Getting Ready for First Grade: Math Gnomes

These are some lovely gnomes hand knitted by our own Linda from the Earthschooling group. Her shop is Mamma 4 Earth and she makes the most incredible knitted treasures with all natural materials. I have raved about her before, most notably regarding Norman the Storytelling Gnome and Lily our Easter rabbit (and we have yet to introduce Seamus the Sea Turtle)...

Anyway, I purchased Linda's beautiful knitted gnomes many months ago in preparation for first grade. The girls took to them immediately, as they seem to take to all handmade goodies and the gnomes have been enjoying free play with the twins.

Well, in preparation for our first grade year, the girls wanted to make math gnomes of their own and with a little help from Mom, that's what they did. We originally were going to cut felt and glue it around a wooden peg person, but Charley had so much fun painting our Sprites from Syrendell that she immediately asked to paint the gnomes instead. These peg people can be purchased through most crafting shops, like Beverly's or Michaels.



The girls painted them first...

We measured and cut out pieces of felt to make caps and capes...




Elena had fun putting the cap on backwards...her gnome looked cute so we might make some other characters like this :)



We sewed the caps and then the girls polished the dried gnomes after we painted the four processes on them.

I just love this serene picture of my Charley...she wanted to stay by the window to polish her gnomes because she was so intent on watching our hummingbirds fly around and feed.

And voila! The capes were stitched on, the hats were put on and the girls declared they were "just right" :) We might go back and add wool beards to them, but for now the girls wanted them beardless - I think inspired by Linda's originals :)

And we even had some curious visitors checking out our creations...I think this is Rudy, one of our sweet twin ratties...Rudy particularly LOVED the Eco-Twig House pictured with the gnomes, also handmade by the incredible artists at Syrendell. It will be instrumental in our Three Day Rhythm as a playhouse for retelling our stories. I will be blogging about how we use it soon!

This project took all morning to complete, but it was so satisfying. I can't wait to use them in our maths blocks this year!

In preparation for our First Grade, I am going to be posting about our journey & am excited to read the blogs of others on this path. I know Donna in the Earthschooling group is documenting her first grade experiences, as well. It helps to have a community to tap into since Waldorf education is so different than the traditional educations most of us received. So please leave me a comment with a link to your blog if you're also doing first grade work so I can join your site.

We're also starting Story of the World, as history nuts, in the afternoons so I hope to have lots of fun activities blogged about as we proceed through the Ancients.

My next blog will be about our beanbags for maths! Stay tuned!