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Exploring Long Division

Taking a look at the Long Division Algorithm This is a sample membership post for The Beauty of Play’s membership subscription. It is opening in November. You can learn more about the subscriptions on the Membership page.…

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Putting together a History Block

My Process when Composing a Waldorf-style History Block – hint, we use a lot of Charlotte Mason tools. This is a sample membership post for The Beauty of Play’s membership subscription. It is opening in November.…

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Grade Eight Waldorf Geometry Block

Exploring the Platonic solids, their Duals, and Deriving Formulas for the Volume of Common Geometric Solids We are working on our Grade Eight Geometry Block, the highlight of which is the platonic solids. We’ve done some…

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A Logarithmic Spiral of Squares

The post discusses using a geometric construction to review angles, proportionality, and percent changes through the lens of logarithmic spirals. It highlights the concepts of arithmetic and geometric growth, the role of logarithms, and the beauty…

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Teaching Science through Art

An Interdisciplinary Lesson; Making Connection and Aiding Retention Jump to Video In regards to atomic theory for our chemistry block, there were several aspects that I wanted to convey. That protons and neutrons are much larger…

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Chemistry Overview

How Waldorf Approaches Science and Chemistry Specifically; Materials and Resources We Are Using for our Homeschool Chemistry Block Earth, Air, Fire, and Water – The four Ancient Greek elements. This is the lens that we are…

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Scientific Writing in Middle School

The Introduction of the Lab Report in our Homeschooling With our G7 Chemistry Block, we are introducing scientific writing through lab reports. Scientific writing is different than other academic writing in a few ways. First it…

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Handcrafts in Homeschooling

How the Pedagogies like Waldorf and Charlotte Mason Understood the Benefits to Mind, Hearts and Hand in using Handcrafts in Homeschooling I sat on the porch with my friend as we studied the collections of baskets…

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Exploring Number Bases

While Practicing Exponents, Place Value, Division, Multiplication and Critical Thinking We had a very short block of one week on Number Bases. Number bases, in my opinion, is not a crucial concept in math. However, it…

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Florida Snow Storm

This is hardly my usual post, but I wanted to share the lovely photos that my son, Jonah took of our recent snow storm. As you might now, an arctic blast came down causing a snow…

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Middle School Geography Block

Scaling up a Elementary Block to Fit a Middle School Geography Curriculum We recently did a block for geography that I used a lot of the books and activities that we did in elementary school. This…

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Spiral of Theodorus

Using the Progression of Roots to Introduce Radical Numbers We’ve been working on our Grade 7 Waldorf Geometry block. When planning for the year, I tend to leave the best for last. I consistently over plan…

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Playful Math Carnival #175

Bringing in Autumn with Spread of Math Delicacies Welcome to the 175’s edition of Playful Math Carnival, and if it’s your first visit to my site, welcome to the Beauty of Play. The Playful Math Carnival…

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Gerrymandering Exercise

An Activity from our US Constitution Block As part of our US history this year, we did a short block on the US Constitution. Listening to the book that I had chosen for the spine of…

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Spring Chalkboard Drawing

And a Few Things I’ve Learned about Art in our Waldorf-inspired Homeschooling Journey A couple of years ago when we did our Botany block, I did a chalk drawing that had a number of trees, a…

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Truchet Blocks

Making Blocks to Play Math I am an affiliate of WoodPeckers Crafts. How did this happen? Early in my blogging days sharing about our homeschool journey, I wrote a post about how I made a 100-chart…

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Exponent Work for Homeschool Math

Playing with Doubles in Cellular Biology In our last block, cellular biology, we ran across something in our reading that talked about how some bacteria are able to double every 20 minutes. I thought to myself,…

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Making Hominy

Making a Common Food for our Native American Studies Corn. It’s the center of the indigenous world in north America. As I researched various nations of native peoples across the United States for the beginning of…

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Pine Needle Baskets

A Hand Craft to Accompany our Study of Native America I often pair handcrafts with our history lessons. This keeps little hands busy while we are listening to our lessons and helps us to retain our…

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Ice Cream Flavor Permutations

Join us as we explore a fun math activity to introduce the factorial function for homeschooling. skip to video We are getting ready to study some probability and statistics for our seventh grade math, and I…

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A Microscope Lab

Learning How to Use a Microscope as an Intro to Biology for our Homeschooling As part of our Intro to Biology Block for seventh grade, we are doing quite a bit of work with the microscope.…

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Spinning with a Drop Spindle

Early Colonial Crafts for our Homeschool Handcrafts for our US History We’ve just started our first history block of the year for US History. The block will cover early colonialization. To go along with this block,…

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Choosing a Microscope for Your Homeschool

Magnification, Resolution, Lenses – We’re Going to Chat about it All. Hello there, Friend,  Let’s talk Microscopes!  This is a question that I get quite regularly, especially when there is any story or picture that has us…

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Density Lab

Exploring Density’s Role in our Grade 6 Earth Science Study We’ve done this lab before in her Chemistry Block for G3, but you know how I feel about repeating things – it’s a great idea! Density…

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Winter Ice Lanterns

A Tutorial on the Ice Lanterns that We Made during Christmas Break. Winter break from homeschooling this year brought record lows with the historic arctic blast storm. We had three straight days of hard freezes. That’s…

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Making Maple Candy

An Activity for our Native American History and Literature Study – The Anishinaabe Nation As part of our Anishinaabe study under our Native America History and Literature block we attempted making maple syrup candy. It was…

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Developing Number Sense for Fractions

Adding Fraction for Game Points in our Homeschooling We’ve been playing a RightStart matching game for percentages and fractional equivalencies. The way that we have been calculating our scores for this game has been by adding…

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Grade 5 Botany: Root Observation Lab

This has been one of most cool projects of our botany block. In this lab, we used a polymer from Miracle Grow, promoted as water crystals, as a germination and growth medium. These polymers are marketed…

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Unschooling for the Summer

Repost: This post was from last year. As my children become older, they have their own projects and their own interests. I try to facilitate their interests as much as possible. My high schooler has a…

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Artist of the 1800’s and 1900’s

We do not usually do artist study separate from our regular studies. With our intertwining of Charlotte Mason (CM) and Waldorf, artist study is usually incorporated into a short CM-style lessons themed to accommodate our main…

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WWI History Block

When planning this block, I was not sure how I was going to approach it. Neither my daughter, nor I really have much interest in war, tactical strategies, or even military planes or equipment. What she…

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Industrial Revolution

We recently finished our block on the Industrial Revolution. This was such an interesting block in the time period, and innovations had a diversity of impacts on so many people – some good and some bad.…

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A Time-Sequence Graph

When my son was in eighth grade, I compiled several resources to make a “How We Learn/How to Study” course in preparation for High School. It went over thinks like memory recall, reflection, interleaving, and notetaking.…

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The Shapes of Numbers — The Curve

Earlier in our Shapes of Numbers block, we explored triangle numbers, square numbers, and primes. We looked at the different ways they related to each other by exploring their sums and differences. Next up — curves…

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A Day in the Life of a Homeschooler

I recently did a Day-in-the-Life of a homeschooler on Instagram. This is an adaptation of that highlight to live permenantly on my blog. Enjoy! Good Morning! Today I’m doing a day-in-the-life of our homeschooling in posts…

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Grade 5 Physics: Electricity

Electricity…it’s electric! We spent two days on the theme of electricity within our physics block. If you are just joining me, there are several blog posts about our physics block. The plan, which has gone reasonably…

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Grade 5 Physics: Magnets

This was the section of our physics block I was most uncertain about. I did not have a clear plan for this one. We did not spend much time in her early years exploring magnets, so…

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Grade 5 Physics: Light

Next up for Physics – Light. There are two previous post for Grade 5 physic. If you are just joining us, we are spending the following days on each concept of our physics unit. Introduce Energy,…

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African Holocaust Block

Because the African Holocaust is a heavy one, I knew that I wanted to sandwich it in-between some ‘good stuff.’ I decided to do this by first exploring the continent of Africa and ending on the…

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Grade 5 Physics: Waves

We are doing a three-week study on physics, as mentioned in the previous physics blog. I plan on spending a couple of days on each concept. The plan is below. There is a previous post on…

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Making a Book

Occasionally my daughter will come to me and ask me to make her a book. We first started out with simple single-signature books, but then I found this wonderfully beautiful book, The Little Book of Book…

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Wild Bird Egg Replica Project

When we arrived on birds within our animal block, I knew I wanted to replicate Hana’s, with Pepper and Pine, egg project. Her YouTube video has been so helpful in avoiding mistakes that I’m almost sure we…

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Dissecting Owl Pellets

We’re in the middle of our Animal block, just about the part of nocturnal animals, and it seemed fitting do dissect an owl pellet. This gives us an opportunity to talk about how owls feed, and…

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Sophomore Year in Review

Whew! High school has been a whirlwind for us, but homeschooling high school is definitely doable. I just have to mentally prepare myself by realizing that there will be lots of changes through the years. He…

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Fourth Grade Year in Review

This was such a fun video to make. I had just finished looking through the kids portfolios in preparation for their annual evaluation, and then looked through photographs of the year to add to the video.…

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Making Mushroom Spore Prints

We love to go mushroom hunting. Our mushroom hunts are for spore prints. We do NOT eat our mushrooms. I wish I knew which ‘shrooms were edible and which were not, but alas… Goals!  Spore prints…

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My Favorite Educational Apps

The homeschool world abounds with opinions on electronics. Some think that electronics should be limited, while others think that electronics should be embraced.  My family falls somewhere in between. We do limit our screen time at my house…

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Natural Dyes on Cloth

Every year after we dye our eggs I have dye left. I always feel bad about sending them down the drain, because I feel like I’m wasting the dye. This year I saved the dye and…

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Wax Resist Naturally Dyed Eggs

Dying eggs is just so gratifying, especially with natural dyes. When my children were young, it was overwhelming to use natural dyes and the best that I could do was a kit. As they have gotten…

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Shakespeare Unit

This was a fabulous homeschool unit where everything just came together. There was a lot of interweaving of facts throughout the books and projects.  Our Read Aloud books, The Shakespeare Stealer and Shakespeare’s Scribe, both describe…

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Renaissance Unit

Renaissance art is some of my favorite art. I don’t know if it’s the depth of color or the intensity of the scenes, but I find it fascinating. The artists that created them are also fascinating.…

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Finding Perfect Numbers

Yesterday’s was all about Perfect number. It’s not how pretty the number is, or how well you like its form. It’s not even about if the number is your favorite. Perfect numbers have a distinct definition.…

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Explorers of the World History Unit

This year in history we have come to the dreaded “Age of Discovery,” which is a misnomer, because all these European explorers really “discovered” nothing at all. These places were already inhabited and well-established, sometimes with…

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Paper Quilling a Snowflake

I added paper quilling to our handcrafts back in October with some pumpkins. This was the first bit of paper quilling that we had added to our homeschooling. It is a delightful craft and easy to…

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Simple Mason Jar Candle Tutorial

For many years our family has participated in a regional art and craft fair that happens every year in our area. It’s a large event that draws in artist and craftsman from around the Southeastern United…

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Making Math Fun

You know I love math!  Today I’m sharing some of the best parts of math.  So if you and your child are struggling with math, add these in. Don’t dare say, “We are taking a break…

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Homeschool Rhythms and Rituals

It’s afternoon.  We’ve just finished lunch and are clearing the table. My daughter goes to get a piece of chocolate, her daily treat after she finishes her lunch. I reach over and give her a hug…

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Nurturing a Love of Reading

Learning to read is definitely one of the hallmarks of childhood, and a particularly special on for a homeschooling parent. Not only do you have the joy of a parent watching your child learn to read…

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Games – Late Elementary

THIS IS A 4-PART BLOG SERIES ON GAMES. IT INCLUDES GAMES FOR PRESCHOOLERS, EARLY ELEMENTARY, LATER ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL.  THIS POST CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS THAT WILL HELP YOU FIND THE GAME EASILY. These…

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Games-Early Elementary

THIS IS A 4-PART BLOG SERIES ON GAMES. IT INCLUDES GAMES FOR PRESCHOOLERS, EARLY ELEMENTARY, LATER ELEMENTARY, MIDDLE SCHOOL AND HIGH SCHOOL.  THIS POST CONTAINS AFFILIATE LINKS THAT WILL HELP YOU FIND THE GAME EASILY. We…

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Educational Games: Preschool

This is a 4-part blog series on games. It includes games for preschoolers, early elementary, later elementary, middle school and high school.  This post contains affiliate links that will help you find the game easily. We’ve…

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Using Cuisenaire Rods for Fractions

This is a math series follows our unit for introduction to fractions in grade 3.  This is one of several. Look for the others by searching “fractions.”  This post contains affiliate links. Day 10 It’s was our…

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Paper-folding Fraction Activity

This is a math series follows our unit for introduction to fractions in grade 3.  This is one of several. Look for the others by searching “fractions.” Though we are not completely finished with the number…

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Fractions on a Number Line

This is a math series follows our unit for introduction to fractions in grade 3.  This is one of several, and I’m combining several days into one post. This part of the unit all involves number…

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Fractions-Circles

This is a math series follows our unit for introduction to fractions in grade 3.  This is one of several, and I’m combining several days into one post. This part of the unit all involves circles.…

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Planning for High School

You know that feeling you get when you feel like you aren’t doing enough for your kids?  The one that causes you to panic and doubt yourself, go look for curriculum, and then over-schedule your homeschooling…

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Leaf Crown Tutorial

Even though for most of the Country the color of the leaves have faded and snow has fallen on a few choice places, here in North Florida we are just now seeing a bit of color…

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Slowing down for the Winter Season

When September rolls around each year, I have a sense of anticipation. The long hot summer days of Florida have started to wear on all of us. We’ve retreated into the recesses of our air-conditioned home…

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Quality of Numbers

  I love math. I always have. I think partly because I was able to see the magic of the patterns through the humdrum of algorithms and worksheets that were mundanely fed to us in school.…

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Vegan Corn-free Dairy-free Truffles

We have food allergies so my family can’t just go out and buy a box of chocolates, but never fear. Thankfully someone else has done all the work to find a truffle alternative.  Many folks asked…

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