Circle Time in Waldorf Kindergarten | Day 15
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 15, Thursday, October 8, 2026, of homeschooling my triplet nephews, who are four years old, for our Waldorf-inspired kindergarten, and what I thought would be a simple day turned into more than three hours of gardening, natural dyeing, cooking, imaginative play, and a few unexpected failures!
I initially thought we didn’t have much planned, but once I gathered our materials, I realized we had far too many projects for our usual two-hour session. Thankfully, my sister-in-law had some extra time, so we were able to extend our kindergarten day.
We began by introducing the projects, primarily for my sister-in-law and my 11-year-old nephew. The four-year-olds don’t need to know the day’s schedule. They need to experience and embody the rhythm rather than anticipate each activity.
Our first project was harvesting the only pomegranate that survived this season. I’d been saving it for my 11-year-old nephew because he loves pomegranates.
We’re making self-watering planters using little plastic pots that fit perfectly inside mason jars. The children threaded wool yarn through the bottoms to wick water into the soil, added soil, and counted out five marigold seeds each. These flowers will eventually become part of another natural dye project, producing beautiful golden and orange colors.
Gardening is central to our kindergarten experience, and counting individual seeds offers a concrete understanding of numbers without formal mathematics instruction.
The children spent time playing in their wooden structure from Head, Hands, and Heart Boutique. I’ve covered it with an enormous piece of fabric, transforming it into a wonderful fort. It’s become one of their favorite places for imaginative play, especially when my 15-year-old daughter joins them.
Back in the kitchen, my older nephew and I experimented with gum arabic, a binder traditionally used with pigments to make watercolor paint. I wanted to see whether we could use our black bean dye instead.
The black bean dye itself was extraordinary! I prepared it using a cold process in the refrigerator, and it produced the most vibrant blue-purple color I’ve ever achieved on wool. Unfortunately, mixing the black bean dye with gum arabic wasn’t nearly as successful.
Next, the children helped prepare our fall meal by removing seeds from spaghetti squash and honeynut squash. We saved the seeds for future gardening projects and roasted the squash alongside seasoned chicken.
Cooking and cleaning are such important parts of our kindergarten experience. The children participate in meaningful household work according to their abilities, and they’ve become wonderful helpers. I’ve realized that we need three child-sized brooms because they enjoy sweeping so much!
When it was time for watercolor painting, our homemade black bean paint was a complete failure. The children couldn’t see the color appearing on their paper! Thankfully, I had extra watercolor paper and Stockmar blue paint ready, so they were still able to enjoy painting.
I also introduced a wooden memory game, but quickly realized it wasn’t developmentally appropriate for the triplets. They enjoyed arranging and turning over the tiles, but remembering their locations was too challenging. I eventually left the tiles exposed so they could match the pictures. In the future, I’ll adapt this into a more cooperative activity.
Our opening activities had become our closing activities, so we gathered around our autumn basket to check the weather, calendar, and seasonal treasures. I placed little peg dolls inside our felted pumpkin, which sparked plenty of curiosity. I also learned that with these triplets, everyone needs the same choices or completely different ones to avoid disagreements!
We’re now transitioning to telling The Hedgehog Leaves Home from memory rather than reading the book.
By now, we’d reached three hours, well beyond our usual two-hour session. We finished with our autumn meal, although the children weren’t particularly hungry after their earlier bagels. I especially wanted them to experience pulling the spaghetti-like strands from the squash, but they were far more excited about bringing their watercolor paintings home.
This day reminded me that more activities don’t necessarily make a better kindergarten experience. Some of our projects failed, some activities needed modification, and our rhythm stretched considerably longer than planned. Yet the children still experienced meaningful work, imaginative play, storytelling, and the satisfaction of bringing home something they’d made.
