Monthly Archives: November 2008

Waldorf First Grade With A Fluent Reader

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Many parents are concerned that somehow their child will be “behind” by waiting until First Grade to start learning the letters of the alphabet.  The flip side to this is the parents that say, “Won’t my child be bored in Waldorf First Grade?  My child taught himself to read at the age of 5 and can read almost anything.  Should I just skip Waldorf First Grade and move onto Second Grade?”

No,no, no.  I have one of those fluent readers, and I think Waldorf First Grade at home provides so many wonderful opportunities for your little one.

First of all, look carefully at your child.  How is their health?  What are they like in their bodies?  Socially?  How are their fine motor skills?  Work in the areas in which your child is lacking or challenged.  If your child would be happy to sit and read a book all day, I do think it is our job as parents to introduce them to other things and yes, even to limit the times when they read and how many books are out at a time.  You would do this with TV, and books can be the same way to stimulate oneself and avoid having to think of something to do out of one’s imagination when one is bored.  The boredom is necessary, let your child go through it!

One special consideration is the switch in First Grade from hearing a tale several weeks or a month in a row to a three day rhythm.  If you talk to a six-year-old, a fluently reading six-year-olds who is reading chapter books (LONG ones, not just Frog and Toad or something like that),  they cannot remember well what they read other than they enjoyed it.  That is what my little one used to say to me – she wanted “long” chapter books and enjoyed reading it, but then would say, “I think I need to read it again.  I can’t remember it very well.”  

In First Grade, presumably your child is still only six and a half or seven years old.  He or she still needs the soul-nourishing qualities the Waldorf First Grade curriculum provides through the fairy tales.  This is another reason why you should not skip ahead to second grade content – the curriculum is carefully set up to match up to your child’s age, no matter what their academic level. 

All that being said, let’s move on to what you can do within your homeschool to satisfy your first grader.  Homeschooling provides a distinct advantage for children and gives them lots of time to play, to dream and to create.  Many children who are fluent readers will start making up written projects during their free time.  This may range from little comic strips to making up stories in a special journal, to writing down little poems or even their own language or menus for playing restaurant.  This is ideal because the first readers in Waldorf First Grade are created by what the student has written.

Many good readers of this early age display handwriting skills that are below their reading level and also many enjoy “silent reading” but not reading aloud.  So these are two important areas to work on.  Have your child read aloud to the dog or to their siblings.  Work on handwriting as you work through the alphabet – after you draw the picture that the letter of the alphabet is coming from.  Work on vocabulary by writing down a list that your child dictates of all the words that begin with “B” for example,  or work on writing a short sentence about the fairy tale if they are interested.  At the end of First Grade, many parents do work toward a small writing block with the beginning of punctuation and word families.

But please, above all, do not push.  Many fluent readers I know are very happy to just go through the letters in First Grade and work on writing simple sentences.  They do continue to read a variety of things on their own time, to listen to a parent read orally to them, but they are not in the least distressed at listening to the fairy tales and drawing the letters.  I attribute this to the fact that the Waldorf curriculum is so tailored to the age of the child and what feeds the child’s soul.  The child knows this, even if we are the parents put our adult baggage on it and think they should be doing “more”.  Please see my post on this blog entitled, “Letting Go.”  This is an important lesson for the parent to learn in First Grade. 

I would love to hear from those of you who have homeschooled a fluent reader through Waldorf First Grade and your experience.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Children and Media

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Waldorf education strongly encourages the limitation of media for children.   Many parents I know have a difficult time with this, and even question why they should limit media for children when “everything my child watches is educational.”  This is a topic that deserves a closer look.

Joan Almon writes in the forward to Martin Large’s book, “Set Free Childhood”, the following:  “My primary concern about children’s exposure to media has to do with the issue of how children grow and develop their full human capacities, and the many ways in which our culture interferes with this.  For children to develop well, they need caring adults with whom they have much contact and who inspire them to develop their full range of human abilities – mental, social, emotional, and physical.  Even the best of media programs cannot begin to inspire children in the way that a loving adult can.  Yet far too often, adults are calling upon the media to baby-sit their children. They feel guilty about about this, for they know that media is no substitute for their own attention and care; but the pressure in their lives leads them to do it anyway.”  She goes on to talk about the lack of imagination and aggression she has seen as a Waldorf nursery/kindergarten teacher in the children who watch TV.

Marie McClendon in her book “Alternatives to TV Handbook” explains how television works. “A television image is seen because the images are normally re-drawn – or scanned- about 60 times a second.  Imagine how much this is for the eye and brain to process.  Regardless of program content or pace, TV overstimulates and taxed the developing neurological systems and may result in shorter attention spans and hyperactivity.  It is simply how the television works”  She goes on to say, “It may sound funny, but the worst thing about your children watching hours of TV is that they are not climbing trees.”  She has a summary of the “Top Ten Research Findings on Children Viewing TV” and mentions that TV-induced alpha brain waves place the brain in a non-learning mode and are addictive.  The alpha brain waves with TV watching are less than sleep or dream waves; the brain actually atrophies.

Martin Large, in his book “Set Free Childhood” has the following criteria available to evaluate the TV your child is watching:

1. News – he concludes is unsuitable for children under the age of 12.

2. Language – he suggests turning off e picture of your child’s television show and listening to the language in it – How do you rate the richness of language expression?

3. Advertising – enough said.

4,  Social skills – How do people solve problems?  What values are offered?

5. Comprehension level – does your child actually  understand the plot lines or what happened, even if they enjoy it? 

Even just the background noise of TV affects how babies sleep.  A newborn baby is sensitive to noise, bright lights, cold and warmth.  I cannot tell you  how many times I have gone into a newborn infant’s room to examine an infant and had to ask the family to turn a blaring TV off.  It always amazes me that there is this precious newborn infant in the room, and the family members are glued to some sort of incredibly loud show on the television! If you are pregnant or have a newborn in the house, please do think seriously about the sounds and screens that are in front of your babies!  The American Academy of Pediatrics also has position statements regarding the hazards of television viewing for children, you can access these policy statements on their website.

Potential health hazards of your child watching TV includes visual processing problems, childhood obesity and lack of exercise, nature deficit disorder, social isolation, the undermining of play and aggressive or anti-social behavior.  Attention deficits and inability to concentrate has also been tied to television viewing in children.  If you are concerned about your child’s developmental progress or behavior in any way, shape or form I strongly encourage you to cut off the television.

Some Waldorf families have no television in their homes at all; some have a TV but hide it away and it does not come on until the children are asleep.   Some families never watch TV, some ban TV during the week, some ban TV during the weekends.  Some allow one show a week, some families allow a certain number of hours per month.  Some families do not really watch TV, but are not adverse to putting in a half hour of Barney is the entire world and all the children are just simply falling apart. 

Eliminating TV does require some advance planning – have some simple activities ready that  you can pull out. One time of day many parents find challenging is the before dinner hour, when it seems almost all small children are tired, hungry and whiny. Marie McClendon proposes some ideas on page 40 of her little book.  She mentions that you can make up a story while you cook, sing while you cook, give the children a snack, make a little fort for your children to hide away in while you cook, or let your child call grandma or someone while you cook.  My personal favorite is to let the children have a snack and either play with homemade salt dough while I cook or enlist them to help me scrub vegetables, tear lettuce for a salad or set the table.  Filling up one half of the sink with soapy water is also usually a  hit for my younger child.

The other area that mothers often find challenging without TV is that famous question of how to keep the older child entertained in order to get a few moments to put the baby to sleep.  There are several things that come to mind.  You may consider trying to lay down with both of them while you read to the older one and hopefully the little one will drift off to sleep. You could also set up play scenarios with little figures and silks and see if the older child cannot engage himself in some play for a few moments.  If you don’t worry about the mess you could set up a big tub of dried beans and cups for pouring, build a big fort and let your oldest have a snack in it while you get the little one off to sleep.  Another thought is to set up lacing cards or wooden beads and strings for your older child to play with.  One thing that always worked well for me personally was to wear the baby in a sling and let the baby nap there till the baby was old enough for only one nap a day and  then I only had to think of something for my oldest to do alone once a day instead of twice a day!  In any case, also take a look at your rhythm again and make sure your oldest has a lot of outside time before the baby needs a nap, so then he or she will want to do something quieter at that point.

Marie McClendon’s book has many suggestions for what to do instead of TV, divided by age group.  It is a small book of about 56 pages, but packs a lot of information in it. I highly recommend you look over the suggestions of activities she presents and see if that doesn’t help stimulate your own ideas!

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Letting Go

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This post is more for the parents of children ages 7 and older.  In my own inner work at this time, I am working with the notion of “letting go” and some of the ideas that come to mind as I work with this phrase, in no particular order  (and I am using the word “she” to refer to a child for simplicity’s sake) :

Letting go means I cannot police my child’s every thought on a subject; she has her own thoughts and ideas. 

Letting go means I cannot control her destiny; my child has her own destiny.

Letting go means  I cannot set so many rules and regulations that my parenting is completely dry, humor-less and alienating, my child has a need for space, a warm presence but also benign neglect. 

Letting go means that I can stop trying to “fix” what I see as my child’s “imperfections”;  my child is herself and needs no “fixing”.

Letting go also means I can stop using so many words and chattering at my child and over –explaining things; instead I can  find support in the warm silence that I give her.

Letting go means I cannot hover over every detail of her life; she needs the space to make mistakes when the cost is small as practice for her own life ahead.

Letting go means doing the right thing at the right time and not trying to go back when she is a teenager and treat her like an infant.

Letting go means letting go of my own adult baggage, my own adult dreams and wants for my child; she has her own dreams and wants.

Letting go  means I can be authentic and fully present with my child.

Letting go means I can support and guide, but not dictate or demand.

Letting go feels good.

What are you going to work on this year in your parenting?

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Forgiving Ourselves

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How do you work within the  context of parenting with the concept of forgiving yourself?  Some mothers have very carefree, sunny personalities and don’t dwell on things so much, but I know many mothers who are trying to be “the perfect mother”; feeling  overwhelmed and then are mad at themselves when they don’t live up to their own self-imposed standards.  When they are being authentic and real, they admit to me they find it hard to forgive themselves and their behavior.  I especially see this as mothers try to change some parenting skill that was inherited from they way they were parented and they “slip-up”.  I also see this quite a bit in homeschooling mothers; mothers who want to do more “of a Waldorf-inpsired homeschool” and are currently more unschooling  than doing Waldorf or using some kind of a homeschooling “curriculum package” instead of creating their own lesson plans, or in mothers where life has derailed their current homeschooling plans.  The opportunities to feel bad about oneself abounds!

For the past two years, I have made my inner work and parenting focus this simple phrase:   “I will be easy with myself.”  The Thanksgiving holidays heading into Advent into the 12 days of Christmas are always a meditative, contemplative drawing-in time for me, and this year I am also starting to work with the idea of “letting go” (more about that in a separate post), in addition to being easy with myself.

If you are feeling guilty about the way you have parented in the past, a situation that involved you not handling things they way you wanted to, if you are feeling guilty about the state of your homeschooling adventure at this point because other things in life are  taking center stage at this moment; please take a deep breath.

Feeling guilty is not always undesirable – it can point out ways to change for the better at times.  However, what I see in so many mothers is just feeling too guilty, all the time, over everything and anything.  Please stop modeling this for your children, especially your daughters!  Trust yourself, your intuition and trust in your authenticity. No, we cannot use this as an excuse for not  doing what is right in our lives,our families and our homeschool, but we can decide that instead of dwelling on the negative things, instead of dwelling on the things in reality that did not meet our expectations or ideas, we can move forward and come up with positive solutions that will help everyone involved.  We can look at enlisting  help and changing what is going on within the family.  We can look at using our own inner work to work with these feelings instead of unleashing them on our children and spouses.  We can look and find the support of other mothers.   We can also look at acceptance.  My husband sometimes will say, “It just is what it is.”  And sometimes that is just enough.

Take the time to examine your own beliefs – do you believe you should never say “no” to anyone, do you think a mother should be able to give of herself continuously and endlessly without any help from anyone else, do you feel everything must be done “perfectly” or it is not worth doing, do you feel your best is never good enough? Do you think you should be working within your home seven days a week without a break?  Do you feel you are so busy with your family you have no time or place to connect to your own children, your own spouse and encouraging friends?

You live in your home with your family; you do not live FOR your home and your family.  Think about what you need and how to get there!  And be easy with yourself while you do it!  Is your home a place of peace, and joy?  (At least most of the time??!!)  Or is it a place of stress and upset?

There is a wonderful book called, “The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood :  Coping with Stress, Depression and Burn-out,” by Kathleen Kendall-Tackett.  In the epilogue of this book, she points out several things you can do to make things better for yourself and your family.  The number one thing on her list is to focus on the things that are actually going well, and that if you can identify even just one strength, one thing that is going right,  you can  use that and build on that.  She also talks about the need for self-care, the importance of eating well, getting to exercise and yes, even getting to relax.  Are you doing this for yourself at all?   She also talks about the need for mothers to laugh, and I so agree with this!  So many of the mothers I  meet just seem unhappy, sad, overwhelmed, depressed, and joy-less.  Make a promise to yourself to start trying to bring humor and joy back into your life.  Kendall-Tackett has lots of other things to suggest, such as ways to re-vitalize your sense of humor, and  her important recommendation of finding support through a mothering mentor. 

From a Waldorf perspective, I think working within your own inner work on your feelings, needs and expectation is vital.  It is the most important part of your homeschooling experience with your children.  If  your homeschooling experience is joyless and not alive, your children will have difficulty not only in absorbing the material and learning, but also in seeing the joy within your homeschool!   Barbara Dewey wrote a great article about this in her most recent newsletter, entitled, “Are Your Child’s Eyes Shining? Are Yours?”  You can find it here: http://www.waldorfwithoutwalls.com/newsletter/44/

Vimala McClure writes in the neat little book, “The Tao of Motherhood,” the following:  “A wise parent recognizes her failings and accepts what is.  There is room in life for remorse, and for forgiveness.  There is room in our heart for ourselves, and for one another.”  Lovely words.

Mothers have been mothering since time began.  What we do is the most important thing on earth, but more important than even doing everything right and trying to meet the impossible standard of providing “the perfect childhood” where there can be no such thing is to provide your children the  model of what to do when the pieces don’t fit together or fall apart.  Show them how one can focus on the strengths and be optimistic.  Show them how one can say, “So glad that is over now!”  Show them how to move on, make things right.  Show them that parents can take care of themselves and be partners together and still have enough love and energy for everyone in the household because that is how families work.

Meditation, meditative rhythmical activity such as Tai Chi or yoga or even walking, prayer, taking a day of rest each week can all go a long way toward helping us to forgive ourselves for just being human.  Be the best mother you can be, but accept and love yourself where you are in your journey and in your path.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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I wanted to thank those of you who read my blog; I hope it provides you some inspiration and encouragement.

Blessings and peace to you on this holiday.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world,

Carrie

Great Fairy Tales for First Grade

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These were some wonderful fairy tales we have shared in First Grade:

For the Alphabet, (since everyone asks this!), this is what we have done/will finish by the end of the school year:

A- Angel (fit in with my container story, not a Grimm’s tale)

B- the BEAR from Snow-White and Rose-Red (Grimm’s)

C- the CAT from The Master Cat (otherwise known as Puss in Boots)

D- the DOOR of the DWELLING of the DWARVES from Little Snow White (Grimm’s)

E- the eeee sound from KEY in The Golden Key (Grimm’s) not my favorite, you may be able to do better!

F- the FISH from The Fisherman and His Wife (Grimm’s)

G- the GOOSE from The Golden Goose (Grimm’s)

H- the HOUSE from Hansel and Gretel (Grimm’s)

I- the “I” that the Prince was from “The King’s Son Who Feared Nothing” (Grimm’s)

J- For JACK from “Jack and the Beanstalk”

K- the KING from “The Princess of the Flaming Castle”

L- Long Legs Longshanks from “Longshanks, Girth and Keen”  (Slovakian tale and I had to include it because it is my favorite tale!)

M- the MOUNTAIN from Semeli Mountain (Grimm’s)

N- the NAIL from “The Nail” (Grimm’s)

O- the hole in a shape of an O from “The Gnome” (Grimm’s)

P- the PINK from “The Pink” (Grimm’s)

Q- the QUEEN from my container story

R- RUMPELSTILTSKIN from “Rumpelstiltskin” (Grimm’s)

S- the SNAKE from “The White Snake” (Grimm’s)

T- the TROLL from “The THree Billy Goats Gruff”

U- the UMBRELLA my Fairy Queen has in my container story

V- a VALLEY, also from my container story

W- WATER from  “Iron Hans” (Grimm’s)

X,Y.Z – the Three Wise Men from my container story – see Donna Simmons’ work for this inspiration, the reasoning behind it and the drawings! 

We will cover some more fairy tales during a writing block toward the end of the school year.

For the Qualities of Numbers-

1 – pick a sun from any tale (we did “Brother and Sister” – Grimm’s

2- “The Two Brothers” (Grimm’s) (this is my other favorite fairy tale)

3- “The Three Sons of Fortune” (Grimm’s)

4-  “The Lion” from the book “Active Arithmetic!”

5- “The Star Money” (Grimm’s)

6- “How Six Men Got On In the World” (Grimm’s)

7- “The Seven Ravens” (Grimm’s)

8- “Eight” by Dorothy Harrer

9-  “The Gnome” (Grimm’s)

10-  we did not do a story

11- we did not do a story

12- “The Twelve Hunstmen” (Grimm’s)

We have also done all the Fairytale Stories from Dorothy Harrer, including The Prince Who Couldn’t Read, The Secret and Magic Name of the King (also great for the letter “I”!), The Princess of the Golden Stairs, The Soldier, the Huntsmen and the Servant, Three Sisters, The Fir Tree.

Nature Stories:

All of the ones by Dorothy Harrer including The Lazy Gnome, The Lazy Water Fairy, The Four Seasons, The Rainbow, The Prince of Butterflies, The Snowflake, The Stag, The Lion, and the Eagle, The Four Brothers.

I have also found a Slovak tale regarding “The Twelve Months.” Excellent!!  I have also taken our local animals, found them in Anna Comstack’s “Handbook of Nature Study” and taken some of the characteristics I wanted to highlight and put them into a little nature story.

Other Favorite Fairy Tales:

The Fairy Tales collections by Virginia Haviland are really wonderful and you can get them so cheaply used.  Other favorite fairy tales include “The Castle Under the Sea” (www.mainlesson.com); The Three Princesses of Whiteland (J. Moe) and Soria Moria Castle (PC Asbjornsen); many of the Grimm’s fairy tales not covered in the alphabet stories; many Irish fairy tales; tales from Czechoslovakia such as Budilinek and Zlatovlaska the Golden-Haired; some of the Russian tales such as The Little Humpbacked Horse and Wassilissa the Beautiful.

Fairy tales are great fun, and I hope this list helps you as you put together a wonderful experience at home for your First Grader.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Making Waldorf First Grade Come Alive!

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It is hard to believe we are almost half-way done with Waldorf First Grade at Home.  I have a few friends with six year olds in their second year of Waldorf Kindergarten who asked for pointers for preparing for First Grade.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Now is the time to be working on the skills you will need to be showing your child in First Grade – this means being able to draw with block crayons, working with beeswax for modeling, being able to play the pennywhistle or recorder, woodworking, gardening and knitting at least a knit stitch.  Now is a great time to practice one night a week after the kids go to sleep whatever new skill you are working on.

2.  Start reading through the Grimms Fairy Tales and mark the ones that resonate with you and ones you think will resonate with your child.  Look at fairy tales from other lands – for example, Celtic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian – and really see what lives in those tales and what lives in you.

3.  Breathe deeply into that three-day rhythm and see if you can start bringing it to yourself.  Memorize a fairy tale for your six year old kindergarten year  by reading it every night for three nights and tell it to your child.  Your  Kindergarten aged child should  not be working in a three day rhythm, but it might not be bad to practice after your child goes to bed with  the story.  The first day you tell it, the second day bring the artistic piece in and the third day the academic piece.  Think about how you would do this!

4.  Think about what festivals you want to bring to your child and start planning.  You can start small with the new festivals and add a little on every year, but at least think about which festivals resonate for your family.  If there are festivals that are traditionally Waldorf and make you uncomfortable, explore that!

5.  Start making up lots of stories.  You will need this in First Grade.  Some mothers write a “container story”  (more below) to carry the alphabet stories along, or weave a large story with lots of different forms in it for form drawing.  You do not have to use gnome stories for math.  Think what would appeal to your child and also carry the moral qualities that they need to hear in a subtle way.  Waldorf Education is all about the morality of the child as he or she grows into this wonderful human being.

I used a container story for my alphabet fairy tales.  It is the story of a princess who is not allowed to wear the crown until she turns seven and undergoes a training period of meeting 26 loyal fairy subjects.  In this process, she discovers that the fairies are becoming besieged by trolls within the kingdom and what her father and the fairy queen know is that the princess alone has the power to defeat them (and of course, this is through love), but the princess must discover this for herself.   The Grimms tales are all there as each fairy subject has a tale that highlights a letter of the alphabet, the three day rhythm is there with the artistic and academic piece off of the fairy tales, and of course the container story with the moral is there.

6.  Look at your own inner work – what do you need more of?  Less of?  Where are you in your life?  Are you lost and depressed and feeling chaotic or are you happy?  If you are not happy, then change it!

7.  Look at your physical space of your house and work hard this year to find a place to put things, a cleaning rhythm you can stick to.   This is important.  Make sure clean-up is an important part of your child’s play.  Make sure your child has opportunities to see you work and do work themselves.

8.  Look once again at the overall tone in your home. Is it peaceful?  Fun?  Is there joy and laughter?  Or is it aggressive and stressful?

These are just some questions to ponder as you prepare!  Please do keep in mind that First Grade is just the bridge from Kindergarten,and to put lots of activity in your lessons, in your festival preparations, and to know when to go outside and play and when to buckle down a bit.  Also remember, First Grade is a time to just START explaining things, whet their appetite through imagery and art, but leave the dry, textbook explanations behind as this does not speak to a child’s mind or spark their learning process.  You are creating First Grade through experiences, not through a bunch of words!  Stop explaining so much and DO!

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Connecting Your Children to Nature

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Our children are in grave danger of losing connection with nature and the four elements.  The emphasis in American schools is on computer skills and literacy.  Some programs say they bring children outside for a good while, but when pressed the reality is the children are going outside for perhaps 20 to 30 minutes a day and only if the weather is good. 

In fact, a whole best selling book has been written about this topic.  It is called “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv.  I highly encourage you to read this book for the sake of your children.

.Our European friends are attempting to do something about this.  In Scandinavia and Germany, there has been a recent  explosion of Kindergarten programs that take place in the woods all day – not just that the children go outside for part of the day, but that the children literally have their program outside. I have a friend who experimented with this at home and you can read about her experience on her blog at this link: http://naturesrhythm.blogspot.com/2008/11/wood-kindergarten.html

Mothering Magazine (www.mothering.com)  recently covered the topic of forest kindergarten programs in the article, “Forest For A Classroom” by Andrea Mills in the November-December 2009 issue.  In this article, Ms. Mills writes:  “American parents and educators can learn a lot from the Waldkindergarten.  The media ensure that American families are plagued by fears of strangers, bug, sharp items, and other threats, both real and imagined.  Technology makes it more likely that our children will be spending their free time plugged into TV’s, computers, or other media.”

The only forest preschool program I am aware of in the United States is the one Marsha Johnson runs in Portland, Oregon. If anyone knows of any others, please leave it in the comment section for me.

We recently spent several hours outside at a Nature Center.  Typically attendance slows down in the winter months because not every family feels the way we do – that there is no bad weather, only bad clothes. Despite the chill in the air, we got outside every day for 2 to 4 hours.  It is that important to the life of a small child (and to the grown-ups as well!).

Here are a few excellent reasons to get your children out more:

“The four elements, earth, water, air and fire, are the basic elements which children are nourished by and from which they grow. No shaped toys-be they wood or plastic-can compete with these materials. The seriousness with which the children play, the deep concentration speaks for itself, and shows how important this “playing” is. Nobody needs to fight about anything –there is plenty of mud for everybody.” —You Are Your Child’s First Teacher, page 184

“Young children are close to the realm of nature because they are natural beings. Because their consciousness is not yet parted from the environment, because they still live in the consciousness of oneness, of unity, they still belong to the natural world…..The process of separating from the parents and from the environment buds only around age seven..” –Heaven On Earth: A Handbook for Parents of Young Children, Sharifa Oppenheimer, page 99.

Rudolf Steiner wanted the children to be able to connect to and feel at home on the land, to feel at one with the cycles of the year and the cycles of night and day, to really care for the land and he wanted the children to be able to work together socially and value the work that was done before them so that the children understood we all depend on the work of others  (Adapted from -Gardening With Children Audio CD, informedfamilylife.org).

So, if you are trying to think about creating your own playspace, perhaps in your backyard or somewhere wild you have access to ,  here are some thoughts of things to include:

-flat grassy areas

-a hill of some sort

-natural screens (bushes, hedges, places to hide)

-building materials

-play structures – tipis, igloos, houses. Sharifa Oppenheimer talks about letting your child add things to the igloo or tipi structure – give hints for adding things to the structure – “When I was a small girl, we used to put pine needles on the floor as a carpet.” Or “I wonder what it would be like to put a few seashells around the outside, as decoration.” – page 102, Heaven On Earth

.-classic structures such as swings, slides, seesaws, hammocks

-sand play

-water play

-mud play – digging is important

-sensory play area inside or outside…….Some children need these sensory areas and inputs more than others. Waldorf kindergartens rarely have a “sensory table” available, but this may be something to work with at home, and it could be a way to bring the outside in if you have no yard. I have a dear friend who taught in a traditional three year old classroom for over ten years before having children of her own, and she volunteerd some of her wonderful sensory table ideas as follows –For example, a sensory table could be filled with:

sand-add water, shells, sticks, (sand will mold if it left very wet and covered), animals

beans-start with one kind and over time add different varieties-

water-add color, bubbles, funnels, waterwheel, clear plastic containers of all sizes, animals

soil-add rocks, sticks, acorns, etc.  It is fun to add in lima beans or corn kernels as they will start to sprout in the moist soil when left for a few days

For autumn-Indian corn, acorns, seed pods, colorful leaves, pine cones, cranberries

Winter-build dens from bark, there are directions for making snow in the Earthways book, wooden snowflakes, ice cubes (freeze a dish of water for pond)

Spring-soil, seeds, small gardening tools, new leaves, flowers from trees, buds to explore

Summer-water, sand, green plants, wild flowers,

Thank you to my dear friend!

Think about equipment:

-small shovels, rakes, wagon, basket of tools (including hammers, wrenches, paintbrushes, pliers, nails), nails half driven into a log or stump for the children to hammer. There are also more ideas in that little book Toymaking With Children.

how about using your GARDEN as a playspace?

-“Care of plant life is a fundamental lesson in outdoor play.” –from Heaven On Earth

-Make a child-sized scarecrow in the fall or even early spring as you are planting

-Choose seeds that have a short time until maturity – lettuce, radishes, berries, snow peas

-try potatoes, pumpkins, corn

-make a bean tipi

-think about gardening with bees and butterflies in mind, with night blooming flowers for the moths

-encourage backyard wildlife – bird feeders, bird baths, bird houses, squirrel feeders, bat house, hummingbird feeders, owl houses, toad hotels

-Think of exploring the garden with all 12 senses!

Steiner discussed the importance of agriculture within the Waldorf curriculum, and “Being a teacher, we should avoid botanizing, taking the botany drum into class and showing the plants to the students. We should rather take the children outside to really emphasize the understanding of the context between the plant kingdom, the earth and the radiant sun.” – Steiner, Dornach, 1921-22. (Gardening usually occurs between the 6th and 10th grades as a yearly subject, but more and more Waldorf teachers are bringing beekeeping, composting, gardening etc into their classrooms as early as Kindergarten and First Grade).

Bring the Outdoors Inside!

-Try raising tadpoles, butterflies, praying mantis, ant farms, ladybug houses

-Try bringing play equipment inside – swings and small trampolines

-Try container gardening inside

-Try sprouting sunflower seeds and other seeds and beans

Other Major Ways to Connect Your Child to Nature:

Spend time outside every day, no matter what the weather – there is no bad weather, only bad clothes!

If you take a daily walk, focus on exploration, not distance, and have a basket to collect small treasures

Assign parts in fairy tales to dramatize which include the natural elements of the story – ie, children can be the trees, streams, etc. in different tales.

Celebrate FESTIVALS (see blog post regarding Changing Your Rhythm with the Seasons).

Celebrate the moon and phases of the moon – some Waldorf teachers have made hats with the moon phases on it for different fairy tales where a moon phase is mentioned

Have a color of the month that connects it to nature – ie, March is the color green and grow wheat grass on your nature table

Which of course, leads to the inevitable :Have a nature table!

Celebrate the elemental beings – gnomes who take care of the earth, fairies, etc. in circle time or fairy tales

Think about joining a CSA or going to farmer’s markets so children can meet farmers, beekeepers and other folks who work with nature and love it!

Crafts should involve natural items, playthings as well!

Experiences with Nature connect us with the Mysteries of Life and help the young child learn wonder, awe, reverence and respect!

For More Ideas See the Following Books, CD’s and DVD’s:

-Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots – Sharon Lovejoy

-Sunflower Houses – Sharon Lovejoy

-Gardening Classes At The Waldorf Schools – Krause

-Gardening With Children: The Waldorf Curriculum – Carolyn Brown, Audio CD from the Children, Nature and Us Conference  -Available from www.informedfamilylife.org

-“Creating a “Kindergarden” for Young Children by Betty Peck, DVD from the Children, Nature and Us Conference – Available from www.informedfamilylife.org

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Holiday Gifts for Children: How Much Is Too Much?

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The holidays are upon us, along with the rampant materialism that seems to consume our culture.  If we are not careful and vigilant, the holidays become more about fulfilling what is on someone’s  wish list than any meditative, contemplative act regarding truths and light in the darkness of winter.

I invite you this holiday season to slow down.  In many of the countries that celebrate Christmas, the season of Advent is a time to slow down, be at home and enjoy making crafts and decorations for the home and baking.  It is not a time to run out and spend 500 dollars on one person at Christmas.

Unfortunately, in our society, the person(s) many families are most likely to spend the most money on are their children.  Whew.  I invite you to make yourself a cup of tea, and have your husband take your kids to the park for a few hours.  Now go into their rooms and the playroom and look at the amount of stuff that is there.  Seriously.  Count the number of puzzles they have, the number of pairs of shoes, how many bags and boxes of craft supplies there are. How many board games do they have?  How many dress up clothes?

The first step is always the hardest.  I invite you to think about purging at least a third or more of your toys this holiday season.  If you cannot purge them all, or you do purge all the junky made in China plastic toys and have some nice open ended toys to keep, here is a thought for you.  Some families pack up toys and  put them away somewhere.  Then they rotate the toys so only a few things are down at a time.  The toys can be changed out either monthly or seasonally.

If you are stumped as to how many toys a child really needs to have or how many clothes/outfits a child needs, I can offer these guidelines that I have read from other sources.  Marsha Johnson, Master Waldorf teacher and moderator of the wonderful Yahoo!Group waldorfhomeeducators has this great article in her FILES section of that group entitled, “The Issue of Toys, Children and Materialism.”  She wrote it in December of 2004 and I think it should be required reading for parents when a baby is born!  Seriously!

She writes on the matter of clothes, “Examine wardrobes and put together fourteen outfits for your children, enough for two weeks without laundry, for each season, and donate the rest.  Buy good quality wool, cotton and natural fiber clothes that will last through several children, practice the fine art of hand me downs, and gather a group of other families to have a twice a year “share” time where you all bring extra clothes and parcel them out.  You will be shocked at how this is so very freeing although you will spend a bit more time doing laundry on your new schedule.”

Yup, fourteen outfits.  And probably not nearly as many shoes as your child currently has in his or her closet either!

For the matter of what toys a child really needs, I turned to the pages of a Waldorf classic entitled, “Toymaking With Children” by Freya Jaffke.  I so love this little book.

At any rate, for the child’s  first year of life, Freya suggests a small soft cloth to play with, a cradle doll and a wooden doll. (There are instructions on how to make these dolls in her book).  She also gives an honorable mention to a felt ball, an embroidered ball, a wooden spoon, blocks of wood that are sanded until they are very smooth with no bark on them, a strong basket, an empty box with a lid and small cloths.   Again, there are instructions on how to make nearly all of these things in her little book.

For other toys for the one to three year old, Freya suggests  knotted dolls, carts, a simple basket “pram” (stroller), a basket of building bricks, a carved wooden spoon, a basket of chestnuts and a rocking horse.

For the three to five year old, Freya suggests toys be grouped into categories such as building toys for a large scale, building on the floor or on tables, the Doll’s Corner and the Play Store.  There are pictures of these play areas throughout this book and they are magnificent in their simplicity and imaginative value.

For example, in the building on a large scale section, Freya has wooden playstands (if you do not know what these are, they are wooden stands you can drape a cloth over  and can be many different things – google for a picture), playstand cloths, dress-up cloths (dyed silks), sandbags, wooden clothespins, little wool rugs, wooden building logs and finger-knitted or crocheted headbands.  This all sounds like a lot, but it can tuck away neatly in baskets, it is all open ended, and all of it you can make yourself.

Everything is very open-ended in the other play scenarios as well. A basket in the doll corner, for example, could be a baby’s bathtub or if flipped over, could be a stove.

Freya recommends baskets full of natural items such as shells, stones, bark, feathers, pine cones and unspun sheep’s wool, a bunting bed for a doll, a doll’s spoon, a hammock for the dolls, play pillows, a footstool, wool carpets and fleece, outdoor toys and a wheelbarrow.  She also mentions for quiet time a tumbling man (instructions are in the book), a Russian doll (the kind you open up and there is a smaller doll inside and you open that doll and there is an even smaller doll inside), a few good picture books.

Marsha Johnson has slightly different suggestions for each age group, but similar in imaginative value and open ended play.  For the one year old, she says infants under one year really need no toys at all, but if you must, consider one rattle, a soft ball, 2 or 3 silks to play peek a boo with, an animal or shape to chew on, a special blanket for naptimes and a nature table to look at.

For the 1 to three year old, the list is a bit longer but adds such things as a wooden stacking toy, a small truck or car and 6 small board books.

For the four to seven year old, Marsha adds  such items as dress up capes and crowns, simple musical instruments, outdoor riding toys, no more than two dozen small books on a shelf at a time.  She also has suggestions for the eight to 12 year old child.  This article is really invaluable, and she has many other wonderful articles in that FILES section.  I suggest if you have any interest in Waldorf at all, join her group and read through all of her fantastic articles.  The things she says really resonate with me personally and I am glad the Waldorf homeschooling community has her!

If you feel as if your child does not need one more toy, see if you can encourage family members to provide gardening tools, a membership to the nature center where you could go one afternoon a month or a homemade gift certificate for tea time with mom or a park date with dad.

Less really is more.  Think about what you could make for your child this holiday, what your child could give and what you could make for your home together. If we keep on giving our children the large number of gifts, the big parties, the closet full of clothes before they are even five years old what are they going to have to have to top all this when they are 15 or 16 years old?

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Steiner’s Grain of the Day

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A different grain for each day is part of the Waldorf Kindergarten and connected to the cosmic origins of the days of the week.   A different grain a day fits in with the nourishing weekly rhythm the kindergarten thrives on.   The most common listing of grains I have seen is the following, taken from The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book:

Sunday (Sun): Wheat

Monday (Moon):  Rice

Tuesday (Mars):  Barley

Wednesday (Mercury);  Millet

Thursday (Jupiter):  Rye

Friday (Venus):  Oats

Saturday (Saturn):  Corn

Waldorf teachers and those who cook with whole grains attribute different properties to different grains.  According to The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book, wheat is often seen as a harmonizer of the organ systems, rice is seen as acting on the digestive system, barley is seen as strengthening to the connective ligements due to a high silica content and also seen to be soothing to the mucous membranes of the stomach and intestines, millet is seen to have warming properties, rye nourishes the head and bones, oats loosens stiffness and increases stamina and resistance to disease, and corn stimulates the metabolism in muscles.

People often ask me what grains we work with in our homes, and how we work with them.  We do not work with wheat much at all.  Rice I tend to cook as either cream of rice for breakfast, coconut cinnamon rice with raisins for snack or just plain old rice with dinner.  Barley I enjoy most in a soup or cooked in place of any recipe that calls for rice.  Typically I cook millet as a breakfast porridge in the crockpot overnight with almond milk.  Millet is rather low in calcium and almond milk just seems to go fairly well with the millet to balance it all out.  I have tried rye in bread, but have found it difficult to work with this grain much.  There is a recipe in one of my raw food “un” cookbooks for a long tailed rye salad, so maybe i will try that next.  Oats I tend toward scottish oatmeal, steel-cut oats or making something with oat flour.

Grains can be a touchy thing for many people.  Many of these grains (wheat, barley, rye, cross-contaminated oats) have gluten in them.  There was just an interesting article in the December/January 2009 issue of the  magazine “Living Without: the magazine for people with allergies and food sensitivities”  (see www.LivingWithout.com for further information about this wonderful magazine!).  The magazine interviewed Peter HR Green, MD and director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University and author of Celiac Disease, A Hidden Epidemic.  Dr. Green states in the article, “Wheat has only been domesticated in the last 10, 000 years. Our digestive systems can’t fully chop up gluten, the protein in wheat.  We’re left with large molecules of up to 30 amino acids that can be absorbed into the intestinal lining (probably during gastrointestinal infections) and that interact with the immune system, causing celiac disease in genetically predisposed individuals.  We evolved to eat meat.  Our enzymes digest meat protein fully into single amino acids or molecules of 2 to 3 amino acids that are readily absorbed.” (I am so sorry to my vegan friends, these are his words, not mine!)

They asked Dr. Green if he thought everyone should limit gluten consumption and he answered, “No, not necessarily.  But many people who don’t have celiac disease feel better not eating wheat and it may be because it’s poorly digested.”  He adds in answer to a different question, “Some people may feel better on a gluten-free diet.  If they don’t test positive for celiac disease, they may still be gluten sensitive.  They may feel better avoiding gluten, or just wheat.  They may not need as strict a gluten-free diet, just limited.”

But at any rate, I thought it was interesting.  Steiner was so into agriculture and the creation of biodynamic cultivation methods, and I wonder what he would say about today’s surge of folks who are gluten-sensitive and/or celiac disease positive.  I have often joked that The Standard American Diet for many people is Wheat, Soy, Cow and Chicken.  Behind that not so good joke, however, is my wonder at what we are doing to our health by eating such a limited diet.

So, I guess this is the long way of saying I think Steiner’s idea of rotating grains through our diet was a good one.  I seem to have gluten sensitivity and can only eat about a half cup portion or less of a grain each day and still feel good, but I do try and follow Steiner’s rotations.  I love the warming properties of my millet.  The other grain that intrigues me, not one of Steiner’s, is the little Ethiopian grain called teff.  Teff is high in calcium, protein and fiber.  I will let you all know as I experiment with it.

Proponents of Nourishing Traditions will point out that most of these grains, except rice, need to be soaked overnight in order to inactivate the enzyme inhibitors present in grains and inhibit the presence of phytic acid, present in grains and causes the decreased absorption of important minerals.  You can do the soaking of grains just by simply covering the grains with warm water and adding a tablespoon of lemon juice, yogurt, kefir or whey and then rinsing the grains before cooking the next day.

Maybe this will inspire you to try some different whole grains, and to think about the diversity of the things you do eat.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.