Homeschooling
Practical home education, curriculum reviews, learning methods, read-alouds and resources for homeschooling families.
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Practical home education, curriculum reviews, learning methods, read-alouds and resources for homeschooling families. Open each item at its original source for the complete article or video.
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What Break Through Looks Like in Kindergarten | Day 13
Thirteen days into homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews for a Waldorf-inspired kindergarten, I learned something that genuinely shifted my perspective on what it means for a child to struggle through a task. Day 13, Thursday, October 1, 2026, we began with our usual opening activities, checking the weather, season, and calendar with our little peg dolls. Of course, the most anticipated moment was checking on the bird who has been sitting on her eggs for what feels like years. The eggs had finally hatched, and I showed the children the two tiny fledglings tucked into the nest. They were thoroughly unimpressed. My sister-in-law and I had to laugh because I had expected so much more excitement. After a few more activities from our fall morning basket, we headed into the kitchen for our projects. I brought out wool for carding and shared some of the scarves I had dyed with madder root. But the biggest surprise came when my nephew who had struggled so much with weaving the week before was the first one to ask for it again. I had not planned to bring weaving back. There had been so much frustration the first time, and I realized that part of the problem was mine. I had introduced a project that was really better suited to my 11-year-old nephew than to four-year-olds. I still believe weaving has a place in kindergarten, but it needs to be presented on a scale that is developmentally appropriate. I also noticed something important. If I keep correcting a child and the same mistake continues to happen over and over again, perhaps the answer is not that the child needs more correction. Perhaps the task itself needs to change. So this time, I stopped correcting them. Their weaving was not technically right. They did not consistently alternate the over-under pattern each time they turned their boards, but they were engaged. They were enjoying the movement. Most importantly, the child who had been so frustrated the week before came back to the work willingly.
Wet Felted Plant Dyed Wool Balls
One of the things I love most about teaching handwork to children of different ages is finding ways to introduce the same project while modifying it to meet each child's abilities. My students range in age from 6 to 12, and this approach draws on the skills I've cultivated over more than two decades of homeschooling my own children, who were also different ages and had different abilities. Our latest project is a collection of beautiful wet-felted wool balls that we dyed using natural plant dyes. What I especially love about this project is that it can be considered complete at several different stages, making it suitable for a wide range of ages and abilities. I prepared the cores of the wool balls using scraps of wool felt and leftover yarn from previous projects. The students then carded raw wool, removed the impurities, and carefully wrapped the wool around the cores. We added a final layer of fresh wool before wet felting the balls and eventually dyeing them with plant dyes. For the younger students, these beautiful wool balls are their finished projects. The older students will take the project a step further by adding embroidery. I love that every child can participate in the same activity while working at an appropriate level of complexity. Meanwhile, I've been experimenting with more natural dyes at home. I prepared a concentrated black bean dye bath and added some wool batting and a little silk. The silk is developing the most gorgeous deep blue-purple color, perhaps the richest shade I've achieved from black beans so far. It's fascinating to see how different fibers respond to the same dye bath. I've also been experimenting with pomegranate skins. During our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten with my four-year-old triplet nephews and their 11-year-old brother, we harvested the single ripe pomegranate growing on my tree. After enjoying the fruit, we saved the skins to make another natural dye. I love finding ways to use materials that would otherwise be di
When Plans Fail in Kindergarten | Waldorf Homeschool | Day 15
Day 15, Thursday, October 8, 2026, of homeschooling my triplet nephews, who are four years old, for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten, and we had more failures today than on all our previous days combined! But even when our projects don’t go as planned, there is still so much to experience and learn. We’re beginning in the garden, where my 11-year-old nephew is harvesting the only pomegranate that survived this season. I’ve been saving it for him because he loves pomegranates, and we’re going to reserve the skins for a natural fabric dye project. Meanwhile, the four-year-olds are making self-watering planters. I have little plastic pots that fit perfectly inside mason jars, and the children are threading wool yarn through the bottoms to wick water into the soil. I bought something similar years ago, but replacements were so expensive that I decided we could make our own. The children fill their pots with soil and count out five marigold seeds each. This is a wonderful example of how mathematics naturally enters the kindergarten experience. Counting individual seeds gives children a concrete understanding of quantity without formal instruction. We finish by watering the soil, and I’ve already realized I need some child-sized gardening spades and a little indoor watering can! Gardening is a central part of our kindergarten rhythm, and I love how these projects connect to our other activities. The marigolds will eventually be harvested for another natural dye experiment. While the children enjoy imaginative play in their wooden structure from Head, Hands, and Heart Boutique, my older nephew and I begin preparing our pomegranate dye. The enormous fabric cover I made for the play structure has become one of their favorite things. They especially love when my 15-year-old daughter joins them and helps guide their imaginative play. Back in the kitchen, I’m introducing my older nephew to alum, a mordant used in natural dyeing. We’re preparing wool for our dye experimen
A Simple Homeschool Day | Day 14
Some days homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten are much simpler than others. And on Day 14, Tuesday, October 6, 2026, after weeks of anticipation, we are finally finishing our wet-felted wool pumpkins, and I could not be more pleased with how beautifully they turned out! We started these pumpkins last week using wool batting felted around racquetballs, with a larger tennis ball for my 11-year-old nephew's pumpkin. Now that the wool has dried and the pumpkins have been dyed with madder root, it's time to cut them open, remove the balls, and add the finishing touches. We cut around the upper third of each pumpkin to create a removable lid. Initially, I left part of the top attached, but when I asked the children whether they preferred a hinged lid or one that came completely off, they all wanted separate lids. The racquetballs popped out easily, while the tennis ball had slightly adhered to the wool, making it a little more challenging to remove. Some of the pumpkin tops were slightly misshapen from the baking twine we used during felting. Next time, I'll try rubber bands instead. Still, the pumpkins held together beautifully, especially considering I had been concerned that we wouldn't have enough wool to complete them. The finishing touch that really transformed these pumpkins was needle-felting the little green stems onto their lids. I had several shades of green wool to choose from, along with a felting needle. Normally, I would use a foam block beneath the wool, but I couldn't find mine. Thankfully, the felting needles came with a tiny piece of foam that turned out to be exactly the size we needed to fit beneath the pumpkin lids. And our kitchen activity could not have been simpler. Each child sliced half an apple using their own cutting board and knife. We saved the apple seeds for a planting project later in the season. Their knife skills continue to improve, and I love seeing how much more capable and indepe
Is This ENOUGH | LIVE Waldorf Kindergarten | Day 12
Welcome to the LIVE audio version of our homeschool vlogs. In these videos, you'll hear the delightful voices of the children, my verbal instructions to the children (often too much instruction) and the quiet and slow between the projects, and the laughter and joy of the play. Day 12, Tuesday, September 29, 2026, of homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten started a little differently. We skipped our usual opening rhythm of checking the weather, season, and calendar and went straight into making our fall peg dolls because I had completely forgotten to make them earlier in the week. The children painted their own peg dolls in the colors of their choice using Lyra opaque watercolor pan paints. I actually loved that they were able to be part of making something that would become part of our seasonal activities instead of simply receiving something I had already prepared for them. From there, we moved into making homemade pizza. The children love working with dough, and homemade pizza has become such an easy and enjoyable activity for us. I have the recipe linked in the description box below. My 11-year-old nephew was also working independently on blueberry muffins while we prepared another project for later in the day. We boiled walnuts so they would hopefully be easier to crack cleanly in half because we wanted to turn the shells into little sailboats. While everything was cooking, the children had plenty of time for imaginative play on their wooden play structure from Head, Hands, and Heart Boutique in Canada. My 15-year-old daughter often joins them in their play, which gives them even more ideas for how to transform the structure. After pizza and blueberries, we moved on to our walnut sailboats. The children chose pieces of 100% wool felt for their sails, and we used small twigs for the masts. Next time we go on a nature walk, I want them to collect their own twigs because I already know this is an activity they ar
Why I'm Saving These for First Grade | Day 14
14 days into homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten, and we are finally completing a project they have been asking about for weeks! Our wet-felted wool pumpkins are finished, and I could not be more pleased with how beautifully they turned out. I had been putting this project off because I wanted to make sure we had the right materials, enough time, and a few modifications that I thought would improve the finished pumpkins. In the end, they turned out even better than the original ones that inspired us! We made our pumpkins using undyed wool batting felted around racquetballs and tennis balls. The tennis ball was a little more challenging because some of the wool adhered to its surface, but the racquetballs popped right out. Once the pumpkins were felted, we dyed them with madder root for approximately 20 minutes. This gave the exterior a beautiful pumpkin-orange color while leaving the interior a lighter yellow-orange. The subtle variations in color are one of my favorite things about these pumpkins. The finishing touch was needle-felting the little stems onto the tops. This simple addition completely transformed them! The children were absolutely charmed by their pumpkins, and my sister-in-law and I were just as delighted. After their rather underwhelming reaction to discovering the newly hatched birds in our garden, it was especially satisfying to see how much they loved this project. I've linked the complete felted pumpkin tutorial in the description box below. You can also find the playlist of our kindergarten lessons with live audio if you'd like to hear the instructions and conversations that take place throughout our mornings. With our pumpkins complete, we moved into the kitchen for a very simple snack preparation. Each child sliced an apple using their own little cutting board and knife. Their coordination and confidence continue to improve with every opportunity to practice. We also collected the apple se
LIVE Circle Time | Fall Kindergarten | Day 11
Welcome to the LIVE audio version of our homeschool vlogs. In these videos, you'll hear the delightful voices of the children, my verbal instructions to the children (often too much instruction) and the quiet and slow between the projects, and the laughter and joy of the play. Day 11 of homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten began in the kitchen because I had a project I knew would immediately catch their attention. I had been plant dyeing some wet-felted wool balls with madder root, and the children were completely inspired by them. Since we have already made wet-felted wool balls together, it felt very natural to add another one to our upcoming projects so they can experience dyeing their own. From there, we headed into the kindergarten room where we are beginning to establish a really lovely rhythm for the start of our day. We begin with our weather gnomes so the children can observe what the weather is like, and we also use our calendar gnomes to find the day of the week and the season. I love having these simple little rituals at the beginning of class because they create such a gentle transition into the rest of our morning. For today, I had prepared a basket filled with fall-inspired materials. There were some wool felt leaves that I had planned to use for an embroidery project, but the children were much more interested in some of the other things tucked inside the basket, so we simply followed their curiosity. They were completely charmed by the little wet-felted pumpkin and immediately wanted to make one of their own. I have not made that project in more than 10 years, since my own children were little, so I am absolutely delighted to bring it back for my nephews. Their sense of wonder, excitement, and curiosity over these simple handmade things brings me so much joy. Inside the felted pumpkin were walnuts in their shells, which led us into our next activity. We used a wooden walnut cracker and each child
LIVE Morning Circle | Weather Peg Dolls & Fall Basket | Day 11
Welcome to the LIVE audio version of our homeschool vlogs. In these videos, you'll hear the delightful voices of the children, my verbal instructions to the children (often too much instruction) and the quiet and slow between the projects, and the laughter and joy of the play. On Day 11, September 24, 2026, I can say, it’s finally fall! Autumn is our favorite, which means I’ve been pulling out some of our favorite autumn activities that I haven’t used with my own children in nearly 10 to 15 years. I am so excited to bring these projects back and introduce them to my four-year-old triplet nephews for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten. We began by exploring a basket filled with some of our fall materials. There was a little wet-felted pumpkin filled with walnuts, our weather and calendar peg dolls, and some sweet autumn peg dolls that immediately caught the children’s attention. Of course, they wanted to take the peg dolls home, so instead we decided that we’ll make some of our own in an upcoming class. They also loved the little felted pumpkin and want to make one of those too. Just one basket gave us so many ideas for projects we can work on throughout the season. The first thing they wanted to do was crack walnuts. I have this beautiful wooden walnut cracker, and each child took a turn cracking a walnut. We tried to keep the shells intact because I would love to turn some of them into little walnut-shell sailboats later. Even something as simple as cracking nuts becomes such satisfying work for young children. Meanwhile, my 11-year-old nephew peeled a pomegranate for us. We saved all of the pomegranate skins because I want to experiment with them for a natural dyeing project later. I love how one activity naturally becomes material for another. Very little needs to be wasted when we begin looking at the things around us as materials we can work with. Our kitchen work for the day was preparing two different varieties of winter squash, a honeynut squash and a re
LIVE What Teaching Looks Like in Our Homeschool | Day 10
Welcome to the LIVE audio version of our homeschool vlogs. In these videos, you'll hear the delightful voices of the children, my verbal instructions to the children (often too much instruction) and the quiet and slow between the projects, and the laughter and joy of the play. Our Tuesday, September 22, 2026 kindergarten day began with something very exciting for the room. Our new wooden play structure had arrived, and my son assembled it for us before the children came. It is made of beautiful pine and has such a lovely natural finish. The wood is incredibly smooth, and you can actually smell the pine when you walk into the room. I also ordered some felted autumn leaves to decorate it and dyed a piece of cotton fabric that we can drape over the top to create a cozy little enclosure for imaginative play. Our teepee has been wonderful, but it has always been a little too small for all three boys to fit comfortably inside together. This new structure gives them much more room to play, while still creating that enclosed, cozy feeling children seem to love. I also like that we can change the configuration and make it smaller or larger depending on how they want to use it. Once the children arrived, we spent some time checking on all of the seedlings we had planted during our previous kindergarten days. Gardening has become such a natural part of our rhythm. Some plants were thriving, while others were struggling a little, so we looked carefully at each one, watered the plants that needed it, and added a few more seeds where nothing had germinated. I love that gardening gives children an opportunity to experience care, patience, observation, and responsibility without needing a formal lesson. They notice which plants are strong, which ones need water, and which ones might need another chance. There is so much learning happening simply through tending something over time. We also returned to our weaving project. I demonstrated how to work over and under the warp thre
Old Kindergarten Activities, New Little Hands | Day 12
Day 12, Tuesday, September 29, 2026, of homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten started a little differently. We skipped our usual opening rhythm of checking the weather, season, and calendar and went straight into making our fall peg dolls because I had completely forgotten to make them earlier in the week. The children painted their own peg dolls in the colors of their choice using Lyra opaque watercolor pan paints. I actually loved that they were able to be part of making something that would become part of our seasonal activities instead of simply receiving something I had already prepared for them. From there, we moved into making homemade pizza. The children love working with dough, and homemade pizza has become such an easy and enjoyable activity for us. I have the recipe linked in the description box below. My 11-year-old nephew was also working independently on blueberry muffins while we prepared another project for later in the day. We boiled walnuts so they would hopefully be easier to crack cleanly in half because we wanted to turn the shells into little sailboats. While everything was cooking, the children had plenty of time for imaginative play on their wooden play structure from Head, Hands, and Heart Boutique in Canada. My 15-year-old daughter often joins them in their play, which gives them even more ideas for how to transform the structure. After pizza and blueberries, we moved on to our walnut sailboats. The children chose pieces of 100% wool felt for their sails, and we used small twigs for the masts. Next time we go on a nature walk, I want them to collect their own twigs because I already know this is an activity they are going to want to repeat. My sister-in-law carefully cracked the walnuts after they had been boiled, and surprisingly, many of the shells stayed intact enough to use. I glued the felt sails onto the twigs and then secured them inside the shells with hot glue. The little boats
LIVE What Kindergarten Should Really Look Like | Day 10
Welcome to the LIVE audio version of our homeschool vlogs. In these videos, you'll hear the delightful voices of the children, my verbal instructions to the children (often too much instruction) and the quiet and slow between the projects, and the laughter and joy of the play. Day 10, September 22, 2026, of homeschooling my four-year-old triplet nephews began with a beautiful new addition to our kindergarten room: a wooden play structure from Head Hands Heart Boutique in Canada. My 20-year-old son assembled it over the weekend, and I added some wool felted leaves to decorate it for fall. My mother had also recently noticed the red and white mushrooms in the story we are reading, The Hedgehog Leaves Home, and picked up the sweetest mushroom hats for the children. Even though she was not with us that day, she sent the hats along with some little aprons she thought the children would enjoy using during our kindergarten work. We also spent some time bringing the senses into our morning. The children smelled a cinnamon stick, which is such a simple way to bring the season into the room. I love incorporating the smells, textures, colors, and experiences of fall into our kindergarten rhythm rather than separating them into a formal lesson. Our gardening work continued as well. Some of the seedlings were beginning to struggle in their small pots, so the children added a few more seeds and watered them. At this point, most of the seedlings really need to be transplanted outdoors. Since we still have landscaping happening in both our front and backyard, I decided to send the majority of the plants home so the children could continue caring for them and eventually put them into the ground. The main handwork project for the day was weaving. This was primarily intended for my 11-year-old nephew. I taught him how to make his own weaving board, add the string, and begin working with some of the plant-dyed wool yarn. I also prepared smaller weaving boards for the four-year-
Plant Dyed Silk | First Handwork Lesson as a New Waldorf Handwork Teacher
Plant dyeing silk turned out to be one of the most beautiful first handwork projects to do with my students. We worked with children from about six to thirteen years old, using natural dye materials like red onion skins, yellow onion skins, black beans, turmeric, safflower, saffron, and avocado pits to transform simple white silk scarves into these gorgeous pieces of color. The scarves are 5 mm silk, so they are lighter and more delicate than the 8 mm scarves I have used in the past, but they were such a good option for a large group because every student was able to work with real silk. The shimmer in the fabric made the natural colors look even more beautiful. All of the scarves were prepared with a mordant before dyeing, which helped the colors take strongly and richly. It also created some wonderful surprises. Red onion skins, for instance, can produce beautiful pink tones without a mordant, but with a mordant they shift into these deep greens. Some of the richest scarves developed olive and even forest green tones. Turmeric gives such a clear, strong yellow and works incredibly quickly. In some cases, the silk only needed to be in the dye bath for seconds before the color became rich. Yellow onion skins created deeper mustard, golden, and slightly brown-orange tones. Safflower gave us another beautiful variation in the yellow family with softer golden shades. Black beans were one of the most surprising dyes. They produced everything from a pale blue to a deep blue-purple depending on how long the scarf remained in the dye bath. This dye needs to stay at room temperature or colder because heat can muddy the beautiful blue color. Avocado pits gave us a soft blush pink, but they required a lot of material, a longer extraction time, and more time in the dye bath. Using the pits by themselves produced a clearer pink, while avocado skins tend to shift the color toward deeper burgundy tones. The youngest students mostly worked with one color, while the older stu
LIVE Observing Children Through Everyday Work | Day 5
Welcome to the LIVE audio version of our homeschool vlogs. In these videos, you'll hear the delightful voices of the children, my verbal instructions to the children (often too much instruction) and the quiet and slow between the projects, and the laughter and joy of the play. Today was our fifth day, Friday, September 4, 2026, of Waldorf-inspired kindergarten with my four-year-old triplet nephews, and our day looked a little different than usual. We typically meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but since I had Friday off this week, I invited my sister-in-law and the children over for an extra day together. We kept some of the familiar elements of our kindergarten rhythm, but shortened our schedule and allowed more time for free play. We began our morning with play before heading into the kitchen for some practical work. Our first project was preparing raw wool for wet felting. Before we can turn the wool into felted balls, it needs to be cleaned and carded. The children carefully picked through the raw wool, removing all the little bits of debris before using small bamboo carding brushes to prepare the fibers. I had originally intended to purchase traditional wool carders, but these smaller brushes ended up being such a happy mistake. They are lightweight and easy for little hands to manage, and the children took to the work beautifully. I was so impressed by how carefully they cleaned and carded their wool. We saved the prepared wool for another project later in the week. I'm also learning quite a bit about how our environment needs to change to better accommodate young children. We've been doing much of our work at the kitchen counter, but the bar stools are simply too high. Their feet are dangling, and the counter isn't at an appropriate working height for them. I'd like to add child-sized tables where they can sit with their feet firmly on the floor and comfortably engage in their work. After cleaning up the wool, we moved on to our cooking project for the day
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