Daily Archives: February 14, 2009

More Thoughts About Waldorf Kindergarten At Home

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Some mothers who have been feeling overwhelmed in their attempt to create a Waldorf Kindergarten at home have contacted me.  I have a few thoughts on this subject.

First of all, while circle time is the heart of the Waldorf Kindergarten in a Waldorf School, I feel the heart of the Waldorf Kindergarten homeschooling experience is often the practical work we do in our homes and with our children.  To me, it is much more important to work on the rhythm of your day and your week first.  What day do you garden? What day do you bake or cook something special?  What day do you do housekeeping?

Someone asked me if regular, mundane housework was what the children were being called to participate in.  I could only share my own experience with her.  When I started trying to commit to doing things on certain days, I started with washing one day and ironing the next.  And what I discovered is that even having the children assist in sorting clothes, carrying clothes, putting clothes into the washer, hanging clothes up to dry, ironing – was just not riveting to my children, even with singing and verses involved and child-sized ironing  boards and whatnot. They would be off playing (or more often than not, rolling in all the clean laundry I was trying to fold and iron :)).  For some Waldorf families, washing and ironing works well as a weekly activity – for us it did not.  Does this mean I stopped washing and ironing? No, it just means I include it more in our daily chores that I do after breakfast – where the kids can join in if they want  or just play.

The work we do as part of the Kindergarten I do try to make special and I try to hook them in.  This may look different from family to family.  However, if you light a candle in the morning with a verse and then blow it out and do your work – whatever that may be- with a song or a story while you are doing it, and giving them opportunities to help – you may find things go better.  You will find what resonates with your own children.  In our family, we have devised weeks  where our activities by day  were wet-on-wet watercolor painting, bread baking or cooking something special, arts and crafts or festival preparation, gardening (always with stories, songs, and something a child would be more interested in than just pulling weeds for two hours!), housekeeping. This is separate from the daily chores we do around the house and yard.  Again, each family will find their own activities and what works for them may also change as their children age.

Second of all, these mothers were going nuts trying to piece together verses and stories.  I explained my thought would be to simplify.  Pick three fingerplays that reflect something going on in the seasons and stick to those for a whole month.  Have one song you learn together for the whole month that reflects something seasonal.  Pick a story and tell it for a whole month.

We recently did the story “Why the Evergreen Leaves Don’t Lose Their Leaves” for a whole month.  I just told it whenever we had story time, so perhaps three to four times a week.  However, we did lots of different things with the story to bring it to life.  We played the part of the bird and hopped around how we thought a bird with a broken wing would hop around.  We stuck green silks on our heads and played the different parts of the different trees in the story. We made birds out of beeswax to sit in a nest.  We made trees out of air-drying clay.  We took nature walks and looked for nests in the bare trees.  My oldest played her pennywhistle for the part of the wind as we added details about the weather in the story (which coincidentally reflected the weather we were experiencing outside.  Hhhmmm, how did that happen?).  We added repetitive phrases in that echoed throughout the story so by the end of the month my Kindergartner could say this phrase at the right points in the story.  We made up a song to sing as the bird walked.  We were never tired of this story,and many of these ideas came to me after I had lived the story for a few weeks.  Try it and see if this happens to you.

If you cannot memorize a story, get two sheets of watercolor paper and write the story out and put it between the covers as your special book.  But do try; you may find that just by reading the story for three nights every night before you go to bed and sleep on it that you have more memorized than you think.  Use props.  Write the key phrases down.  Whatever works for you.

But most of all, keep it fun.  You should be working together, having lots of time outside (see my “Connecting Children to Nature” post if you need help in that area), playing, singing. 

You can do Waldorf Kindergarten at home; just keep it simple!  You have several years of kindergarten, and your four-year-old should be at a really simple level; your six-year-old may need more.

Some of Waldorf Kindergarten really is just like the Nike slogan, “Just Do It.”  Quit reading so much, keep it simple to start and just live it all together and see what wonderful things happen!

Breathe and smile,

Carrie

Is It Too Late?

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I have had several mothers call me lately who are feeling what I call “the Waldorf guilt”.  They are looking, in most cases, at very verbal and sometimes physically aggressive 5 and 6 year old little girls and wondering if it is too late to start the Waldorf lifestyle with their little ones.  They feel the way they parented their children before may not have been as age and developmentally appropriate as it could have been.

First of all, please be very  easy with yourself if you find yourself in this situation.  We all are the best parents we can be with the information we have at the time.  Forgive yourself for any perceived inadequacies and move on.

Second, I would say it is never too late for the healing benefits of Waldorf.  However, I do think this takes sincere effort, planning, and change within the family.

Here are some thoughts that I think may be helpful if  you are trying to “switch” to a Waldorf  lifestyle for the benefit of your child’s health or to work with a very head-oriented child under the age of 7 or 8:

1.  Start small with consistent naptimes, bedtimes, and meal times.  Think foods made with your own hands and foods that are not far removed from what they really are….a whole apple as opposed to processed apple Pop-Tarts.  Think about the amount of sugar, dyes, additives your children are ingesting and work hard to limit those substances.

2.  Think about the concept of warmth.  I find many of these over-active, over-talkative little beings have a severe problem with lack of warmth, both intuitively from the family in an emotional or spiritual sense,  and also perhaps needing more physical warmth. 

For emotional or spiritual warmth:  If you meditate or pray, can you do that over your child after they go to sleep at night?  Soul warmth and energy flow there.   Can you laugh with your child, have fun, smile with your children?  Instead of all those words, how about a hug, a smile, a kiss?

If you feel your child needs more physical warmth, can you think about woolens for under their clothes, warm coats, hats, mittens?  Layering?  Does your child need more warmth in whatever space you have – warm colors in their room, layered rugs, curtains? 

3.  The very verbal child  under the age of 7 needs a parent who can stop talking to the child.  Lots of “Hhmm, I wonder that as well” kinds of comments, as opposed to the Doctoral Thesis on whatever the child is asking about.  Get your partner on board!  This is so important, and necessary.  If your partner is rather analytical, talk about the concept of doing the right thing at the right time.  You are not withholding knowledge of the world to the detriment of the small child, but rather waiting to bring it in at the right time when the child can process it well.  You are providing information in the right way in the right amount for the child’s age.

4.  I find for the most part the things that these children have said in the past has been given entirely too much weight.  I am not saying to ignore what your child says, or to ignore how your child says they feel!  But what I am saying is that YOU have to start to distinguish between is this random comment one that you should give weight to as a mother and then act upon or is it just that – a very random comment?  In this day and age and in our society we often take our children far too seriously about small things, (and probably not seriously enough about big things as they get older).

5.  This child needs HOURS a day outside to just be, and than a balancing of that with an activity that provides them quiet.  Have arts and crafts ready, woodworking, cooking projects, storytelling at the ready for these special, intimate moments.

6.  No media.  No media at all during this transformation.  No screens.   And model good behavior by cutting down on your screen time…can you do it?

7.  Plan some fun FAMILY activities with you, your partner, your child, siblings.  Sometimes these often serious and tense children need to see that, indeed, the family can have fun and laugh together.  It does not have to be something over the top and expensive – plan something like going hiking, roller skating, ice skating, planting a garden together, star watching.  Also do some projects around the house together so your child can see how a family works and plays together.

9. After you have a small rhythm going for the day –to -day kinds of things and weekly things, do start looking at festivals within the year.  (And if you need help with rhythm please do hit the rhythm tag in the tags box and all those posts will come up).    Not every family who celebrates festivals  celebrates religious ones, but Steiner did talk quite a bit about the importance of a spiritual life for the child.  Think about your own spiritual leanings and investigate this.   If you have no spiritual leanings at all, why not?  Perhaps a tradition completely different than the one you were raised with will speak to you.     Perhaps this is the inner work you are being called to do at this time. 

10.  Start working within yourself to be the change for the things you want to see in your family.  You set the tone for things in your family, you have a choice as to how you respond to things.  You don’t need to nag your partner about all this, but instead model, show, demonstrate, love.

Just a few thoughts to ponder,

Carrie