Art Club - Halloween & Thanksgiving

More notes from Art Club!

Past notes from our Art Club for ages 5 & 6:

John Cage - Oh, How We Love You

Turnips / Onions / Acorns

Halloween

Fri Oct 30

read "How Witchamaroo Became the Pocket Witch" and act out story
from the first book of Autumn Tales by Suzanne Down

go bobbing for apples

Spooky Painting
paint water on a chalkboard and watch the marks slowly disappear

Mud Kitchen
make a Halloween Brew (make it bubble w/ vinegar and baking soda)

play Go Away Monster!

Thanksgiving

Fri Nov 6

read Socks for Supper by Jack Kent

do "Pelle's New Suit" circle time
from Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures: Movement Enrichment with a Therapeutic Approach to Early Childhood, vol.1

feel raw sheep fleeces and compare them to smooth colorful roving

practice using wool carders

Nature Walk
find and then sew a string of beautiful Autumn Leaves

Fri Nov 13

read "Teasel & Tweed" and act out story
from A Donsy of Gnomes by Sieglinde de Francesca

look at and touch spiky teasel

string beads onto rainbow thread

choose bits of colorful wool roving to leave as gifts for the gnomes

Outdoor Play
tuck wool into crevices and then play in our new fallen tree area

Fun Fact:
I have taken years of puppetry training with Suzanne Down and know her well. She told me once that she actually lost her computer file with the first book of Autumn Tales and had to write a complete second book. I still had a copy of her first book, so I lent it to her so that she could photocopy it! 😊 Right now, none of her books are in print but she is in hopes of bringing them back. You can find all of her other work at junipertreepuppets.com.

Halloween Fun

A list of Halloween-related activities. Some we are doing this year; others we either have in the past, or I would like to remember them for the future!

Handwork

Spooky Stone Weaving
from Making Zen Sep 2026



Hand-Stitched Franken-Fabric
from Making Zen Sep 2026



Magical Embroidery: Abundance Toad
StitchWorts School of Magical Embroidery

Language Arts

Haunted House of Speech

SWI - A Spoonful of Frogs



"The Bells" by Edgar Allan Poe

The Landlady by Roald Dahl

The Feather Pillow by Horacio Quiroga

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

Mathematics

Ghostie Numbers

Cauldron Quest board game
even/odd (complete game rules are here)

Would You Rather? version I / Would You Rather? version II
static addition / dynamic addition & subtraction

Goblin Goooolash
adding & subtracting mixed fractions with unlike denominators

Halloween Word Problems
decimals

Halloween Party Planning
fractions & decimals

Science

Chocolate Fake Blood Recipe

Blood Spatter Detectives Lab

Geography

Nightmare Land Contour Map

Art History

A Week at the Boo-seum

unknown artist
The Gayer-Anderson Cat, approx. 600 BCE

Hans Holbein the Younger
The Ambassadors, 1533

Caspar David Friedrich
The Tree of Crows, c. 1822

Edvard Munch
The Scream, 1893

Alexander Calder
Ghost, 1964

Louise Bourgeois
Maman, 1999

Writing Halloween Letters

The other day I found some special Halloween-themed paper in my stationery bin, and had a great idea! I had to write a letter to parents letting them know that we wouldn't be dressing up in costumes at school. (We do lots of spooky things, including reading Halloween stories at snack, creating Haunted Houses of Speech in Grammar, and practicing odd and even in Math by playing Cauldron Quest... but we don't do costumes and a party.)

So I had the children write the letters, practicing friendly letter format and incorporating this week's Spelling words (isn't, it's, its).

Here is the letter we came up with:

October 28, 2025

Dear _________,

It's almost Halloween! We decided not to wear Halloween costumes to school on Thursday. Sometimes costumes are scary, which isn't fair to younger children. And I want my costume to look its best for trick-or-treating.

With love,

_________

Now they are all copying it in their best penmanship. This idea was a hit!

If you'd like to see all of my notes on creating a Friendly Letters block for Waldorf fifth grade, they are here.

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

Booktacular Pumpkin Contest!

We love entering this annual contest at the Carbondale Public Library!

Pumpkins are decorated like favorite book characters, and will be on view for library patron voting from Oct 16 to Oct 23 (winners in each category are announced Oct 25). Then the pumpkins will carefully be transported to the Pumpkin Glow at Oakland Nature Preserve for all to enjoy Oct 24, 25, 26!

Our 12 entries this year will be

Almanzo (and his Milk-fed Pumpkin)
from Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Auggie
from Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Carlo the Frog-Dragon
from Hooky by Míriam Bonastre Tur

Gerald
from The Thank You Book by Mo Willems

Greg
from Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney

Katniss
from The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Mossy the Gnome
from The Way of Gnome by Sieglinde de Francesca

Pete the Cat
from Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes by Eric Litwin

Ripple Squirrel
from Pippa Pops Out! by Betty Boegehold

Shiara the Fire-Witch
from Searching for Dragons by Patricia Wrede

Tin Woodman
from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Wilbur
from Charlotte's Web by E.B. White

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

Silent Movies

When 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 Oz (1900)
The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)
Ozma of Oz (1907)
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908)
The Road to Oz (1909)
The Emerald City of Oz (1910)
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913)
Tik-Tok of Oz (1914)
The Scarecrow of Oz (1915)
Rinkitink in Oz (1916)
The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)
The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918)
The Magic of Oz (1919)
Glinda of Oz (1920)

Or, I will get the Oz, The Complete Collection boxed set, with five volumes which each contain 3 books in one.


Volume 5 also contains The Royal Book of Oz, which was credited to L. Frank Baum but entirely written by Ruth Plumly Thompson.


Note: the copyright on these books has expired and free digital versions are also available at archive.org.

My mom sewed my Halloween costumes for me and I still have two from that time. One year I was Glinda the Good in red satin with beaded collar and cuffs. The next year I was Ozma of Oz, and it was my favorite Halloween costume of all time. She made me a beautiful pale green tulle dress with a golden headband (it is still the star of our dress-up bin).

Today I unexpectedly discovered that there are 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, later evolving into Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer.

I am really thrilled because I often want examples of silent movies to show to my U.S. History students who cannot imagine such a thing, and I never have time to track any down. Now this one just fell into my lap! I usually recommend that they watch Singin' in the Rain to get an idea of how talkies changed everything, but that was made in the 50's to show life in the 20's.

Here are the movies I want to remember for next time this comes up:

The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914)
available at Amazon Prime with a one week free trial of MGM+

His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz (1914)
available at Wikipedia for free
but without piano and the piano is important!

The Magic Cloak of Oz (1914)
available at Amazon Prime for $19.99
note: the Forest of Burzee is also the setting for The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, available for free at Project Gutenberg

I had no idea, until I started researching this, that there was a 1910 silent film version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (13 minutes) AND a 1925 silent film version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1 hour 11 minutes, available at Amazon Prime for $3.99). Did everyone know about this but me?

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

Booktacular Pumpkin Decorating Contest

Every year we participate in the Booktacular Pumpkin Decorating Contest at the Carbondale Public Library. It's so fun to hear what book characters children love best! Today they each got their pumpkins, chose their book characters, made a planning sketch, and turned in a supply list to me (younger children had the assistance of older children to scribe for them).

Now I am looking over all of the supply requests and seeing what I need to purchase!

Sorting Hat from

medium brown, dark brown, black, and white paint
brown witch's hat
clothespin

Dragon from

red paint
black and white pompoms
red paint chips
scissors & glue

Paddington Bear from

green, brown, and black paint
brown fur fabric
needle & thread
large hat
red ribbon
paper egg carton
scissors & glue

Tag from

dark brown and grey paint
metallic gold paper
orange construction paper
scissors & glue

Cat from

red, white, and black paint
red and white construction paper
scissors & tape

Narwhal from

light blue, grey, and black paint

Polly from

light peach, red, black, yellow, and green paint
hair ribbon

Eragon from

blue paint
metallic black paper
aluminum foil
blue and silver colored pencils
cardboard
scissors & tape
brown wool roving

Fireheart from

light green, dark green, medium green, white, pink, and black paint
orange construction paper
scissors & tape
black wire

Golem from

white, black, and blue paint
grey wool yarn
gold bracelet
white paper
pencil
scissors & glue

Saphira from

white, light blue metallic, and dark blue metallic paint
light blue, medium blue, and dark blue yarn
metallic black paper
blue construction paper
black Sharpie
scissors & glue

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

Week Nine Photos

I'm on vacation and finally have time to get caught up on things!

These photos go with the post Week Nine Notes (Oct 31 - Nov 3).

Is It Sculpture? day 3

http://switzerite.blogspot.com/2022/10/is-it-sculpture.html

wearing costumes to school on Halloween

explorations of the Bohr Board in Alchemy

https://switzerite.blogspot.com/2022/10/ppi-alchemy.html

the Haunted House of Speech

https://switzerite.blogspot.com/2020/10/haunted-house-of-speech-revisited.html

in Upper Elementary (ages 9-12), they learn that there are more Grammar symbols, including for different kinds of nouns!

Mummy Race

we use the leftover toilet paper to make Ghost Mud

Ivory soap, toilet paper, water

another Halloween tradition... Witch's Brew

adding magic powder

and the magic liquid

it bubbles in a most satisfactory way

next on the list of traditions, Pumpkin Portraits

a student using Gelatos discovers that there are some Day-Glo colors!

this is PERFECT because we just learned about the invention of Day-Glo colors in our Inventors block... so we can use these for the MLB illustrations!

https://waldorfcurriculum.com/Class2/inventors.html

getting the shape just right

getting the color just right

learning about Tony Sarg and the difference between articulated and non-articulated puppets

making the connection between the words < article > and < articulated >

another big project... the Octal Mat!

the biggest number on the Golden (base 10) Mat is one million

the biggest number on the Octal (base 8) Mat is 262,144

we start by writing the numbers in silver Sharpie
but decide to go over them with fabric paint

everyone is excited to try it out!

the number 72 in base 10
7 in the 10s place and 2 in the units place

the number 72 in base 8
1 in the 64s place and 1 in the 8s place

the invention of the Rubik's cube

the invention of the Slinky

using the Decimal Stamp Game

Handwork is our special for Wednesday afternoons

under the fence
catch the sheep (shown here)
back we come
off we leap

the Pouches Game
a pouch is 10 gems
so the number 12 is one pouch + 2 gems

the number 14 is one pouch + 4 gems

the number 20 is two pouches and 0 gems

we read The Hundred-Year Barn and wonder...
how many pouches would it take to make 100?

since Mary Blair is our new Artist of the Month,
we start Alice in Wonderland as our read aloud story

the finished cut paper collages are wonderful!