The Beauty of Play

Making a 100 Chart for Math

I adore Grimm’s Counting with Wooden Number Chart, but I couldn’t move past the $140 sticker price, though I think it’s well worth it. Still I really wanted a 100 chart like this, because we will be using the 100 chart a lot this coming school year for my youngest. I wanted something “whole brained”…

Doubling and Halving

Hello There! Welcome to The Beauty of Play. This post is for my subscription memberships. I currently have two: One for all things homeschooling and another for all things math. If you are interested, you can sign up for my newsletter HERE where I will let you know when the next enrollment period becomes open….

Water Colors in Homeschooling

Exploring Long Division

Putting Together my Planner for the Coming Year

Math Circles

Thinking about Time in our Homeschooling

Memorizing the Multiplication Tables

Dying with Natural Plant Dyes

Window Stars from Squares

Window Star Math

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 plays such a big role in the formation of the Earth and of the Earth’s atmosphere. I felt we…

An Overview of Cuisenaire Rods

Convection in our Earth Science Studies

Exploring the Causes of Plate Tectonics, Currents, and Climate in our Grade Six Science. Convection is a strong theme in our Earth Science studies this year. We are seeing it in tectonic plate movement. We are also seeing it in the water and air currents. To make sure that we had a concrete understanding of…

Tools for Learning

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 unheard of in North Florida. It very rarely snows here (maybe once in the 20 years we’ve lived here)…

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 surprisingly simple and easy to make with only one ingredient – maple syrup. I wanted to use an Anishinaabe elder’s…

Language Arts for our Grade Six of Homeschooling

Resources We Are Using for Sixth Grade English. Things are changing a bit for us for language arts this year. In previous years, I’ve relied on BraveWriter style copy work and dictation for language arts in addition to our Waldorf/Charlotte Mason-style narration process. We’ve had some Michael Clay Thompson grammar thrown into the mix, and of course some Grammarland. We’ve…

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 all the fractions from the pairs. There are many activities that I have in my math curricula Fractions Year…

A Homeschooler’s Review of the Book Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools

How we are using the book Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools to teach art in our homeschool. My daughter and I just started her sixth grade year of homeschooling. One of my favorite aspects of this year for our family is the introduction to charcoal in art. An interesting part of Waldorf pedagogy is…

Botany: Rate of Photosynthesis Experiment

In the experiment, the rate of photosynthesis is explored. This is a fun experiment, because the first time a little leaf disc rises to the surface there is so much excitement. What is being observed is the rate of photosynthesis determined by how much oxygen is being produced. When enough oxygen has been produced in…

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 at hydration crystals that help keep soil from getting too moist or too dry. They do this because they…

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 job now, and is pursuing his interest in drones and videography. He rarely participates in our read aloud. My…

Grade 5 Freehand Waldorf Geometry: Ellipse Exercise

We’ve been working on our freehand Waldorf Geometry block the last couple of weeks. Check my Geometry highlights on Instagram for more. We are using pushpins as string to first draw a circle from the center, and then moving the focus outward from the circle to see the changes in the circle. It’s a cool exercise just by…

2022 Wax-resist Naturally-dyed Eggs

You likely realize by now that I love dying eggs. I have at least two different blog posts on it. Well, we did it again this year, and it may be my best year yet. Last year, I really felt that we could use a little more pinks and purples in the mix. You can…

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 lesson. Since we do history chronologically, this means most of our artists have reflected what we were studying in…

Grade 5 Botany: Dissection of a Flower

One of the activities that we did last week for our botany block was to dissect a flower and find all its parts. We looked at some of those parts under the microscope. As it was spring here in North Florida, we took a little walk around our yard and picked some flowers. Most of…

Exploring Rules of Divisibility through Patterns in the 100-chart and Digit Sums of Multiples

Rules of Divisibility. How did we decide what they were? That’s where we are headed in our math journey at the moment. I’ve talk about going back, reviewing, revisiting, or doing an activity more than once. This repetition brings depth to our math journey. We are doing just that again in preparation for reducing fractions…

Botany (Grade 5): Celery Stalk Demonstration of the Vascular System

Matching scientific demonstrations accurately to the explanation of their concepts is important to me. Science is cool, fascinating, and amazing! But even more amazing is scientific literacy and why these demonstrations work the way that they do. It’s essential to match those concepts with clear, accurate concrete examples. Dying the leaves of celery or carnations is…

An Introduction to Genetics through Botany

Our Botany Block offered the perfect opportunity for an introduction to genetics with the work of Friar Gregor Mendel. Mendel is the person that bred several generations of pea plants to discover the basic understanding of genetics. In this book Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas, the story of Gregor Mendel is told and…

Some Favorite Books for Black History Month

I know I’m a little late to the ballgame, but I wanted to add to the wonderful collection of books that I am seeing for Black History Month. Not all of them are historical necessarily, but there are a couple that I just needed to add anyway. These are not affiliate links. I, Matthew Henson…

because playing is learning