Vertical Teacher Planner

My first choice and my second choice of teacher planbook are BOTH no longer being made, so today I spent a good hour and a half searching through all the remaining options. I finally discovered this nifty little item -- Elan Publishing Company 4 Period Teacher Lesson Plan; Days Vertically Down The Side (P4-97) -- and I'm very happy! For just $12.95, this bare bones stripped down planner comes with no stickers. It is simply an undated planner with the days vertically down the side, and four blocks of time.



For Waldorf homeschool families, these four blocks could correspond to Head / Heart / Hands plus a column to also list doctor appointments, etc.

For me, it goes beautifully with our three blocks of time in the day -- AM (before snack), MM (mid-morning, ie. after snack and before lunch), and PM (after recess). The fourth section is for my notes on individual children and it has eight rows, enough for each child to have a personal note each day.

I do a combination of whole group, small group, and one-on-one lessons every day and it's hard to find a planbook which will accommodate all those notes! This one looks like it will work well.

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

Introduction to Spelling and Penmanship

We started Spelling & Penmanship this week!

So far in SWI we have reviewed the basics of morphology by looking at word sums (prefix, suffix, base) and the three suffixing convention flowcharts:

final consonant doubling

replaceable < e >

toggle < y > to < i >

Next week we will begin to have short lists of spelling practice words based on words that the children misspell over and over in their MLB rough drafts. We will study these words too using Structured Word Inquiry to see why they are spelled the way they are spelled. Our first list: they, their, they're

To make daily spelling practice more fun and fancy, we will be using our fountain pens! The children will also get to choose whether they want to practice writing their spelling words in Chancery Script or cursive (everyone had a cursive workbook last year so they already know the alphabet).

We started our Spelling with the childrens' own names! They took a pretest on Monday where they had to write their first and last names. They thought this was really fun!

Your Name Is a Song
by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow

In our plan book color coding, Penmanship is gold (for illuminated manuscripts), so everyone got a two pocket folder with gold metallic accents in which to store their spelling & penmanship papers.

I've written an online course on how to incorporate Chancery Script into either the Waldorf or Montessori curriculum. It also includes videos on how to form all of the letters. If you are interested, it is here:

2-DAY ONLINE COURSE:
Waldorf Main Lesson Block Planning: Lowercase Letters

Here are the supplies we use in the classroom for our fountain pen work:

Pilot Fountain Pen Medium Stainless Steel Nib - Metropolitan Collection


Pilot Fountain Pen Medium Stainless Steel Nib - Retro Pop Collection


refill fountain pen ink cartridges - black

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

New Notebooks for a New School Year

I always enjoy purchasing supplies for a new school year, and this year I'm particularly pleased that I found Plan Books in three different sizes of Montessori penmanship paper and Math Journals in three different sizes of graph paper!

The three graph paper sizes are (from left to right) 1/2 inch, 1 cm, 1/4 inch.

AND Montessori penmanship paper in three sizes as well!

The notebooks will be perfect for our daily Plan Books! There is a print series (with a guide to print letters in the front) and a cursive series (with a guide to cursive letters in the front). The pink book has the widest lines, the blue book has the medium lines, and the green book has the narrowest lines. Montessori paper is wonderful for teaching Chancery Script as well.

On the first day of school, each child will have a chance to pick the set that is best for them. We have a mixed age homeschool environment (ages 7-13), so having a variety of paper sizes will accommodate everyone's needs.

I'm really pleased to offer these three options to the children, and to see what set they each choose!

links for small set:

plan book
math journal (1/4 inch)

links for medium set:

plan book
math journal (1 cm)

links for large set:

plan book
math journal (1/2 inch)

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

Color Coding the Plan Book

I've written many times about this favorite classroom routine, which I learned from my old Montessori school.

Children keep a written record of each thing they do during the day that counts as school and put colored dots in the margin to show which subject(s) the activity is. When they are little you can scribe for them, and then they will gradually take over the writing. You can use regular composition books or those with primary paper or Montessori paper (available in two sizes).

You can do this routine at the beginning of the day for goal-setting, throughout the day to help you strive for a balance in your activities, or at the end of the day for reflection. For homeschooling families this is wonderful documentation if you find that you are dejected at the end of the day that you're not doing "enough." A lot of what we do has learning embedded in it, and it's so fun to see it all down on paper!

Our colors are

yellow - Language Arts

orange - History & Geography

red - Fine Arts

purple - Practical Life

blue - Mathematics

green - Science & Nature

brown - P.E. & Health

gold - Penmanship

silver - Foreign Language

pink - Play

In years past I've bought each child his/her own box of colored pencils to use in color coding the plan book, but this year I realized that I have so many leftover pencils from previous years that we can absolutely just use those! So I set them up in little ceramic jars, one for each color. They look so adorable (I still need to get three more). Then I went looking to see if you could buy these pencils separately, if there's just one color you are short of. And you can!

Lyra Super Ferby Color Pencil - SINGLE
A Child's Dream
$2.70 each

White - 001

Zinc Yellow - 004

Lemon - 007

Light Orange - 013

Scarlet Lake - 018

Light Carmine - 027

Pink Madder Lake - 029

Peach Pink - 032

Magenta - 034

Violet - 038

Sky Blue - 046

Light Blue - 047

Prussian Blue - 051

Peacock Blue - 053

Aquamarine - 054

Viridian Green - 061

Sap Green - 067

Apple Green - 070

Van Dyck Brown - 076

Venetian Red - 090

Medium Grey - 097

Black - 099

Rainbow Garden School Store (which supports Houstatonic Valley Waldorf School) prices the pencils at $2.80 apiece and has these additional colors:

Light Violet - 039

Gold - 250

Silver - 251

Stores tend to sell out of the metallics, so I'd recommend checking Palumba. As of Aug 27, 2023 they still had Silver and Gold in stock ($3.20 apiece).

If you are in Australia, Rainbow Tree sells all of these colors as individual pencils and has nice little colored boxes to help you see what they look like.

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

Photos Part 1

Here are some photos from the classroom for the end of January.
Enjoy!

Montessori grammar symbols for article, adjective, noun

making Birdseed Ornaments with birdseed and melted veal tallow

from a local family farm

the Bilibo is a big hit!

Becca thoughtfully refills the bird feeders

the much-loved Tree of Life puzzle

a fish which has completely mastered the art of camouflage

from the Coral Reef Habitat Mat

we had so much fun putting our hands in birdseed making

the Birdseed Ornaments...

so, we made a birdseed sensory bin

building a snowman on a snowy day

Becca stands on top of it!

hmmm, climbing up isn't as easy as it looks

running out of sheer happiness

inspired by the art in our poetry book,

we made snowflake art ourselves

practicing our bird identification for Project Feederwatch

of course now we have to hang up more birdfeeders,

so we can attract more birds!

this fresh local produce is delicious, Mom!

(not much cabbage makes it into the Stone Soup)

ready to collect our birdwatching data, friends gather with clipboards

creating gigantic termite mound artwork for the Zoology MLB

we love Douglas Florian's concrete poem, which is shaped like a mound

thank you to the family who donated Animal Architects

to our homeschool co-op classroom

drawing the details of the termites' elaborate ventilation chimney

using chalk and negative space to draw our ants

inspired by Amy Lowry Poole's book

Leah's ant from her Fables MLB

"The Ant and the Grasshopper"

the phases of the moon in Science Club

of course, we have to use Oreo cookies!

Zac watches intently

time for a new homemade birdfeeder project,

this time with oranges

we juice them first and enjoy the sweet juice

then scoop out the pulp, add a string for hanging,

and fill them with birdseed

the entire class watches intently

as Becca hangs them in the tree

so beautiful!

now the REAL fun begins...

scooping the birdseed from one large bin to another

we turn our attention to the Honeybee in Winter

and the play immediately becomes about bees in a hive

elaborate silken constructions

and team planning

we taste honeycomb with our Snack

and the older students compare its design to the paper wasp nest

we looked at earlier -- they are strikingly similar

tasting the honeycomb and/or dissecting it to see the chambers

we discover that the little beeswax caps to the cells

are themselves perfect hexagons!

we have studied so much but there is so much left

on the Tree of Life... an incredible realization

a final review of the insect life cycle 

(and its close resemblance to other patterns in nature)

I love these wooden Insect Life Cycle Turnover Tops

and they are not made anymore!

on the underside you see the egg and larval form

take the top in your hand and spin quickly...

and they begin to stand on edge...

and then flip over...

and finally settle, revealing the adult form of the insect

we marvel at the intricate skeletal design

on this X-ray of the snake

I also use the color coding from our Plan Books

when I write our afternoon schedule on the chalkboard

the precious little wooden cells and bees are safe in today's hive

some like to be a nurse bee, taking care of little ones

some like to be a worker bee on construction duty

making Stone Soup with Miss Aliya,

a beloved Thursday tradition

the beautiful blocks for the Colorful Ice Fort project

Happy January!!

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