Look Inside Eden's Table: The Teacher's Guide, Notebook and Read-Aloud, Page by Page

Eden’s Table is three books that work together: a Teacher’s Guide you teach from, a Student Notebook your child writes in, and a Read-Aloud Storybook with the family story that runs through the year. Below I walk through what each one looks like inside, using the real Week 1 pages, which you can download free and hold up next to this post.

If you’d like to follow along on paper, grab Week 1 here first. It comes as PDFs in about a minute.

What comes in the printed set?

Each year, Sprouts (K-2) or Seedlings (3-5), is three books, printed to order and mailed to you:

• Sprouts: Teacher’s Guide, 240 pages, letter size, coil bound. Student Notebook, 224 pages, letter size, coil bound. Read-Aloud Storybook, 112 pages, small paperback.
• Seedlings: Teacher’s Guide, 245 pages, coil bound. Student Notebook, 227 pages, coil bound. Read-Aloud Storybook, 160 pages, small paperback.

The coil binding means the guide and the Notebook lie flat on the counter while your hands are busy. Each set comes with one Notebook, and you can add extra Notebooks for siblings at $39.99 each. The herbs aren’t included. Each week uses a small amount of a common dried herb from your pantry, your garden, or the herb list I keep for you.

What does the Teacher’s Guide look like inside?

Every week starts with a Week at a Glance page. In Sprouts Week 1, that page shows:

• the unit, In the Garden God Made, and the plant, lavender, with its Latin name
• the memory verse, Psalm 139:14
• one line for each day, Monday through Friday
• the subjects woven into the week: Bible, science, language arts, math, art, history, geography, Latin, health and character
• an “Around the Table” question to talk about at dinner
• the Kitchen Lab supply list, so you know what to buy before Monday

After that comes one page for each day. Monday is Read-Aloud and Discussion, Tuesday is Discovery, Wednesday is Kitchen Lab, Thursday is History and Art, and Friday is Garden and Review. Each page has the lesson written out so you can read it as it is, and a Teacher Notes column down the side with the word of the day, how the subjects are woven in that day, and the learning benchmarks.

Look for the two depths. On the Wednesday page, Little Sprouts measure the lavender buds and smell them before the water is poured, and Older Sprouts watch the clock for the five-minute steep and strain the buds out by themselves. Every lesson is written that way, so a younger and an older child can work the same week at one table.

The Friday page ends with a works cited list. Week 1 cites Grieve’s A Modern Herbal (1931), Kew’s Plants of the World Online and NCCIH, with the Scripture from the NASB.

What does the Student Notebook look like?

The Notebook is your child’s book. In Week 1 it has one page per day, and the memory verse runs across every page so it’s in front of them all week.

• Monday: questions about the story and about the senses, and the memory verse to say together three times.
• Tuesday: draw a lavender spike and label the flowers and stem, plus the day’s word.
• Wednesday: the lab page. “What I observed” has lines for color, smell, taste and texture, there are stars to color in for a rating, and there’s a spot to write each ingredient and how much was used. It even has a safety note from Bear, the family dog: the dried buds are for smelling and touching, and lavender essential oil is never for tasting.
• Thursday: the steps for a “Lavender in Rome” drawing, and questions about the history.
• Friday: the herb chant, a line from Vovó, and the week’s review questions.

For a K-2 child a lot of it is drawing and telling back. By the end of the year the Notebook is a full year of your child’s work, dated and in order, which also takes care of a lot of your record keeping. In Seedlings, the Notebook moves from color and smell to measurements, ratios and a hypothesis your child writes and then tests.

What is the Read-Aloud Storybook like?

The storybook is about the Eden family: Vovó and PopPop on their Tennessee homestead, Levi and Ruthie, Manny, Evie and little Gracie, and Bear, a chocolate goldendoodle who has his eye on the cornbread. The first reading, “Meet the Family,” comes with the free Sprouts week. It’s a Sunday dinner that ends out in the garden, with lavender growing along the path.

It isn’t a story every week. Sprouts has seven readings across the whole 36-week year, and four of them fall in the first nine weeks. The next one after that isn’t until week 18. In Seedlings, Story Seven falls in Week 2 and Story Eight in Week 8. The printed storybook is a small paperback, sized for a lap.

How does the whole year fit together?

Sprouts and Seedlings each run 36 weeks, one plant a week, in six units, and the two years teach different plants. Sprouts opens with In the Garden God Made: lavender, chamomile, lemon balm, peppermint, calendula and plantain. Seedlings opens with Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, starting with elderberry. You can see every week, plant and unit for both years on the scope and sequence page.

It’s Charlotte Mason inspired in the ways you’ll notice at the table: a real plant in your child’s hand, a drawing of what they see, and telling back what they found in their own words.

How can I flip through it myself?

Download Week 1 and print it. It’s the real thing, the same pages families teach from all year: Sprouts or Seedlings Week 1, free. If you like it, the Starter Unit is weeks 1 to 9 as a $39 download, and the printed year is $249 plus $12 shipping, at your door in about two to three weeks.

Using an ESA or scholarship? Eden’s Table is an approved or registered vendor in seven programs, and the ESA page shows how buying works in each state.

Questions about anything you see? Email hello@edeninstitute.health. I answer it myself.