Keep in mind this would be an ideal day in our house with a Kindergartner and an Early Grades kiddo, but maybe it will help give someone an idea of how to put it all together. Modify, change, take what resonates with you and your family and where you live.  There is no one right way to do this!!  We are at home and not at a Waldorf school!

Here is a day in the life:

• Up, air out beds while taking shower, cleaning up bathroom and getting dressed
• Make all beds with children’s help
• Breakfast with blessing, religious devotional;  clean-up after breakfast including wiping table and sweeping under table
• Help children with dressing, hair brushing and teeth brushing
• Throw in laundry
• Go for walk with children and dog or gardening tasks
• Snack
• Call to school with Song of Month on pennywhistle and any festival songs we are learning, light candle, say morning verses  (we may school outside or inside)
• Circle time or seasonal finger plays for Kindergartner
• Story for Kindergartner/Activity after story – every week we include modeling of some type and kind.  We also use drama, puppets, drawing, and other things to bring the story alive over a period of two weeks to a month for each Kindy story.
• Active Math practice for older child if not in a Math Block or pennywhistle and more singing practice
• Main Lesson for Grades Child – three day rhythm here……  An hour is a long time here for a First Grader!
• Foreign language two days a week (German on Mondays with arts and crafts for the younger child, cooking on Tuesdays, Wednesdays Spanish with free play inside for the youngest child) (And yes, amazingly, this time period may involve more eating and snacking :))
• Outside play while I do some more cleaning, lunch preparation
• Blessing, lunch; clean-up
• Quiet time
• Handwork alternated with arts and crafts or wet on wet painting is ideal

The afternoons we spend outside playing or just creating.  I like to garden or read while the children play.  Time to “just  be”  is important to us.  We do grocery shop on Thursday afternoons in general.  Some weeks we have allergist or chiropractic appointments to work in as well.  I try very hard to keep us home a lot, which means saying NO to a lot of   things.  🙂

Fridays look a bit different in that our typical school day is usually either a fast finish up of the only the academic piece of the Main Lesson (without the Kindy stuff or math practice).  We usually then do  a short  Peace Circle (this idea was inspired by  the Winter Seasons of Joy booklet by Annette  – you can see her website here about ordering: http://natural-childhood.blogspot.com/ for Annette’s example)   I have made my own Peace Circles (and taught hymns or other spiritual songs and verses) and a religious study.   This year we have been discussing one Fruit of the Spirit a month through a bible story, coloring, games or whatever else I can think of (there are nine Fruit of the Spirit  so this happened to work out well for us).  And then generally we clean and play and get the house ready for the weekend!

Every Waldorf homeschool will look different; it will also look different at different stages as your children grow and mature.

I hear so many mothers who have three children or more under the age of 5 and they are so hard on themselves that they don’t have this wonderful rhythm with all these activities going on; please do be easy with yourselves out there!  Sometimes it is just getting through the day and small things at that point with building up to the bigger things as the children grow and mature!  Take it easy if you have multiple children under the age of 5; remember Steiner thought is was beneficial for a child to be able to see even 15 minutes of real work done by your warm hands.  Go through the back posts on this blog about rhythm and start small – awake times, bedtimes, mealtimes.

Be easy with yourself and others as we travel this homeschooling road together,

Carrie