This is an excellent article regarding one of Steiner’s 12 senses that is important developmentally for young children: warmth.
Please check out this link to read a great article on Warmth, Strength and Freedom: http://tidewaterschool.blogspot.com/2008/12/warmth-strength-and-freedom-by-m.html
Happy, happy reading!!
Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.
I had a friend over today who requested I write a post regarding the celebration of Advent and other Winter festivals within the Waldorf Home. She told me, very astutely, that this time of year was difficult for not just herself but for so many people she knew who did not have a true religious leaning – it was hard to know what to celebrate and why, and not only that, the consumerism and materialism of this time of the year really dampened her enthusiasm and excitement. She summed it up by saying like, “What can I show my children about this time of the year when I don’t even have it all figured out?”
This is a hard time of year for the very reasons my friend stated. I have a number of friends who encompass different faiths, spiritual leanings, denominations – atheism, agnosticism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islamic, Mormon, Presbyterianism, Reformed, Lutheran, Paganism, or just friends with leanings toward one place or another but no true “spiritual home” yet. And this December, we all come together to celebrate different things; whether it be Saint Nicholas Day, Bodhi Day (when Buddhists celebrate the Enlightenment of Buddha), Eid al Adha (Islamic Feast of Sacrifice, the most important holiday of the Muslim calendar from my understanding), Santa Lucia Day, Las Posadas in Mexico, Winter Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. But yet we are all in the darkness of Winter searching for Light.
It is my fervent hope this holiday season that no matter what our spiritual leanings are, that we are all working toward and being the most loving, compassionate people we can be. Our children need that, and our country need that.
I hope this holiday season and throughout the year we can all treat each other with respect and dignity. We are one in humanity. I had a beautiful family I worked with recently from Bangladesh and the father looked at me at one point and told me in broken English how he and his wife had just bought a house and how he did not especially want to hang around with the Bengali community in our town.
“My neighbor, he American and say he help me with whatever I need, “ he shrugged. “I cut my finger, I bleed, you cut your finger, you bleed.” He and I solemnly looked at one another over the head of his little baby and nodded at each other. One humanity, one world. That is what we should be about this time of year and all times of the year.
We are not the only ones with difficulties this season. Consider the plight of the Waldorf school teacher. In the book , “An Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten,” edited by Joan Almon, she writes, “December brings special challenges to the Waldorf Kindergarten teacher, for Christmas is a vital part of our culture and a festival that brings joy to children. However, there is sometimes a tendency to be so overt in one’s celebration of Christmas that the kindergarten comes to feel more like a Christian Sunday School than like a Waldorf school. This brings great pain to our non-Christian families, but it is problematic even for the children of Christian background. Within the Waldorf Kindergarten the festivals are not meant to be “taught” but are offered in a light manner, much like telling a fairy tale, which allows the children great freedom to come to the festival as they will. When offered in a spirit of gratitude and with a sense of wonder and awe, something of the essence of the festival can speak to the children.”
In this same book, an article by Freya Jaffke, says this of the festivals, “DOING-DOING-DOING. Never reasoning why something is done in a certain way, although sometimes children have their own philosophy about certain things. Our task as kindergarten teachers is to try to transform everything we do, to transform our knowledge into activities: to make visible that about which we have been thinking.”
The joy of a Waldorf homeschooling experience, I think is that you can choose the festivals that resonate within you and your family in this season and little by little, year after year, bring them to light. Just as you would not bring a fairy tale to your child that does not resonate with you, you would not try to bring a festival to your child that does not resonate with you. So choose your festival carefully, and also the traditions that you start with these festivals as the children will expect the same things year after year.
So, let’s go through some of the Winter Festivals that are common to Waldorf Tradition and some of the typical ways they are celebrated. If the Winter festival you most enjoy or celebrate as part of your religious faith is not on this list, please do not be offended. It just means I could not find information regarding this festival/holiday in the Waldorf books and resources I had on hand. And I do hope people will post their holiday traditions in the comment section! Let’s share the beauty of our traditions!
Advent – Advent means that which is coming, so this is the time of preparation for Christmas. This year Advent began on November 30. Advent can be celebrated with an Advent calendar, needle felted figures of Mary and Joseph that start somewhere in the room and make their way closer and closer to the stable for Christmas Eve, an Advent wreath, an expectant Nature Table covered with a simple cloth. Some Christian families make a Jesse Tree.
It is popular in Waldorf to mark stones, plants, animals and human beings each week within the Advent wreath or on the Nature Table each week. So for example, the first week of Advent would include adding stones, crystals, shells to the Advent Wreath or Nature Table. The second week one would add representations of the plants – mosses, ferns. And so forth. Examples of what a nature table for Advent would look like can be found in the book, “The Nature Table.” There is a wonderful book that has seven stories in it for each week leading up to Christmas and the first week all the stories involves stones in some way, the second week the stories involve plants in some way, etc. This book is called, “The Light in the Lantern.”
My German friends have told me in Germany, Advent is a time of peacefulness, a time of cookie making and craft making. Paper window stars, making ornaments, paper snowflakes and straw stars are typical crafts for the season. Contrast to the hustle and bustle and materialism you see here, and think about how you can bring peace to your home during this time.
Advent Spiral 2008
Advent Spiral
– this is a peaceful, meditative time for young children. We hold an Advent Spiral every year within our local Waldorf homeschooling group, and this is how we have done it. The Advent Spiral is typically held inside where a large evergreen spiral is laid out on the floor. The spiral is adorned with The room is dark except for candlelight – the candle at the middle of the spiral. The children come in and receive a candle inside a hollowed-out apple. One by one each child walks the evergreen spiral , which is typically adorned with representations of the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms) to the center where they light their candle from a central candle. On their way out of the spiral, there are gold stars on the floor and the child chooses a star and places their candle on it. All the children walk the spiral one by one until the spiral is lit up with all of the candles. The children look at it for a moment and then file silently outside to go home.
Saint Nicholas Day – This day is celebrated on December 6th. Children leave out their wooden clogs, shoes, a boot or even a sack on the Eve of Saint Nicholas. Saint Nicholas comes to earth on his snowy white steed, and leaves behind apples, tangerines, clementines, walnuts, hazelnuts and sometimes a little toy or book. In many stories, Saint Nicholas is the forerunner that reminds children the Child of Light is coming. Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of children, is loved in many countries, including Russia, where there are many churches dedicated to Saint Nicholas. It is a major day for my friends in the Netherlands. Saint Nicholas music, crafts, cookie cutters and recipes and more can be found at the wonderful website www.stnicholascenter.org. There are also some wonderful handouts regarding the relationship between St. Nicholas and Santa Claus.
A good source of St. Nicholas stores can be found in the Winter Wynstones book and also the little book I cited “An Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten.” One of the most famous stories of St. Nicholas is about his rescue of the three maidens who had no dowry to marry.
Tonight, (December 5th) my littlest child was looking wistfully out the window into the darkness tonight, softly singing under her breath a Saint Nicholas song. That sweet knowledge of everything’s right with the world and the wonderful anticipation of good things to come. My children left out hay and carrots for Saint Nicholas and his horse (oh, and a cookie as well :)) and polished up their wooden clogs. Tomorrow they will wake up to one piece of candy each, a clementine each, a book each and small game to share together. We have Saint Nicholas napkins for breakfast and Saint Nicholas cookie cutters to try our hand at decorating. However, the best thing to do in the spirit of Saint Nicholas would be to do something wonderful for someone else, and not have them catch you whilst doing it!
Santa Lucia Day– is another day some Waldorf school and homeschools celebrate. This holiday is typically celebrate throughout the Scandinavian countries, especially Sweden. You can google her and read quite a bit about her, but she is honored in Scandinavia as the bringer of boats filled with food when the people of Sweden were in a time of great famine. The oldest girl in the family rises early in order to make sweet yellow buns for the family breakfast. While serving, the oldest girl wears a white dress with a red sash and on her head a wreath of greens with four small candles lit – (yes, in this day and age you could use electric candles!)
Solstice – Unlike the very meditative inward experience of the Advent Spiral, the Solstice is parties and fun! Round, yellow foods prevail with hopefully lots of friends and music! Some families have a big bonfire, a Solstice tree, and some families “count up” to Solstice by starting with a set of 21 candles and lighting one each night until all 21 are lit on Solstice!
Look for a separate post regarding the 12 Days of Christmas and Epiphany soon. Hope you have a wonderful holiday season celebrating with your close family and friends.
Peace, love, and joy.
Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.
Whew, almost every day people ask me where to start with Waldorf homeschooling with their young children under the age of 7. My recommendation is to take a deep breath, get yourself a cup of tea with honey and come and sit back down at this screen.
Okay, have that cup of tea? Are you ready?
Let’s start with a quote by Rudolf Steiner himself, to get us in the mood. This is from page103 of the lectures compiled into the book, “Soul Economy” : “Anyone in charge of young children – especially those who work in children’s homes- who is aware of the activity of destiny, must ask, Have I been specifically chosen for the important task of guiding and educating these children? And other questions follow: What must I do to eliminate as far as possible my personal self, so I can leave those in my care unburdened by my subjective nature? How do I act so I do not interfere with a child’s destiny? And, above all, How can I best educate a child toward human freedom?”
This quote gives one a clue as to the framework and tools Steiner sees as appropriate with young children. It is not that it is only destiny, but that as a caregiver or parent one must act in the right way with the right thoughts as we are the utmost model for our children to imitate. It is a great quote to ponder and meditate on what this means to you and your work with small children.
[This is from the comment section below, maybe it will help explain this quote a bit: Steiner’s point was not just “hands off” for the early years; he had a strong notion that we are parents and teachers ARE the leaders within home and school. However, he also felt strongly that teachers and parents do the WRONG thing doing these early years by intellectualizing the child, by providing the child with toys that do not require imagination…I think the quote above was more the call to get out of our own way, to disregard what we think we know about childhood development from a traditional perspective and to look at the child from a spiritual perspective and what we can do in these early years to lay the best foundation for adulthood].
Here is my Top 10 List of the Essentials of Waldorf Kindergarten at home:
1. Understand what Waldorf kindergarten is – -> NO ACADEMICS. Yup, that is right, and there is a reason for this. If you are new to anthroposophic thought, a brief and probably unsatisfying summary would be to say that Steiner based Waldorf education upon his thoughts of the knowledge of the human being. The years from birth to seven are for forming the physical organism of the child, the memory is not seen as freed for academic work until the seventh year. The young child should be surrounded by joy and happiness, toys that encourage the imagination, but only the physical body is ready for influence by the outside world. Hence, no academics because the child is not yet ready.
2. So if there are NO ACADEMICS, what should I be doing? Preparing yourself in two areas is the first thing.
Inner work: Inner work is the hallmark of Waldorf education. How you do it is up to you. Many people use Steiner’s exercises. Other people use prayer, meditation, yoga, tai chi, walking meditation. Identify your strengths and your challenges for this homeschooling journey. Meditate on the quote from Steiner above and how to put that forth in your care of your small children.
Preparation of skills you will need to be able to show your child: oral storytelling, choosing fairy tales, knowing your local fauna and flora, singing, playing a blowing instrument (pennywhistle, pentatonic flute or recorder), washing and carding wool, spinning wool, dyeing wool and silks, toymaking, gardening, woodworking, knitting, other forms of handwork, drawing with block crayons, wet on wet watercolor painting, modeling, seasonal arts and crafts. Pick something and practice at night after your children go to bed.
3. The second thing to do is to prepare your ENVIRONMENT.
Screens: How much time are you spending in front of a screen? TV, computer, other? How much time is your child spending in front of a screen? Please see my blog post entitled, “Children and Media.”
Clutter: Is your house organized so you can find things? Do you have 10 of everything? Do you have too much furniture for your house?
Simplicity: What can you get rid of and be free of? What toys do your children actually play with and how many books and toys do you have out at one time?
4. The third thing to do is to start to establish a rhythm.
Awake times/naptimes/bedtimes: A wonderful place to start your rhythm is around awake times, naptimes and bedtimes. A wonderful cozy bedtime routine at an early hour sends your children off to peaceable sleep and starts your day off on the right foot the next day. Then start work on times of outbreath – outside time- and times of inbreath-storytelling, art. You can tell the same story for two weeks to a month! Repetition is the foundation of childhood!
Weekly: What practical work are you going to do when? Baking, laundry, housekeeping, gardening, handwork?
Yearly: What festivals will you celebrate and in what physical way will you show your small child? We do not explain the holidays, the festivals, only show these are the things we DO at this time.
5. Now that you have that in place, start reading about child development. Steiner said that this was essential, and the anthroposophic view of childhood development is much different than the traditional view of development. I highly recommend The Education of the Child, Soul Economy and The Study of Man.
6. Work on how you ARE with your children – are you a warm presence? can you just BE with your child? Are you completely running around after your child, is every day a frenzied day or are you setting the tone of your home by getting up at a consistent time with a plan and a rhythm for the day? Are you there for your child but letting your child see your work, your interests?
7. Protect your child’s 12 Senses. Steiner felt there were 12 senses instead of the traditional five senses we think about.
8. Work on getting your child into his or her body. This is the most important thing you can do for your young child under the age of 7 – games, circle time, free outside time, play and movement – are all critically important. Donna Simmons has some great suggestions in her book, “Joyful Movement.” Another book I really like from my pediatric physical therapist work is the book, “Activities Unlimited”, which was written by a group of Neurodevelopmentally- trained pediatric therapists. (This book is available through Amazon, and for more i nformation regarding Neurodevelopmental Treatment please see www.ndta.org). “Activities Unlimited” is not Waldorf by any means, but it would be fairly easy to put these activities into some sort of game or fantasy play.
Another great source of movement and getting children into their bodies is through all the circle time kind of games and fingerplays that go on in a Waldorf classroom. Please see the Rudolf Steiner College Bookstore or Bob and Nancy’s bookshop for books that have pre-planned circle times, or get adventurous and make up your own!
9. Watch how you frame discipline – are you using imitation, movement and fantasy to re-direct your child? Are you a chatter box and explainer with your child? Please see my blog post entitled, “Take My Three Day Challenge”.
10. Okay, now is the time to start slowly bringing in the skills you are learning – start with storytelling and puppetry, bring in baking once a week, needle felt something for your nature table…Bringing it all in and to your child is the last step.
You have the years of birth through age 6 to work on this…it is a process, it is an evolution, it is a learning. It will not happen in one day. But begin with your end in mind and work toward it. Hope that this will provide you with some inspiration and encouragement.
Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The Parenting Passageway 