Author Archives: Carrie

The Adjunct to “Did You See This” ?

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I have gotten some private emails and such, apparently this post has hit a lot of raw nerves.  First of all, I would like to give all of you struggling with these issues empathy.  Some of you have grown children and you are worried that perhaps people judge your parenting skills by the state your adult children are now living in.  Some of you worry for your child’s safety. Some of you have taken over care and responsibility for your grandchildren.  I too, was raised by grandparents with involvement from my father and uncle.  I probably understand more than you think about this.

Please give yourself a break and be easy with yourself.  There are no guarantees for how children “turn out”.  It is a fallacy in our society, especially that for mothers, that if we provide our child undivided material goods, unlimited opportunities, that if we are the “perfect” mother our children will turn out just fine.  This is a fallacy, but it should also not be an excuse to bow out of parenting in the best way we know how.

I believe the skyrocketing rates of  childhood ADHD, depression, alcohol and drug abuse are definitely related to not only parenting but also the position we assign children in our society.  Many people have told me out right there is no way there would have more than one or two children with the often unspoken message that children are a liability in this society- a cause of worry, a cause of stress and doubting yourself as a human being and who would want that?  Motherhood is the invisible job that no one seems to value anymore, yet it is the most important one to be able to provide peace and stability in your home to the best of your ability.  The work of motherhood should be well supported and encouraged for the future of our children and our country.

Children are a joy and a blessing.  I strongly feel the work and education of attachment parenting and Waldorf for the early years is at least the best hope we have at this time to stem the tide of all the problems we are seeing now in teenagers and young adults.

Thanks for all your comments and thoughts, keep ‘em coming.

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

Did You See This?

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According to an article detailed on msn.com this morning,  1 in 5 young people (college-aged) in the United States have a personality disorder, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, phobias and bipolar disorder.  This was the findings of a study where 5,000 people aged 19-25 were interviewed face to face and asked about a variety of personality disorders.  Researchers also found the rates of substance  of abuse by young people was higher than the rates of personality disorders.

Obviously, personality disorders have always been around. Hopefully this study will highlight the prevalence of these diseases and encourage those affected to seek help.  Hopefully this study will encourage discussion amongst families as to family history.  Hopefully this study will encourage more research to be done into the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to personality disorders.

Some children seem to you with their own biology, circumstances and destiny.  The best parenting techniques may not be able to change the reality some children, step children or foster or adoptive children, enter into your home with.  This post is not intended to be directed toward those children per se, unless you think there is something here that will help your circumstance. 

Here is just a thought for what may compose the best stability and the most security for our children so they can grow up into healthy, stable adults.

1.  Marriage before having children is an excellent place to start.

2.  If you work outside the home and are happy with this and your family is thriving, please skip this paragraph and go on!  If you are not perfectly happy, read this.  I feel having a parent that stays home with the children when they are young, and is home daily  throughout the child’s years, even the teen-aged years, is essential. I personally  have had a variety of work situations including working 12 hours a week with on=site daycare when my oldest was little and now working one weekend day a month when my husband can be home with my children.  I have stressed and agonized and felt torn like so many of you.  So please know I am not saying these things lightly or without feeling or compassion. However, if you have thought about staying home and have the possibility of doing so, I am here to encourage you.

I have two thoughts on the subject of working, and I am sure  you all can add more perspectives and comments.  My first thought is actually for the mother.  If you are caught up in work, chances are you are not present at home, even if you are physically there.   I have seen mothers tearing themselves into little pieces in order to be the perfect  mother, the perfect wife, the perfect worker, the perfect everything, only to be stressed out, worried, disappointed and feeling like they are not doing the best job at either place. If this is you, change it.  Your children need your warm, loving and caring presence.

My second thought on this subject is  for the children. Some children seem to do “well” (whatever that means)  in daycare of any kind – group daycare, in-home daycare, nanny etc. – but some children just do not do well, even if it is care provided in their own home.  I do wish there were more studies regarding the number of hours a child is in daycare and future health ramifications for the school-aged child and the adult – studies that look at  mental health and physical health outcomes.   The difficult thing about this  is sometimes you just cannot tell until your children have grown and matured who seemed to survive in an alternative care situation and who really did not. 

All that being said, if you are going to work, please be happy about it and confident about it and carry that to your children in your energy. Please do not use your worry about working as an excuse to jellyfish parent or to shower your child with material things to make up for what you believe is lacking.  Have a rhythm for when you get home from work, and work hard to be with your child outside of work.  Seek out support from other caring, working parents through your local La Leche League and Attachment Parenting support groups.

If you wish your work situation was something else, and many of us do in this economy, know from the bottom of your heart you are a caring parent for even worrying about it, and that you are doing everything you can do,  the best you can do,  right now.  My heart goes out to yours.  Support is vital in this situation, please do find a community to hook into about this important subject.

Onward and upwards.

3. Get your own stability in check – do what you need to do, but get therapy, help, advice, do your  own inner work through prayer, meditation, tai chi, yoga, energy work.  Align yourselves with mothers whose parenting you admire.  Look deeply into what you feel the role of a homemaker should be, could be, is now for you.  Think about how you set the tone for your home, the peace in your home, the tone and model for your spouse and your children.   Think about your relationship with the other adults in your extended family, and what you are modeling for your children.  Do not assign your adult baggage a role in your child’s life.

Also, mothers please take care of your bodies.  It is the only one you have for your life here on Earth, and how you feel in your body affects your mind and your attitude and your ability to create peace in your home.  Please show your children how to care for their own bodies by  limiting your own screen time, by being active, by eating healthy and by receiving whatever preventative  health care you need to keep yourself in balance.

4.  Start things right by breastfeeding and practicing other measures of attachment parenting. If you need more advice or thoughts regarding this, please see www.attachmentparenting.org and www.lalecheleague.org.

5.   Learn about protecting your child’s senses (all 12 of them!  Yes, there are 12 senses according to Rudolf Steiner).  Warmth is a very important sense, and start working on this early to provide your children not just with physical warmth by keeping their heads covered, but also work on being emotionally warm with your children.  They need this to thrive!

6.  Establish a rhythm in your home that benefits your whole family.  This includes gently guiding yourself and your child toward better, healthier sleeping patterns, and adequate time in movement and outside time.  Repetition is a healthy cornerstone for the early years.   Work toward providing healthy boundaries that protect everyone in the family’s dignity and respect.

7.  Understand normal childhood development and the best ways to guide behavior in a loving way during different stages of development.  For the early years, this includes  respecting that young children live in their bodies, distraction, having a strong rhythm, limited choices, using fantasy and movement as our friends to encourage the behavior we do want to see, keeping ourselves calm and grounded, and yes,  even use of the word “no”.  You can still set limits and be a loving parent. You can still be a warm, loving parent and not explain away the mysteries of life and chatter away to your child. Practice your singing and humming instead for some really beautiful energy in your home that words and explanations cannot touch.

8. Enjoy, protect and nurture childhood.  I feel so sad when parents say to me, “Yes, my little one is six and in school and all grown up.”  I feel sad when I see the little girl  third graders at the bus stop experimenting with make-up.  I feel sad when all the wonder of childhood is gone before it even starts in our rush to sign our little ones up for organized sports, teach them reading and writing, and force their independence too early.  What is our hurriedness doing to our children?

Let them have the wonder of childhood. Protect them from media for awhile.  They will not be behind if they do not use a computer when they are five, and they will not be behind if they haven’t seen all the Hannah Montana TV shows by the time they are nine.  Childhood should be a time of imagination, fantasy and wonder. 

The world our children will inherit will be even more fast-paced than it is now.  We are going to need good, solid leaders who can make difficult decisions, innovative out of the box creative thinkers, inventors, and people who can help other people.  Protecting their childhood and letting your child have a childhood will contribute to this in a most important way.

9.  Look into Waldorf education for your child.  It is the most healing educational system I can find, the only one that seems to correlate the educational process with the possible health of the future adult, the one where the entire curriculum is set up to feed a child’s soul based on the child’s developmental level.    Please see our own personal  reasons for choosing Waldorf for home education on my blog post entitled, “Wonderful Waldorf”.

10.  Create opportunity and moments of wonder and reverence in your home for your child through nature observation and being outside, the wonder of stories, the wonder of beautiful art and music, the wonder of the mysteries of life.  Wonder, joy, reverence is really what it is all about.

Take  what resonates with you from here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

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

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.