2024 - 2025 Class 8 Complements
Click one below to learn more:
Painting & Drawing
Practical Arts
Cyber Civics
cooking
Jewelry Making
Ukelele
Theatre & Speech
World Languages: Spanish & German
Painting & Drawing
Semester 1 with Mr. Gay & Semester 2 with Ms. Jones-Schmidt
This is a year-long class (2 semester) for 7th and 8th grade students. Black and white drawings of natural objects and still life; landscape color perspective paintings; perspective drawing; and architecture will be central to this class.
Students who are 13 & 14 can feel unsure and misunderstood in their changing physical bodies. Artistic work can help them stand more confidently and easily in the world. Practicing accuracy in perception and thinking will help the student form a clear relationship with the world around them and their own mental abilities.
Semester 1 with Mr. Gay
In this semester, we will further explore object drawing, with a strong focus on observation, moving from black and white into full color. The lessons will start with simple skills exercises to develop drawing skills and we will then work tasks set. Learning to observe precisely is key to good object drawing. We will practice using everyday household objects that will become the focus of drawing, honing in our skills of line, shading, light and darkness. We will use only black and white and then move into colour.
Each student will learn how to use a pencil, line weights, intensity etc and look at how, when using color pencils, we can layer colours to give deeper and more vibrant colours.
Once we have mastered some of these skills we will explore the same observation using paints, particularly aspects of veil painting so they can learn how to combine colours. and how thin transparent layers can bring a vibrancy to their work.
This semester will consist of lessons where the teacher leads the students through a piece of work and also work they create freely by themselves.
Semester 2 with Ms. Jones-Schmidt
This class will focus on landscape painting in various media. We’ll incorporate what the students have learned in previous classes regarding perspective, shading, color, and form. Periodically, I’ll introduce the work of a particular artist. We’ll discuss that person’s technique and think about adapting it for our own work.
Waldorf students work with watercolors from Kindergarten on. The early grades focus on color study, leading to veil painting in older classes. In this class, we'll work with the subtleties and gradations of color possible when using tubed, rather than liquid, watercolors.
Pastel paintings encourage the student to build up forms and create depth by adding layers of color. The results can be paintings that practically sparkle with rich color.
Acrylics provide yet another approach to liquid paints. These paints are created from a plastic base and dry very quickly, so any “mistake” can be easily corrected. Acrylic paints were not available until the mid-20th century. Now, many artists prefer them to oil paints.
We will end the year with paper-cut collages. These are not paintings, but they offer yet another approach to color and form [as well as fine motor challenges!].
In each block, the teacher will model proper brush technique and color mixing possibilities as well as providing an image to serve as a model. Students will be encouraged to "make the painting their own" by adding or deleting elements from the model, or by choosing their own models.
The course will focus on the period of history from 1800 - 1950. We’ll explore various media and take a brief look at the work of some of the major visual artists of this time period.
Jewelry Making: Fine Arts & Folk Arts with Ms. Ljubic
We will turn our working spaces into a studio of jewelry making sessions, exploring various techniques that can be comfortably performed at home. Discovering and implementing some of the styles of global cultures, students will work with materials such as wire, polymer clay, fiber, wood, leather, paper, beads, stones and other gifts from nature and tools such as pliers, wire cutters, leather punches.
While learning different techniques and the use of materials and tools requires focus and repetition to master, there will also be a space held for exploration so that students may elaborate on their own ideas and designs, provided with support of any creative and technical means. In this class students will be strengthening focus and patience while improving their capacities for spatial orientation, balance and harmony of visual elements.
Cooking with Ms. Smith
Encouraging children to help prepare healthy meals for their families is an excellent way to teach them essential life skills. They gain a deeper understanding of the effort and time required to create tasty dishes and develop a stronger connection to the ingredients they use. This connection often makes children more open to trying foods with new flavors and textures. By expanding their palate, they can develop healthy eating habits that benefit them for life. By encouraging independence and instilling competence, children will gain the confidence to make any recipe they discover and adapt recipes to suit their tastes. The sense of accomplishment that comes from feeding loved ones can also lead to self-confidence in other areas of life.
Anticipated Recipe List:
(Recipes are subject to change according to dietary restrictions and accommodations needed within the class.)
Moroccan Couscous with roasted vegetables Morocco
Apple strudel Germany
Stuffed Grape leaves Lebanon
Design Your Own Tacos Mexico
Challah Bread Israel
Moist Healthy Chocolate Cake Ukraine
Swedish Pancakes Sweden
Pita and Hummus Egypt
Khichdi/Indian Fried Rice India
Brigadeiros/Brazilian Fudge Balls Brazil
Gyoza Dumplings Japan
Pumpkin pie North America
Quiche Lorraine France
Cranberry Hootycreeks Jar Cookies for gift-giving USA
Pasta al Limone Italy
Belokranjska Pogača/Traditional Slovenian Bread Slovenia
Hungarian Chicken Paprikash with Dumplings Hungary
Chicken Noodle Soup
Throughout the semester, the variety of recipes will reinforce technical skills, encourage innovative use of ingredients, and support interest in food culture. However, this class is about more than preparing tasty dishes.
Cooking offers hands-on experience with measuring, counting, fractions, tracking time, and temperature. For students in third grade and up, multiplication and division skills are needed to scale a recipe up or down. For students in fifth grade and up, additional math practice can come from calculating the cost of making a recipe vs. the price of a take-out version of a similar dish.
Following the step-by-step process-focused instructions of a recipe improves reading comprehension and shows that reading has practical benefits.
As foods are prepared, abstract concepts such as chemical reactions become relevant and understandable to children.
Cooking requires problem-solving and resilience to find solutions when a recipe does not come together as planned.
Many recipes we will prepare utilize basic ingredients that the student may already have in their pantry, demonstrating that home-cooked meals are manageable and can be fast and straightforward to prepare.
The kitchen is an excellent place for children to engage their senses experientially. They can knead, toss, pour, smell, chop, feel, and taste foods, all while having fun and learning without even realizing it.
Students will be encouraged to flavor dishes with herbs and spices and challenged to try their own variations, customizing recipes to suit their flavor and dietary preferences.
Cooking can teach children responsibility as they learn specific tasks to contribute to meal preparation and cleanup.
Acquiring ingredients from the grocery store, farmer’s market, or even harvesting their own herbs, fruits, and vegetables helps children understand where the ingredients that make up their favorite meals are sourced. Purchasing fresh, locally grown ingredients supports farmers in your area. For the Cooking 3/4 class: Students will be encouraged to visit a farmer’s market or pick- your-own farm to choose local seasonal ingredients.
Making a grocery list before shopping helps a child learn about planning and making informed choices about healthy foods. Choosing whole-food ingredients reduces packaging waste and instills the values of environmental consciousness.
Preparing recipes from other countries allows children to experience new flavors and textures. This exposure to diverse cuisines opens a child’s mind to different cultures, offers a geography lesson, and promotes awareness, understanding, and appreciation of culinary traditions and practices worldwide. For the Cooking 5-8 class: Each week, students will be encouraged to research two new facts about the recipe’s country of origin to share with the class.
Cooking allows children to learn more about their own heritage and family traditions through treasured recipes passed down through the generations.
Class 7/8 Cyber Civics with Ms. Gemignani
Lotus & Ivy has partnered with Cyber Civics to provide our students with an age-appropriate cyber education. It is critical that we provide our children with education on these topics so they may develop a healthy relationship with technology. We have chosen this particular curriculum because it was developed by a Waldorf teacher and is used in many brick-and-mortar Waldorf schools. Parents are provided with parent activities along the way to help you stay connected with what we are teaching and to offer you support for family conversations on these subjects.
Our 7th & 8th Grade students cover the following concepts:
UNIT 1: LIVING IN A PARTICIPATORY CULTURE
Students learn the difference between “consuming” and “producing” media as they discover what it means to live in a “participatory culture” (a term coined by scholar Henry Jenkins). They begin to understand how to participate and contribute to media discourse in powerful and positive ways. “Your Brain on Tech” is a focus.
UNIT 2: CALLING ON CRITICAL THINKING
The ability to use critical thinking to assess online information is perhaps one of the most important skills for young digital citizens to master. This unit, updated based on new research and information from the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), teaches students this skill. Detecting misinformation is a focus.
UNIT 3: "FAKE" NEWS
One of the wonderful things about living in a participatory culture is that anyone and everyone can be a purveyor of information and news. This is one of the great downsides too. This unit teaches students how to be critical consumers of news media, and helps them understand how misinformation can spread via the Internet and social media, and even find its way into mainstream “news.”
UNIT 4: STEREOTYPES & MEDIA REPRESENTATION
Television, social media, videos, movies, video games, and more often depict people in overly simplified ways and digital technologies make it easier than ever to share and perpetuate these notions. Through this unit, students learn to recognize and understand stereotypes and representations in all the media they use.
UNIT 5: VISUAL LITERACY
From Instagram toYouTube, Snapchat, TikTok and more, the messages young people consume and create are largely visual. This unit helps students learn how to read and create visual media, and also teaches them how to be less susceptible to visual manipulations.
UNIT 6: SEXTING
Sexting, “the sending OR receiving of sexually suggestive, nude, or seminude images,” is a serious digital age issue and in many states individuals who distribute, possess, or produce a sexually explicit image of a minor could be charged under the state’s child pornography statutes. Many young people are unaware of the potentially serious consequences of sexting, which is addressed in this unit. Our perspective: “Sexting: Just say no.”
UNIT 7: DIGITAL LEADERSHIP
The lessons in this final unit encourage students to flex their digital leadership muscles with several hands-on, collaborative activities in which they consider their
place in the digital world, now and in the future. This unit covers Trolls, Lurkers, and Upstanders, Emerging Technologies and Ethical Thinking, Making Technology Accessible to All, and Final Activity: Are You a Consumer or a Producer Now?
EXTRA UNIT: This unit is used in conjunction with our students’ “8th grade project”. These lessons show students how to use digital media to research, write, cite, and create a research project. These are all important research skills students will use in high school and beyond. This unit covers Filters and Operators, Search Like a Pro, Avoiding Plagiarism, How To Cite Right, and Copyright, Fair Use, Public Domain.
Theatre & Speech with Mrs. Rezzelle
In our weekly drama class, students will explore the power of storytelling through drama. In class we learn how to bring characters to life through characterization, movement, and voice. Steiner-inspired speech exercises will provide a backdrop to work on speech concepts such as articulation, diction*, prosody (expressiveness of speech), and flow.
By working with familiar themes and stories inspired from their Main Lesson classes and the classics, students will learn core acting skills that will help them bring the stories and characters to life. Despite being online, ensemble-building will be a crucial component of this course. Theatre games and choral work will build our group together through laughter and imagination! No experience necessary.
Our class will meet weekly for 18 weeks (except during school-wide breaks) and will culminate with a presentation of skills through monologues, choral speech, and scene work.
*Please note, this does not take the place of specialized Speech Pathology courses. This will aid students in these areas.
Ukelele with Ms. Gemignani
Playing the ukulele offers a myriad of benefits that positively impact both mental and physical well-being. Engaging in the rhythmic strumming and precise finger movements required to play chords and melodies enhances hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills. The melodic and harmonic aspects of playing the ukulele promotes relaxation, and reduces feelings of stress and anxiety. Learning and practicing music stimulates various areas of the brain, improving cognitive function, memory, and concentration.
Regular practice sessions instill discipline and perseverance, contributing to personal growth and development. Please encourage your child to play every day until it becomes a habit.
In this class, students will embark on an exciting musical journey, learning the fundamentals of playing the ukulele while exploring various rhythms, chords, and songs.
To begin, we will start with the basics, teaching everyone a foundational rhythm pattern (DDUUDU) and three essential chords (C, F, G). With these chords and rhythm, students will learn to play songs, laying a strong groundwork for their ukulele skills.
As we progress, we will expand our chord repertoire by introducing two minor chords (Am and Em), enriching our musical palette and broadening the range of songs we can play. Students will continue to practice and refine their technique, gaining confidence in their ability to strum and switch between chords seamlessly.
While we will be learning chords, the class will be focused on playing music. Blending chord practice and playing songs will make for a wonderful, full learning experience and will excite the children. During class, students will be listening to me, and playing along, or I will play a group of chords, and they will “repeat after me” in a choral manner. There will also be times where students are the ones leading and playing off mute.
Next, we will delve into the world of bar chords, learning the D and Bm chords. These chords will unlock new possibilities, allowing students to comfortably play songs in the key of G (G, C, D, Am, Bm, Em). With a focus on mastering different rhythms, students will learn to play songs with varied time signatures, adding depth and complexity to their musical repertoire.
As students progress, they will have the opportunity to explore advanced chord variations and their own musical choices. For those ready to challenge themselves further, advanced chord shapes such as Dominant 7th and bar chord versions will be introduced, encouraging exploration of the ukulele's fretboard.
In the final stages of the class, students will learn to play in the key of F, mastering chords such as Bb, Gm, and Dm. With a diverse range of chords and rhythms at their disposal, students will be well-prepared to tackle a variety of songs and even consider performing in gigs.
Throughout the class, emphasis will be placed on creativity, expression, and collaborative learning. By the end of the course, students will have developed a solid foundation in ukulele playing, equipped with the skills and confidence to continue their musical journey with passion and enthusiasm.
If you’d like some reading about music in Waldorf schools, this is a wonderful read:Music as a Threshold Experience