Category Archives: Homeschooling

Lesson Planning: A Sample Form

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In one post I shared my personal form for the rhythm of one of our days of the week, but I was recently thinking about a sample form or list that could help mothers plan their Grades One through Eight  homeschooling according to the eight pillars of artistic work of Waldorf Education that we have talked about in the past on this blog.  Academic subjects are taught through artistic work in Waldorf Education; this is an enlivening form of education for the child.

Please take this as a “I thought of this in quickly and you might be able to tweak it or use parts of  it or come up with something even better” kind of way, not as a definitive end product.  Smile

Anyway, this is what I was thinking: Continue reading →

Homeschooling Fourth Grade: Norse Myths

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I have enjoyed this block of Norse myths; I remember doing Greek myths in the fifth grade in my public school education but I never  formally did Norse myths so these stories are fairly new to me.  It is always very exciting as a homeschooling parent to delve into uncharted lands!

I also think Norse myths fit and match the moral ambiguity the post-nine year change child is discovering in the world.  The Norse myths, as they head along toward Ragnarok, also bring forth new depths of emotions in the complexities.  Many children are outraged, saddened, in disbelief of the ending.

One other thing that has been interesting to me and my own development as a teacher has been drawing on the blackboard for this block.  I wanted to share some of my drawings with you…

I drew this recently……Here is Odin on Sleipner, his eight-legged stallion:

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Here is another one of Odin I drew at the beginning of this block; I feel my drawing abilities have improved a lot through this block: Continue reading →

Operation Shiny Toy

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Ever feel like a cat with a shiny object in your own home and within your own homeschooling rhythms? Look, a shiny toy!  Oh, look over here, another shiny toy!  I do!  It can be especially hard to get back into the swing of things after the holidays.  I know some families in the U.S. are starting back to homeschooling this week and some are starting back next week.  We ourselves started on Monday, so I wanted to offer a word of encouragement and a plea for Operation Shiny Toy.

Turn off your computer.

Turn off the phone.

Do not schedule things during the time when you are homeschooling.

Do not say yes to events during the time when you are homeschooling.

Plan what you are doing; work at night to make sure you know what you are presenting the next day.

Commit yourself that the housework, emails and phone calls to make, the housekeeping and cooking (unless you are doing practical work in school!) can wait and you must finish your homeschooling time first.

Write down an outline to the flow of your day and homeschooling time.

Jump in and do it!

On Monday we woke up and started school with Continue reading →

More Virtual Tea: The Twelve Senses In Homeschooling

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Happy New Year’s to you all!  Many best and bright wishes to my readers in this lovely New Year!

Many of you know that given my background as a physical therapist and homeschooling parent, work revolving around the twelve senses as set forth by Rudolf Steiner has been fascinating to me.    Some of the therapists and neuroscientists I have spoken to feel there are anywhere from 75 to over a hundred senses, but I feel these twelve are a fine place to start.  They are well-organized and clear, and I think it is a piece that is accessible for all educators, not just Waldorf/Steiner educators and should be of particular importance to us as homeschool educators and as parents.

Lisa Boisvert-Mackensie was kind enough to continue a virtual tea with me regarding some of the fundamental pillars of Waldorf Education.  You can see those posts here:  http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/12/20/the-three-artistic-pillars-of-waldorf-homeschooling/ and here:  http://www.celebratetherhythmoflife.com/2011/12/as-person-who-has-straddled-worlds-of.html  and here: http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/12/21/more-about-the-artistic-pillars-of-waldorf-education-a-virtual-tea/

Lisa’s last virtual tea post on the twelve senses ( here is the link:  http://www.celebratetherhythmoflife.com/2011/12/lemniscate-and-senses.html)  inspired me to draw the image above.  It was originally presented in horizontal form in a lecture I heard in the fall  by Douglas Gerwin, but after I really sat with this information, slept on it, let it lie fallow for a bit,  I drew this vertical figure. This vertical figure reminds me of the upright human being; it reminds me that we all have these twelve senses, and that having all of these senses fully developed leads to the freedom to give and receive love. One can have all the knowledge and training and facts in a field, and if one cannot rule over oneself, if one cannot see another’s view, if one can relate to another person, if one cannot use their knowledge and training for the love of humanity, what good does it really do?

This figure also reminds me that Continue reading →

More About The Artistic Pillars Of Waldorf Education: A Virtual Tea

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Lisa over at Celebrate the Rhythm of Life  wrote an incredibly important post about Waldorf School and Waldorf Homeschool, relaxed Waldorf Homeschooling, and the pillars of Waldorf Education whether in the home or school environment.  It is an important read, and I suggest you don’t miss it.  Here is the link: http://www.celebratetherhythmoflife.com/2011/12/as-person-who-has-straddled-worlds-of.html

She talks about including the other major pillars of Waldorf Education:  speech, singing and musical instruments, drama, movement (oh yes!  my major place of push on this blog!) and handwork.

Yes, yes, yes!

And what I realized is that I have addressed all of these components on this blog, with perhaps the exception of drama, but in a rather scattered manner  – perhaps mentioned in with summary posts of what we did in a certain grade, or in conjunction with a book review or something else.  I think parents are attracted to Waldorf homeschooling by all of these pieces, but then become at a bit of a loss as to how to integrate it all into their busy homeschooling lives.  I hope in the future to have more organized posts on each of these pillars, and how to make this accessible for homeschoolers.

I think a major thrust of where I am headed personally is this education being about the future health of our children through using and engaging the twelve senses throughout the curriculum.  I recently heard Douglas Gerwin speak, many of you probably have as well, but his drawing of the twelve senses as a  lemniscate and where these senses fit into the curriculum across the grades set my wheels turning.  How we use these eight pillars, as Lisa and other Waldorf trained teachers have described them, within the context of the twelve senses, is a major place of discovery for the child and the foundation of health, and a  major piece of where I think I am headed in my life’s work.  It is a slow unfolding for me.

The other counterpart to this within the home environment, I feel is PRACTICAL WORK.  Steiner lectured and wrote about practical tasks for the students quite a bit.    We have such an opportunity for this in the home environment, even more than in the school setting  perhaps. Continue reading →

The Three Artistic Pillars of Waldorf Homeschooling

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The three artistic pillars of Waldorf homeschooling are the same as those found in the grades of the Waldorf school:  drawing, painting, and modeling.  Yet I so often hear that “all we can get through is the Main Lesson” and that doesn’t seem to include  drawing, painting, or modeling, unless the child is drawing and summarizing on the second or third day  of a two or three day rhythm.

I know this is the time of year many homeschoolers take stock of what they have been doing during the school year, and make plans or tweak plans for the rest of the school year.  Therefore, my plea is for drawing, modeling and painting to be the vehicle through which you teach, and to always include exercises in the fundamentals of these three areas as part of the Main Lesson as you see fit during the week.  Many of the exercises for drawing, painting and modeling are in fact the metamorphosis of archetypal geometric forms and how one moves between these forms.

In drawing, we have form drawing and freehand geometric drawing, but we also have artistic drawing and how we change the things we see, that are three dimensional, into two dimensional shapes and transform these shapes.  For example, how does one draw a sphere (circle in two dimensions) and change this to an oval and then to an egg shape and so on?  In drawing, we also have the added dimension of color.  How do we move within the color wheel to create color bands, shades of coloring?

In painting, we have a series of color exercises without form that eventually help led us into the creation of paintings of scenes and portraits.  We can take a shade of red, a shade of yellow and a shade of blue and create variations of every color the eye can see.

In modeling, perhaps the most unexplored practical territory in Waldorf Education, we also can work through series of archetypal geometric shapes.  How do we move from the sphere to a three-dimensional oval to other shapes?  In this medium, we have the added challenge of warmth to stimulate that which we are working with, and we have the other dimension of the possibility of three dimensional asymmetry or symmetry within the modeling material.  One book that has changed the way I looked at modeling is Hella Loewe’s “Basic Sculptural Modeling:  Developing the Will by Working With Pure Forms in the First Three Grades.”  You can find it on the AWNSA website.

Many blessings to you!

Carrie

The Hidden Curriculum of Life

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I promised I would write a post about “the hidden curriculum” of life that we talked about at the recent course regarding sensory processing and modulation that I attended.  Those of you who have beautiful children struggling with issues along the autistic spectrum know how very literal these children can be, and that sometimes presents problems in social situations.  Idioms can be problematic, and so can things like reading social cues that are not direct.

There were some interesting books and products mentioned at my course for the mentoring of the older child (mainly upper middle school and up aged), and I wanted to pass them along to you. I got a chance to look at some of these products, and I thought they were really interesting for EVERYONE, not just children along the spectrum. Continue reading →

Children Who Dislike Everything

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I was going through some papers this weekend and came across an article by Michael Howard that I had printed out called, “Educating the Feeling-will in the Kindergarten” and this quote just popped out at me:

“The defining characteristic of feeling will is the capacity to live deeply into the inner quality of something outside us, knowing and feeling it as if we are within it or it is within us. In the early childhood years a healthy child is naturally inclined to drink in the inner mood and qualities of places and persons.  It is one of the tragedies of our times that the ways of the world, including the life of the family and school, can dull rather than foster this natural soul attachment.  Tragically, many young children come to kindergarten with a sense-nerve disposition already strongly developed.  Their thinking has become prematurely intellectual and abstract, and their feeling life inclines toward strong personal like or dislike.”

I have been seeing so many tiny children yet with so many big opinions.  Have you been seeing this as well?  Continue reading →

One Mother’s Experience With “Thinking–Feeling- Willing”

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“Thinking –Feeling-Willing:  Bringing The Rhythm Home” is a fairly new program put forth by A Little Garden Flower.  I know rhythm is of interest to many of the mothers who read my blog, and one of my readers wanted to share her experience with this program.  Thank you to Sheila, homeschooling mother of two, for writing about her experiences.  I know some of you are concerned about smaller children being lost in the shuffle whilst homeschooling grades-aged children, and Sheila writes about this in this review.  I think you will find it interesting.  This is from my reader Sheila:

When I first came to Waldorf, I was overwhelmed by all the information out there: books, blogs, websites, suppliers, curricula. I honestly didn’t know which end was up. I was even confused by the vocabulary: rhythm, circle time, fingerknitting, never mind the 7 year cycles, the 3 fold nature of the human being and the 12 senses. It’s a lot to learn and there are a lot of people to learn it from. One person who has helped me to craft my mothering and my homeschooling is Melisa Nielsen. Her new program “Thinking, Feeling, Willing” is that elusive primer that I searched, googled, posted and prayed for, but at that time did not exist.

 

I think the real genius behind “Thinking, Feeling, Willing” is that the program is split into separate sections: one for the child and one for you, the mom. This is a cornerstone of Waldorf that I am realizing only in retrospect. You can’t focus on the “things” of Waldorf (and here, I am not even talking about the material “things” like wooden toys, play silks and Stockmar crayons; but even things like circle time, baking day and festivals). What I have found is that these things cannot come into your home in any real way until you have prepared yourself first. Melisa knows this and stresses this to everyone in her yahoo group, her consulting practice and those who use her curriculum. “Thinking, Feeling, Willing”  can thoroughly prepare you to homeschool your children with Waldorf-inspired methods.

 

The first lesson for Mom is all about rhythm. Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm . . . when I first came to Waldorf I kept hearing this word. I knew I wanted to have this gentle order to my day, but how to get there? (I have to mention Carrie here, because she is the one who helped me to solidify my rhythm, back before Melisa’s program existed. Check out this back post: http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/01/05/rhythm-for-the-irregular/Her advice dovetails nicely with Melisa’s.) And even though I feel our rhythm is pretty solid now, it is not something static or finished. Through TFW, I have looked at our daily rhythm through a bigger lens and I am now working on bringing in a seasonal sense of rhythm to our year.

 

The monthly lessons for the child are seasonal and simple. I have a 6 year old kindergartener who seemed to be just floating along in the wake of our 4thgrade lessons. Our days were fine, but I wasn’t being intentional with my little guy. I knew it was important to stress the seasons, sing songs, recite verses and do things just for him, but that made me think I had to totally shift my homeschooling focus and recreate a Waldorf kindergarten in my home (ironic, because a Waldorf kindergarten is modeled on the home!) Melisa’s book suggestions, her continuing gnome story, her outrageous (!!!) recipes, and easy handcrafts have allowed me to simply augment what I was already doing. I can honestly say my fourth grader enjoys these aspects of our day just as much as his younger brother does.

 

TFW also provides handwork lessons that teach you how make many of those items so indicative of Waldorf: dyed silks, little gnome figures, paper lanterns, not to mention knitting! I learned how to knit pretty easily a couple of summers ago, but for some reason fingerknitting seemed beyond me. I have watched youtube videos and tried to figure it out through books with no success. Melisa’s video tutorial had me fingerknitting within about 2 minutes. In turn, I taught my boys and we now have chains and chains of fingerknitting waiting to decorate our Christmas tree come December.

 

 

Like everything Melisa Nielsen does, “Thinking, Feeling, Willing”  is comprehensive and budget-friendly. With a couple of books (some of which can probably be found at your local library), a few craft supplies, and some yummy additions to your shopping list, you can honestly get started with Waldorf in a real way. You will not waste time searching endless blogs, buying books and supplies you really don’t need or feel like you are out there reinventing the wheel by yourself. The program also includes a year of email and personal phone consultation with Melisa – she is literally there every step of the way with you. I think TFW is a great place to begin for those who are just coming to homeschooling with little ones, those who are coming to Waldorf with older children and even those who want to bring about a more rhythmic, seasonal focus to their time at home – homeschooling or not.

 

Thank you Sheila for this review.

Many blessings to you all,

Carrie