-05:00Roadside Geology SeriesI absolutely love the Roadside Geology series! Waldorf does a main lesson block on Geology in grade 6, but I know that lots of families have children that are rockhounds early on... or sometimes you're just taking a long drive and wondering what you're looking at!
We have Geology Underfoot in Illinois by Raymond Wiggers and I refer to it often. In fact, it includes Tower Rock, and ZacUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-16959424857022259152023-12-27T15:52:00.011-05:002024-01-28T15:49:42.815-05:00Yarn Shops in Southern IllinoisA friend and I are working on making a list of yarn shops in Southern Illinois. As I wrote before, I'd love to start buying only white yarn and having the children and I dye all of our colors ourselves. Why I Only Want To Buy White Yarn
BUT I'd also like to support local businesses, so it would be lovely to get the white yarn from them. And that would allow me to learn about classes and Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1694474699802617686.post-88861967548444435982023-12-21T21:23:00.002-05:002023-12-21T21:29:06.598-05:00Homemade 2024 Calendars - Local FoodsWe had a wonderful time making the 2024 calendars and I hope all the families really enjoy looking through them! Here are some notes for this year's calendar theme, "Local Foods, Farmed and Foraged." The children did all the seasonal artwork themselves, and wrote all the calendar numbers.
Zac, age 3, picking lavender at
Shawnee Hills Lavender
front cover - 2024
background -
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0