Category Archives: Sixth Grade

Guest Post: A Homeschooling Manifesto

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One of my best friends wrote these words, and was gracious enough to let me share these words with the world.  I can see this being printed out and put on refrigerators everywhere for a dose of encouragement.

Thank you to my dearest friend, Andrea Hartman!  These are her fine words:

I remember back to when we were homeschooling, on those really hard days when the house was a mess, and I was a mess, and the kids were a mess, and I would be having the passing thought  that I should send them to school.  School would be better for them than this.

We had to do public school this year.  We might have to again.  You might have to one day.  It’s not the end of the world, but now I see the public school experience not from my own experience, but from the experience of my children.  I feel like I am really blessed with the knowledge of ‘both sides of the coin’ here.  We are planning to go back to homeschooling this coming fall, so I have written a Homeschooling Manifesto. I didn’t write my little manifesto to discuss the negatives of school, but to reconnect myself with the essence of homeschool.  I’d love for you to read it, file it away, and on those crazy days, you can pull it out and remind yourself of what you are really doing.  I promise you, I will be reading it next year, many times.  ;-)   I hope you enjoy it!

 

Today, in New England, it was a beautiful day. Sunny, breezy, low 60’s. Perhaps to my Florida family, this is a chilly day, made for long sleeves and snuggles. But to my northeastern friends, this was a day for opening windows, climbing trees, and running through the grass barefooted.

As I gratefully cracked open my own window over the kitchen sink this afternoon and felt the cool breeze on my face, I realized that these three aforementioned activities are so very symbolic of the choice our family has returned to- homeschooling.

For a variety of reasons, our family tried public school this year. I must say, that of all the public schools out there, this is one of the best. Not because of test scores or academic standards, but because it is old and has character, it is small and cozy, and the principal is there every day, accessible and available to chat with a smile on her face. One cannot say this of many public schools. Continue reading →

More Musings On Grade Six

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Something has happened to me on my way to planning grade six:

I grew a little.

I don’t mean literally of course, but what I mean is in seeing the essence in the curriculum as we enter into these upper grades.  I am seeing the holiness in the curriculum and how that relates to my children, to me, and to our interconnectedness to the world.

In the Waldorf curriculum, the sixth grader is usually twelve or close to twelve.  And many things begin happening at this time:  turbulence.  A passionate acceptance or rejection of things.

And I was thinking what I had to possibly offer.  Do I have anything?  Sometimes, like many mothers, I don’t feel like I have reserves.  I certainly have not felt like I had much to give this year.  And, this thought is tinged by this being that time of year where almost all homeschoolers I know feel as if the year has been stale or flat.  So we have to sort through how we feel to whether or not within our feelings  lies any truth.

The big picture of sixth grade, to me and from my end as a homeschooling parent includes: Continue reading →

The American Impulse In Waldorf Homeschooling

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I think in Waldorf homeschooling, we have a unique chance to take the indications and pedagogy built by the indications of Rudolf Steiner and the Waldorf Schools and build off of them toward our own culture or our own religious impulses.

The American impulse in Waldorf homeschooling is something I really want to discuss today.  I alluded to it in one of my last posts where I referred to the Neoclassical period of American history here: http://theparentingpassageway.com/2013/03/17/pondering-portals-part-three-media/

I have been deeply disappointed as to the depth and breadth of the American spirit as covered within the Waldorf Curriculum as according to the AWNSA chart, which otherwise I love and use for planning my year. There are a few nods to American literature and Continue reading →

Planning: Homeschooling Grade Six

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It is hard to believe I will have a sixth grader in the fall!  I have started gathering some Waldorf resources to use for grade six.

First of all, here are a few things that I know my local Waldorf School covers in Grade Six and a few notes with what I plan to do at home:

Main Lesson Blocks:

  • Roman empire, medieval society and history  (at home, I plan on covering Rome this year and will save medieval for seventh grade.  In Eighth Grade we will do the Renaissance and voyages of discovery, and then move into Asian and American history probably more in Ninth Grade.  I just feel this is a more realistic timetable for home, and since we plan to homeschool in high school, I feel I can stretch the middle school subjects a bit.)  Resources: Christopherus Roman History and Charles Kovacs’ Ancient Rome, Dorothy Harrer’s book)
  • Compositions, book reports, research projects, speech work, oral presentations, discussion, debate (see Eric Fairman’s Path of Discovery Grade Six for some neat project ideas)  — I am putting in our year a two week block of literature.  I have not yet decided what book look at in-depth during this time. I also intend to take our daughter to see some plays during this time.
  • Percents and business math, metric system,   (Probably will use a mix of Making Math Meaningful, and The Key To Series….Also may pull from more standard sources for practice problems)
  • Physics, geology, astronomy, botany  Continue reading →