This chapter gets into the nitty-gritty of exercises, and suggestions for movement in order to further develop the vestibular system.

Vestibular – exercises are recommended around three types of stimulation:  horizontal movement around a vertical plans, such as spinning and rolling; vertical movement around a horizontal plane such as swings and see saws, along with cartwheels and handstands; and tilting and rebound kinds of movement such as trampolines, wobble boards. Position whilst doing these activities also counts – whether they are performed lying down, sitting, crawling, walking, kneeling.

For the Baby -  “When awake and physically separated from its mother, the baby’s next natural playground is the floor.  It is from the ground that a child can learn to develop muscle tone as an opposing force to gravity.”  The author points out that infants should experience both passive movement through being carried in a sling or carrier and active movement on the floor.  The baby should always lead.  Suggestions in this part of the chapter included gentle vestibular stimulation, developing monocular vision by breastfeeding or changing sides when bottle feeding, play on the tummy and the back as well and social play with the mother. Swimming, singing and talking and less use of baby equipment is also mentioned.

“The mother provides the child with his first mirror on the world and research indicates that this primal relationship plays an important part in developing connections to centres in the brain that will be involved in regulation of emotions and impulses later in life.  It is important that motherhood is valued in a rapidly-changing society.”

Touch – massage, games such as “This Little Piggy Went To Market”, patting, and time spent on the back are important components of touch.  For older children, playing eyes with the eyes closed and touch  can stimulate this sense as well – the child has his or her eyes closed, you touch  an arm or leg and the child tries to touch exactly where you touched.

Sound – Hum, dance, sing, gently tap or rock to a beat, sing familiar tunes but put in words about what you all are doing, tell simple stories.

There are 21 exercises in this chapter that are illustrated for the use of the parents as done through a story with movement activities (geared toward ages 3 and a half to 6 years of age).

This has been an interesting book to look at chapter by chapter!

Hope you enjoyed it.

Many blessings,

Carrie

Small children take in sense impressions all day long, without any kind of filter on those impressions.  They also tend to go “full force” in their work and play without a good ability to balance these inward and outward forces.  And lastly, small children under the age of 9 really have a difficult time balancing their excesses of emotion, of bringing their emotional and feeling life being into balance.  Rhythm is strength for them, and for the brief reasons mentioned above,  sleep and rest are vitally important for small children.

One thing that forms the basis of health is stillness.  Stillness is the basis for nearly all spiritual traditions around the world.  In my own tradition of Christianity, the Early Church Fathers discussed stillness, prayer, love, and self-control.  Stillness is also the basis for wonder and awe which leads to a sense of goodness in the small child, this idea that the world is a good place, which is a foundation of health.  When we have consistent sleep and rest times for the whole family, I think we convey to children that being still is valued.  That resting is okay.  That having an unhurried pace is okay.

In this age of information overload and the “need” to respond to things “right now, hurry, hurry and respond and don’t think first” I think  through rest and sleep we are giving our children the foundation to be able to say as adults, “That is interesting.  Please let me think about it and I will respond to you in a bit.”  We are giving our children the ability to find the stillness to connect with themselves, with the natural world and with the spiritual world.  We are giving them the tools for health.

Rest –   I was thinking today about how adults also use meditation and prayer as a form of resting connection, and how children really use rest to rejuvenate themselves as well. Children can also start to learn the fundamental basics of resting in prayer and other spiritual practices as according to their family culture as a form of health.

In rest, we also think of the physical act of resting.  A consistent napping schedule is important for small children (and adults enjoy this as well if they let themselves rest!).

I have often observed two main transition points for naps:

• Going from two naps that normally end up beginning around 10 AM and 2PM to one nap that usually then starts around 12 or 1. An interesting observation I have had over the years is that children who are having challenges around bedtime often have a nap that is scheduled to end too late. Once children become older toddlers, they may fight going down for a nap to a certain extent, even if you have had a wonderfully consistent routine. In those cases, I often just tried to make a dim place with a comfortable nest and told a very slow, repetitive story and to remain as neutral as possible. Having something repetitive to do with one’s hands can often be helpful in these situations.

• The other transition point I have seen is when the nap is dropped and we move into holding a quiet time after lunch.  This is something the whole family can hold, including mother sitting down and resting as well.  If you are homeschooling, this is truly important.

We have had many discussions on this blog about rest, quiet times, naps.  Here are a few of my favorite back posts on this subject:  http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/10/05/cultivating-stillness-and-silence/

http://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/09/23/more-about-quiet-time/

Sleep is important, and to me, intricately tied to warmth.  Does the child feel emotionally embraced and warm?  Physically warm?  There is something so vulnerable about drifting off to sleep, and I think some children are more sensitive than other in regards to letting that happen.

The other thing I often think about with sleep besides rhythm and when wake-up and nap times are includes physical exertion and being outside, but for children ages 7 and up, also the permeation of artistic activity into the day. There is some discussion of this artistic activity and how this relates to sleep in the lectures compiled in the book “A Modern Art of Education” by Rudolf Steiner.

Here are some ideas about  babies and sleep:  http://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/03/03/the-peaceful-baby-in-march-sleep-part-one/   and this one:    http://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/03/04/the-peaceful-baby-in-march-sleep-part-two/

And this is a pretty comprehensive look at how to handle bedtime struggles:   http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/05/29/struggling-at-bedtime/

Many physicians tie the liver into sleep challenges.  Here is an article by physician Susan Johnson on this subject:   http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/GW4003.pdf

There is also an interesting article by Waldorf Educator Arthur Auer here regarding sleep and its importance to education:  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/RB1401.pdf

Much love to all, and peaceful rest,

Carrie

This is often what can make or break homeschooling. It can also make or break how peaceful a mother feels…(not that one cannot have a wonderfully clean home and still have a whole bunch of sadness or tension in it!)  However,  I think in general, if mama is completely stressed and overwhelmed by her environment, and has to homeschool on top of total care of the home with no one helping in the form of the family working together, then mama may burn out.  If life cannot be brought under some bit of control in order to not have the Mount Rushmore of Laundry, things clean, the environment uncluttered to the point where mama does not feel nuts….then homeschool is that much harder to get done.

At least that’s how it is in my home.  And I think this is how many women function.  We all know people before things, but at the same time, if one is home all day long and every flat surface is piled high with things, every drawer and closet is bursting, the laundry and dishes are piled up…..

It just doesn’t feel good.

So, my thoughts are these:

1.  You must be home enough to also include getting your housework done.

2.  Mama should not have to do everything by herself, unless of course you have only very tiny children in the home that are working with you but obviously cannot complete tasks..

3.  Children learn how to work together as a team not only in team sports, but also and mainly I think  in the home. Chores are an important part of family life!  We all live here and we all help!

4. Less stuff equals less to do.

5.  A rhythm for housecleaning, errands, cooking, etc. is essential or no one in the family will know what needs to be done when.

I have written quite a bit about chores before; my favorite back posts on chores include this one:  http://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/08/15/more-regarding-children-and-chores-in-the-waldorf-home/  and this one, written when my third child was very little:  http://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/12/08/children-chores-housecleaning-and-homeschooling/

I recently sat down and made a giant master list of every possible chore with the help of the book “Managers of Their Chores” by the Maxwells.  It is a Christian resource and will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it helped me immensely to organize my thoughts around chores .  On my master list (the book I mentioned includes a master list to start from),  I included seasonal chores, occasional chores – everything I could think of. I also checked in Martha Stewart’s housekeeping book to see what care was recommended regarding certain items and seasonal cleaning.  Most of that information is also available for free on her website (but I do like the book form).

Once I reviewed my master list,  I started to think about what the children could do, what I could do realistically, what my spouse normally does.   I decided to work on getting my children to do chores mainly in the morning where I could be around to not only do the chores with the children and show them exactly how I want it done at first, but then to be available to check on the chore when it is done so we can talk about it, problem solve together, etc.  I think we all have this vision in our heads of just sending our children off to do X chore, but the reality is we have to be there to demonstrate, to  check in with and then to see that the chore is completed for children who are younger.  The independence grows in time.

Children under seven should be weaving in and out of work through imitation of what you are doing to work in your home with parts of the chores accessible for small children.  Children in the grades can and should start doing chores with you step by step,  and then work on completing the chores independently after they know how to do it.  You can then be there to check to see if the chore is completed.  With multiple children, I find having a specific time to check on chores is  a necessity as I cannot send everyone off to the wind to do different chores at different times and be so busy myself I don’t check to see if the chore was started, completed or how it was completed.  That is why mornings are best for me to schedule the majority of chores.

Everyone always asks where to start.  I think getting dressed, brushing hair, brushing teeth, folding pajamas and putting them away and making beds are a good place to start.  Chores around mealtimes also are good places to start since everyone is working to put food on the table and clean up.  My children enjoy outside chores, cooking, vacuuming and taking care of our dog as well.  Start small, think of the steps it takes to complete a task well, demonstrate it, do it with your child, supervise your child, then have them work  independently and check in with them.    Slow and steady wins the race!

Please feel free to leave a comment or link detailing the ages of your children and what chores they are responsible for around the home.

Many blessings,

Carrie

We have looked at the beginnings of establishing a rhythm by starting with ourselves.  The other pieces of rhythm include a rhythm for the people and pets/livestock in your family, and then a rhythm of the care of the things in your home and environment.

I think the major piece of looking at rhythm for your family means pondering two important things:

1.  Discerning the essential – does your rhythm reflect the values you hold for your family?  And, if your rhythm does not reflect this for whatever reason right now but those values are still what you hold dear, how will you get there?

and -

2. Balance.  If  you craft a rhythm based on your day and week and find, for example, that everything is geared toward your oldest child, then having your rhythm written down becomes a system of checks and balances; a starting point for change.  Remember, there are all the children’s needs, the needs of the single adult or the need of the adult couple as well or the need of the extended family members in the home as well, along with pets, etc.  All have needs.

Throughout the years, I have chosen different ways to keep track of rhythm.  Sometimes I just wrote a list on the computer or in a day planner; one year I used mainly a paper teacher’s planner; lately I have taken to making a table for each day of the week in Microsoft Word where I could write a note beside each activity.  For example, for today, my little notes looked a bit like this:

This is so individual to me and to us that I am not sure it will be very helpful to everyone else out there but some mothers really wanted to see an example.  This table certainly doesn’t include many of the things I do for inner work or what happens at night,exercise time, etc…but those things are fairly well integrated into my life at this point… I wanted to show something simple. For us, each day of the week looks a bit different as well depending upon if we have activities outside the home.

Many mothers, especially those of you with really tiny children, have shared your rhythm on your blogs.  If you have a blog entry regarding your family’s rhythm, please leave the link in the comment box below as I know mothers trying to get something down on paper would love more examples…

My only caution is:  rhythm is specific to your family and your family’s values and life. Therefore, please don’t spend TOO much time looking.  Get out your piece of paper and write down a flow to your day. Live with it, tweak it, change it, but start.

Next up :  crafting a rhythm for caring for your things…and talk about chores…

Many blessings,

Carrie

Today we are looking at YOU.  Many mothers tell me they have a really hard time with rhythm, starting with sleep and what time they get up.

In order to get up and set the tone for your family, you must go to bed.  That, of course, is not nearly as simple as it seems sometimes.  Sometimes at night we are just thrilled to garner some time alone, or some time with a spouse if we are married and then we are up rather late on top of being up all night with:  the child who had a nightmare and can’t go back to sleep/the toddler who is restless/the baby who still wakes up.  Then, we find it hard to get up, we get up and jump into everything since the children are awake and running around, but then we do not get to take a shower or put ourselves “ together”  first.

Yup, been there and done that.  There is an interesting post on the value of getting up here:  http://waldorfjourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_waldorf/2011/01/when-i-.html

Going to bed is the best insurance we have in case someone will be up all night.  Getting up and then getting into the shower first thing, unless we make it part of our rhythm to take a bath or shower at night,  is also important. Our self-care has to come in somewhere, (and for right now I am talking about plain and simple physical self-care), and I think especially if you have multiple children or older children, it is easiest to take some care of yourself first.  If you have a different experience, please leave it in the comment box below!  I would love to hear everyone’s perspective!

So, here is just a list of free-flowing questions to help you think:

When do you go bed?  What time do you need to go to bed?

What time do you get up in the morning?  What is happening at that time and has your family already left the gate without you?

When is the time for your self-care?  What do you do for your self-care?  How do you take care of your skin, your hair, your teeth?

When do you exercise?

When do you go to buy clothes?  There is a saying that bras really shouldn’t see a birthday, that they need frequent replacing, and this made me think of how many mothers out there are still wearing old bras, underwear that is old, and they never buy clothes for themselves either due to finances or it is just so hard to take multiple children with them to  buy clothes.

When, in the course, of a month or a quarter of a month, do you schedule in your own dentist, doctor, hair appointments?   I see mothers who rarely, if ever, have these kinds of appointments.

And here are some thoughts of “the variables”:

How does the co-sleeping baby/toddler/child impact getting up?  What is your attitude about the early riser in the home and how do you handle this?  This season is not forever!  Melisa Nielsen compiled some of her thoughts on this subject in relation to a discussion regarding this on her yahoo group here:  http://waldorfjourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_waldorf/2011/01/i-want-to-get-up-but-my-kids-are-early-risers.html

How could other family members help you if there are other adults present in the home?

If you are a homeschooling family, who can help you with your children during the day so you could attend a doctor’s appointment or a dentist appointment?

I would LOVE to hear what you are doing for your skin care, exercising, how you juggle any appointments you need in the comment box below..

Please, please make it a priority to take care of yourself…again, this is just the outer part of you, I am not talking so much about personal development, inner work, rhythms of prayer here…but I feel sometimes if we get the outer part ordered, then the inner part can come…

Lastly, here is a back post for you about self-care which also addressed this theme: http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/10/18/the-sacred-art-of-self-care/

Many blessings,

Carrie

A list of encouraging things to say to your children:  http://parentingfromscratch.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/encouraging-things-to-say-to-kids/

Lessons about parenting from Nancy Mohrbacher on her son’s 30th birthday:  http://www.nancymohrbacher.com/blog/2010/10/15/process-product-and-personal-growth.html

…and I thank Lisa Boisvert-Mackenzie for choosing to interview me for her Wonder of Childhood magazine…http://thewonderofchildhood.com/2012/01/carrie-dendtler-of-the-parenting-passageway/

Many blessings for your weekend,

Carrie

Also,to me, an most important part of having a family rhythm is that it is an outward way of expressing your family’s values.  A family that values gardening, for example is going to have a rhythm that looks different than a family whose life includes lots of music.  Rhythm is another way that forces us, as parents, to be mindful as to what we are creating as family life, what is essential, what our mission is as a family in raising our children.  The beginning of a new year is always a wonderful time to go back and review your family mission statement. If you do not have a family mission statement, it might be an interesting process for you to ponder and go through.

I talk to so many women who state that garnering a rhythm is just plain hard.  Their main complaints and challenges about rhythm center around several things:

1.  That rhythm is too forced and scheduled.  My argument to that is perhaps these ladies are trying to build too elaborate a rhythm. Rhythm is different than a minute by minute schedule. If your life right now is diapering, naps, mealtimes because you have toddlers and very small children, then your rhythm IS those things. Nothing more, unless you think there needs to be something very essential added to that.

2.  Rhythm is set in stone and therefore rigid.  I think of rhythm as a flexible and adjustable thing that changes with each day of the week, and with the seasons of the church and the seasons of the year.  Here is a back post about changing your rhythm with the seasons:http://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/11/17/changing-your-rhythm-with-the-seasons/  Rhythm also changes as children grow and family situations change.

3. That they, themselves, are too irregular  (and what they are not saying is that this irregularity leads them to not be able to set a rhythm for their family).

Ah, well that is something different right there.  The baby steps to rhythm can often be challenging for mothers.  It is hard to be the leader sometimes,and move children toward bedtimes and mealtimes…but the more days that this leading happens in a row, the more it will naturally happen, the more the resistance to rhythm will decrease.

Baby steps happen with getting up at the same time each day, and having meals at the same time each day.  This will naturally put naptimes and therefore bedtimes in the right place.  If you want your children to have an earlier bedtime, chances are you have to have an earlier naptime, and in order for that to happen, youall have to get up.  And in order to get up, you actually have to go to bed and not stay up all night.   If your small children are waking up frequently all night, then going to bed earlier will help you cope with this.

This back post may also be helpful to you:  http://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/01/05/rhythm-for-the-irregular/

4.  Rhythm doesn’t work for them because the rhythm is too harried and too “packed in”.  I say to these mothers that they must discern the essential.  You must add in the:  extra time it will take to get out the door with five children, the time you will need to clean up  from a meal or an activity, the extra time something will take in general because the children are very small.  A rhythm, to me, must be simple to work.

Awhile back, I loved Rebecca’s description here of the simple, unhurried rhythm around personal care for toddlers:  http://bendingbirches2010.blogspot.com/2011/06/personal-care-for-young-children.html

If we are to provide health to our children, one way to start is with a peaceful rhythm.

I think in planning rhythm, there are three levels we must consider:

1.  Rhythm for ourselves

2. Rhythm for the people and pets in our family

3.  Rhythm for taking care of the “things” in our family, and the errands that support those taking care of those things.

I recently sat down and made simple tables for each day detailing the general flow to our day, and in the empty box on the right of the descriptor I made notes specific for that day and activity.  It was very easy, and helped me really get back on track after the holidays.

More thoughts in my next post on rhythm!

Many blessings, and in joy,

Carrie

These are the eight components that I have chosen to make up family culture:

Rhythm – This is an outward gesture  made up of some of the inner attitudes towards some of the components below.  Hopefully it reflects the values your family holds toward sleep, rest, mealtimes, work, play, etc.  This is an area that gets a lot of play on different blogs,  and sometimes much bashing as in, “I don’t need a rhythm!”  I think rhythm actually is important, it has been an important part of human culture and being human since the beginning of time.  More about this in another post.

Attitudes toward sleeping/rest – Is your home unhurried enough to be conducive to rest, to early bedtimes, to sleeping in later should the children need it?  Do you notice your sleep and rest patterns changing with the seasons?

Attitude toward mealtimes – Is there time for you to sit down together as a family for meals?  Do you cook?  How many times a week are you eating out or getting fast food?  What is your attitude toward nutrition and food?

Attitude toward Work and Play – All work and no play may make Jack a dull boy, but what I see today are many children who are responsible for nothing.  A long time ago, I talked about “what would happen in your house if your children were gone?  what wouldn’t get done?”  If the answer is that nothing would happen if the children were gone, and your children are older, then your children do not have enough responsibility.  Chores are a great stomping ground to learn how to work together as a team.

The other common phenomenon is children who cannot do much self-directed play and need you present for every bit of their play, even at older ages.  The days of neighborhood groups of children getting together and playing every afternoon in games where adults are not present has gone by the wayside in many places in the U.S. due to aftercare, classes and sports, and the play life of the child has suffered for it.

Attitude of Gratitude – With gratitude comes humility, kindness and courtesy and making a place where the family members support each other in love.

Intimacy of Adults in the Household/State of Marriage or Partnership – A solid marriage or partnership is the foundation of the household; without this nothing really works well.  Our upcoming book study, “ The Seven Principles For Making Marriage Work:  A Practical Guide From The Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert” by John Gottman and Nan Silver is going to take a much closer look at this.

How We Deal With  And View Conflict – How you deal with conflict, with feeling frustrated and angry, becomes the model for how our children deal with it.  How is conflict seen in your home? Is conflict just glossed over so no one fights?  Is it an all-out war?  How do you communicate in conflict, both with the other adults in the house and your children?

View of Children, Childhood and Discipline – How do you view children: as miniature adults with less experience who just need to be filled up, or do you view children as coming into development slowly and that certain things are appropriate at certain stages?  How do you view discipline – as guidance, as leading your children into the adults they are going to become, or as a place to lay down the law or as a place to lay down no laws since children are children?  What is your view of authority in parenting and what picture does that conjure up?

I can’t wait to start thinking about these areas, can you?  These are the foundation of life along with religion and inner development, and together all of this forms the basis that homeschooling can be super imposed upon.  Without examining these foundational levels, homeschooling and parenting is that much harder.

Many blessings,
Carrie

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: 

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:

Here is a picture of Freya, the goddess of love and beauty, riding in her chariot with little Noss.

A big view:

And a closer up view:

This block has been one of drawing Celtic braids, knots and forms; poetry, writing, and drawing. We have also done a lot of modeling, both of simple transformational exercises (for example, such as sphere to egg to oval, etc) but also of the human form.  I enjoy modeling in the three dimensional realm and then taking parts of it into the two dimensional world through drawing.

Hope to hear what you all are working on in your homeschooling!

In Joy,

Carrie

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 modeling, (using the exercises in this book that I mentioned before in the first post of the Virtual Tea:  “Basic Sculptural Modeling”  http://www.awsna.org/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=37_29&products_id=445)  then jumped into first grade work whilst my fourth grader did some spelling and read.  No one was used to being back in school, so it was slow going.  Our first grader did well, but  sweet toddler was unusually disruptive and we needed lots of breaks.  He finally settled down to some of the homemade candy cane playdough and pushing a baby dolly in his big sister’s stroller.    After lunch and getting toddler to sleep, we read aloud and my fourth grader did her Main Lesson. (First Grader spent a large amount of time here also with the candy cane playdough, and playing in her room with her dollies. Apparently candy cane playdough is a requirement for the first day back from break!)   We didn’t get to Spanish nor the drawing exercises and drawing I had planned for the afternoon due to the amount of time it took to get through other things.  There was quite a bit of grumbling, melting, feeling sad that school was starting again, especially on the part of the poor fourth grader who had to wait until the afternoon to really get going.

That is okay!  It is only the first day back!  You must keep going!  Hang in there!

The second day we started with being outside.  It was cold, but we stayed outside for almost an hour and then came in and tackled math.  We did our Main Lessons, did some more modeling in the afternoon, and drawing.

On Wednesday we started with modeling again, and then had disruptions of life.  Oh no, this is only Day Three of Operation No Shiny Toy! No disruptions please! Our new back to school rhythm is too fragile for morning disruptions yet!  However, we got through math and baking, had lunch and put toddler down for a nap and then did our Main Lesson work in the afternoon. Not an ideal day, and I realized some of the commitments I made in the fall needed to be changed to the afternoon, but we still finished what we needed to.  Please do learn from all my mistakes; that is what this blog is all about.  We did a good deal of drawing.

Today is Thursday, Day Four of Operation Shiny Toy.  We are starting with Spanish, because that is when our Spanish tutor can come, but she is coming early enough that it will just be starting early and jumping in on the plan.  In the afternoon we will be preparing for Epiphany, and tomorrow we have the great fortune to go celebrate with friends from Germany in the morning and share in typical German and Austrian customs for Three Kings’ Day.

No homeschooling experience is perfect; it is not school but life!  So stop reading, and jump in and do it!  If you get sidetracked, go back to your plan.

If anyone takes up the Operation Shiny Toy challenge, and blogs about it, I would love to have your link in the comment section below!

Many blessings, and have fun getting “back to school”!

Love,

Carrie