Out of all of the things you will purchase for your students — whether you’ve got a classroom-full or your own homeschooled children — materials for creating beautiful main lesson books are the supplies not to skimp on. Colored pencils and main lesson books are daily-use tools — buy the best and make your everyday work enjoyable. Today I’ll cover all the ins and outs of main lesson books and I’ll cover pencils, crayons and everything else in the coming days.
Main Lesson Books
I have always preferred the main lesson books that used to be put out by Adonis Press. A couple years ago the Adonis people quit selling main lesson books and the books are currently sold by a company called RAAND. I find these books far superior to the ones carried by Mercurius. The paper quality on the RAAND book is just as good as the Mercurius (with the exception of the recycled books) and though the cover is simply a heavy cardstock, rather than the more durable textured cover of the Mercurius books, the quality of the spiral binding is far superior. I’ve found it definitely better to get a book with a spiral binding so that you can easily turn the book back on itself while you’re working, but I found that the open wire spiral binding of the Mercurius books would often get caught on things and get bent out of shape. There’s never a problem with the plastic coil binding of the RAAND books. One other benefit, the colors of the RAAND book covers are more subdued and much more pleasant than the bright royal blue and shocking orange of the Mercurius books.
But what size to get? All through my years teaching the upper grades I purchased the smaller 9 by 12 books, thinking it was a bit intimidating and difficult to try to fill a larger page using small colored pencils. Recently, though, I saw some beautiful examples of main lesson book work using the larger 11 by 14 books. I’m not convinced they are the best thing to use for regular everyday main lesson bookwork, though. Some teachers buy the larger books for mapmaking in Geography blocks. I tried this, but I found it tricky to have one book that didn’t fit in with all of the others. It also required that the book follow us for a number of years, because we certainly couldn’t fill it in one block. Looking back, I realize it would have been better to stick with the regular 9 by 14 book. Almost all teachers in the lower grades use 11 by 14 books. Mercurius sells an 18.9 by 12.6 book that I’ve seen used, but my teacher training warned against using a book that was too large with little ones whose block crayons look pretty small when faced with that huge page.
Onion skin or no? Onion skin paper is used between pages to prevent the colored pencil on one page from rubbing off on the page it faces, which is a bit of a dilemma on richly decorated main lesson book pages. I never ordered books with the onion skin bound in the book. Some of our specialty teachers did and many kids accidentally wrote on the onion skin (which is a bit heavy in the Mercurius books). One year I bought loose onion skin, though that ended up being too large for the smaller RAAND books so I trimmed it down, which was a pain, and some students ended up using untrimmed onion skin that stuck out of their books in an untidy way. One year we put loose printer paper between our pages, which was nice and tidy, but felt a bit wasteful. I think there’s no perfect solution here, yet, so make the compromise that works best for you.
Binding books? One year I ditched the whole pre-bound main lesson book idea altogether and the students worked on a “signature” which was a large sheet of paper (I think I used 18 by 12) folded in half to create four (9 by 12) pages. At the end of the year I taught the students bookbinding and we bound all of their work together. This was nice because we didn’t have main lesson books with extra pages leftover and we could put the blocks in the order we studied them. It took a bit of organizing — keeping everyone’s work straight, without having everything neatly bound. I’m not sure I would do it again. The binding at the end of the year was pretty challenging (even though this was 7th grade) and though there were a handful of students who were quite proud to have their work for the year neatly bound together, there were many more who were frustrated by the experience. Recently I have seen some teachers have their students bind together their main lesson book work in a different way. Throughout the year the students work in bound main lesson books. At the end of the year they remove the spiral bindings, stack the work neatly in order and then sew through the holes made for the spiral. I could see this being a nice compromise.
Meridith, I appreciate this post so much. Our MLB’s were bought from a Waldorf online shop, so I’m not sure if they are Mercurius or not, but they are 9.5 x 12 and the colors are pretty darn bright (they have onion skins in them and yes, the girls have accidentally drawn on them).
With two Grade 1 students, we should have gone bigger, but we ended up for our Capital Letters Block, using one page that would hold our drawing and our letter. We have often times run out of room as it is difficult for young children to plan their page and keep it small enough to fit everything, though I agree that a huge page can seem overwhelming. I admit that part of the reason why we did this was to save trees and money. MLB’s are expensive (as homeschooling can be), but I am going to try your rec for Adonis Press ones in Grade 2. I assume I should get the 11×14 for that grade? Would you recommend 11×14 up until grade 3, with the exception of geography then (if one doesn’t mind one larger book than the others)?
I’d also love to hear your thoughts on with the MLB – do you keep one going throughout the year and get out a new one as the old is finished up, or do you have one for each subject? If you do one for each subject, do you get new ones each grade or get out the Maths one (let’s say) from last year to begin the Maths block this year?
We are also doing a yearly seasonal book that we are creating together and will sew up at the end of Grade 1. It is a pain to plan it, though – remembering which page will come first and keeping it in order (which side to draw on, etc), but I think they will be so special. I store it with wax paper in between to protect the pages. I am not sure what to put in between the pages to protect them once we stitch it up, though. Is your opinion that onion paper isn’t necessary after the artwork has been drawn? Our block crayons do seem to get everywhere…where would one purchase onion paper?
Sorry to bombard with questions, but this is so essential to our homeschooling that it’s worth dissecting
Thanks for this great post! And Happy New Year!
Hi Jen. I’ve seen your MLB’s — they’re beautiful. It is tough, but they’re doing a great job of planning the space. As I said in my comment, I’m so impressed with how you are meeting the curriculum. Now, on to your questions.
1 — I would definitely use the 11 by 14 through grade 3, maybe even grade 4. One compromise — the smaller Mercurius books (which is what you probably have) are a bit larger than the small Adonis books (they measure in centimeters, not inches) so maybe the thing would be to use those in 4th and 5th, when you’re drawing primarily with superferbys, then switch to the smaller Adonis books in 6th through 8th. I think I remember the Adonis books being less expensive, if that helps.
2 — At the beginning of the school year I looked at the blocks and organized them so that two blocks that seemed to go together went in each main lesson book and I chose a color cover that seemed appropriate for the subjects. This usually made it so that we were not working in the same book for two blocks in a row which worked out logistically because they sometimes had work to finish up at the end of a block, which would make it hard to know where to begin the work for the next block. It also allowed for the book to be put away so the content could go to sleep for awhile, until the second block of the book was begun. They always enjoyed looking back through their work when I passed the books back to start the next block. In the younger grades it seems fairly simple — you have a letters book, a numbers book and a form drawing book, and you’re rotating those blocks anyway. Just move into a new book when one is full. Disclaimer, though, I haven’t taught the early grades so I don’t have any BTDT advice to offer. It does seem right to begin with fresh books for each grade, though from time to time I did have books that carried over (especially for special subjects like music). Generally, I found it difficult to carry books over from year to year, with students coming and going, but you don’t have that problem homeschooling. In the upper grades many of the subjects build on each other throughout sixth, seventh and eighth grade, so if you can manage holding on to something for three years, I can imagine it could be quite nice to have an entire Physics, Chemistry, Geometry book and so on, that lasts throughout those three years.
3 — Your seasonal book sounds lovely. I do think that crayons especially need onion skin or something between the pages. Colored pencil is better about not getting everywhere and in eighth grade we didn’t use anything at all between pages. Mercurius sells loose onion paper. When your book is bound you can just lay the loose sheets of onion paper between the pages. Having to keep track of the loose onion skin actually makes for a nice experience when it comes to looking through a book. It becomes an experience that must be savored and the book stays on the shelf until you are ready to thoughtfully look through it — rather than just flip through.
Keep up your beautiful work. It’s just lovely!
Meredith, thank you for this thorough response! It was marvelous and gave me a better grasp of proper use of the MLB’s. I also have to say that your affirmation that I am meeting the curriculum is really validating ~ I didn’t realize I hadn’t exhaled in a while – lol! But seriously, I do so appreciate your words of wisdom, especially having no former schooling or training in Waldorf education. And I have to say that there are so many wonderful, wonderful momma teachers out there who have been my informal teachers through their fabulous blogs and yahoo groups, along with the wonderful books out there (esp Eric Fairman’s POD books – my very fav). I think that with Waldorf comes heart and children so thrive in its environment.
I’m excited to see you wrote about block crayons, so I am anxious to read that after I put the girls down to bed. You’re doing an amazing job with this blog and like someone said before (was it Jenn?) you are so needed in this community! You’re a blessing, Meredith!
Hugs and Happy New Year,
Jen
[...] my series on main lesson supplies, today I’ll cover crayons. Check here for my other post in this series – main lesson [...]
[...] go through some of my preferences in this post. I’m reconsidering some of my choices, though. I’ll still stick with spiral-bound so we [...]