Author Archives: Carrie

Monthly Anchor Points: October

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Anchor:  a person or thing that can be relied on for support, stability, or security; mainstay: Hope was his only anchor.

When we work to become the author of own family life, we take on the authority to provide our spouse and children and ourselves stability.  An effective way to do this is through the use of rhythm.  If you have small children, it takes time to build a family rhythm that encompasses the year.  If you are homeschooling older children and also have younger children not ready for formal learning, the cycle of the year through the seasons and through your religious year becomes the number one tool you have for family unity, for family identity, for stability.

Ah, month of October, I love you so!  I love fall and October is so lovely here in the Deep South.  Apples and pumpkins are in full swing, the leaves are finally starting to turn yellow and red, the temperatures are still warm during the day (around 70 degrees Farenheit) but the nights are cool enough for an extra blanket on the bed.

These are the festivals that are my anchors this month:

October 4th- Blessing of the Animals and the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi

October 18 – St. Luke the Evangelist  (I feel especially close to St. Luke).

October 31 – Halloween is my least-favorite holiday of the entire year (Ba! Humbug! LOL), but I love All Saints Day and All Souls Day and those are very important feast days in the liturgical year, so I am looking forward to those days and preparing for those days at the end of this month.  I don’t really decorate for Halloween, but the children do go trick or treating.

 

Ideas for Celebration:

Much of our celebrating is tied up with our parish this year from the Blessing of the Animals for the Feast Day of St. Francis to our children singing in two Divine Liturgies on All Saints Day to remembering our loved ones on All Souls Day.  A month of doing in community!

For ideas about a fall October circle and stories for the little ones, please see the post in last October’s Monthly Anchor Points  here.

If you need a post about celebrating Halloween in the Waldorf home, try this back post.

If you need a post about All Saints Day and All Souls Day celebrations, look here.

Pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins

Homemade applesauce

Homemade bone broths with nutritive herbs

Taking care of the birds

Fall hiking

Gathering photographs of loved ones in preparation for All Saints Day/All Souls Day

Buying bulbs to plant in the ground for spring

 

The Domestic Life:

This is the time where I really start making more bone broths and infuse it with herbs – dandelion root, burdock, astragalus.  A suggestion was made today to add echinacea to it as well, so I am going to try that!

Changing bed linens to flannel sheets and adding blankets and thicker comforters

Stocking up on birdseed

Making sure we all have hats, gloves, snow gear  and boots for winter

Gathering the books for this month’s Saints

Thinking ahead to Thanksgiving and Advent

 

What are you working on this month as your anchor points?

Many blessings,
Carrie

Guest Post: One Mother’s Experience Homeschooling Seventh Grade Chemistry

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Our guest post today is by my dear friend Tanya.  She just finished her seventh grade chemistry block with her seventh grader and was kind enough to write about it for us today.

 

Seventh Grade Chemistry Block in the Waldorf- Inspired Homeschool

chemistry title pagechemistry table of contents

After beginning our year with a two week review, we jumped right in to Chemistry.  It took me a while to plan out this block during summer as there aren’t a whole lot of resources for the homeschooling parent to choose from.  What resources I did find though helped tremendously and we were able to execute most of the demonstrations laying a solid foundation for 8th grade and high school Chemistry.

My main resource was a great manual titled:  “ A Demonstration Manual for Use in the Waldorf School Seventh Grade Main Lesson” by Mikko Bojarksy.  This book not only lists in detail materials needed for each demonstration, but it also gives clear instruction on how to perform each demonstration as well as what conclusions can be drawn by observation.  Other resources I found helpful were the two sites:  Waldorf Inspirations  and  Waldorf Teacher Resources  (this one you need to register for a full access, but it is free). Continue reading →

Let’s Read: Simplicity Parenting

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We are up to Chapter Six in Kim John Payne’s “Simplicity Parenting” entitled, “Filtering Out the Adult World”. This is my favorite chapter in this book for so many reasons.  It really sums up to me the difficulties with parenting in this day and age and gives some great concrete suggestions for parenting.  The chapter begins with the story of a mother and how she said her feelings toward motherhood could be summed up with the word, “worry”.  The author goes on to detail stories of parents where the parents are wondering if their children are being tended to enough by coaches or teachers.  He doesn’t address homeschooling families, but I think worry can be doubled in homeschooling families where parenting and teaching hats are shared!

 

“Worry and concern are sewn into the cloth of parenting; they’re integral parts of the experience…..Worry may be an aspect of parenthood, but it shouldn’t define it.  When it rises to the top of our emotions, coloring the waters of our relationship with our children, something is not right.”

 

Simplifying the daily life of both you and your child often helps in decreasing worry and anxiety.  However, another place to simplify may be just how involved we are with our children.  Societal pressure has turned some parents into helicopter parents; and it is not just in the United States but all over the world.  Here is an interesting article from the NY Times about the “the cure for hyper-parenting” and how “hyper-parenting” is occurring all over the world.

 

Kim John Payne’s suggestions include: Continue reading →

Girls On the Cusp of Puberty

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With two girls in our house, I have spent a bit of time thinking about girls on the cusp of puberty. It also is a pretty hot topic amongst my parent friends who have girls this age, and is getting quite a bit of attention in even the mainstream media.  Here is one article from the NY Times called, Puberty Before Age  10:  A New Normal?  I believe the study of over 1200 girls mentioned in this article is this one in the medical journal “Pediatrics”.

We can argue all day long about the causation of early puberty.  Is it the estrogens, phytoestrogens, and other hormone disrupters in our food, water and environment?  Is it the levels  of different things within our own bodies at the time we got pregnant with the children who are now growing up to be girls on the cusp of puberty?  Is it something we just haven’t figured out yet?

WebMD details a few of the possible medical causes and signs of puberty and notes that the difference between early puberty and “regular” puberty is not in the signs , but in the timing.  I find it interesting that in this article the signs of puberty for girls is detailed solely as breast development and the onset of menstruation, but when I talk to parents about the signs of puberty they are worried about it can be about breast budding as well, but many times it is more about the moodiness/fluctuating emotions, talking back to parents that may be presumed due to hormonal change,  pubic hair developing or body odor or even just their daughter wanting to wear a bra.

Here is what I am finding most of my parents friends and readers to be doing: Continue reading →

Woolens Sale Extended and Links To Make You Think This Week

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Green Mountain Organics was kind enough to extend the 20 percent discount for readers of The Parenting Passageway until October 20th.  Use pp20 and get your woolens for winter  here.

 

Here are some of my favorite links from this week:

An interesting NY Times article about how to teach math: teach math.

An Orthodox Christian article about spiritual intervention that can help depression in addition to cognitive behavioral treatment (including the wonderful prayer of Fr. Arseny):  here.

A 2013 article about   post-partum practices in the US.  We can and should be doing so much better and so much more:

This article about outdoor exposure/no screen access for sixth graders for 5 days and its impact on emotional intelligence.  See Children and Nature news

 

Blessings,
Carrie

Wrap Up of Week Eight of Seventh and Fourth Grade

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I am trying to post a little wrap-up of each week of grades seven, four and five year old kindergarten year throughout the 36 weeks I have planned for school this year.  I hope this will encourage mothers that are homeschooling multiple children (or who want to but are worried!), and  encourage mothers that even homeschooling children of multiple ages who are far apart in age is doable.  You can find weeks six and seven  here and further in back posts you can find a post pertaining to the first two days of school this year which gives insight to our general daily rhythm.

 

Kindergarten:  This week was a birthday week for our kindergartener, so we had some company from family and friends to celebrate!  However, my little one also managed to get a good cold going by his birthday, so other than limited company and baking, this week has been a bit subdued.  We are continuing our foray into apples with the making of apple muffins and applesauce and we got out the fall books to enjoy.  Soon we will be going pumpkin picking, but we try to go closer to All Saints Day since the weather is often hot and the pumpkin will rot before that weekend if we get it too early!

 

Fourth Grade:  We are continuing Continue reading →

Talking Back and What to Do About It

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“Talking back” seems to be something I see getting press in more and more mainstream American parenting articles, with comments something along the lines of, “We expect teenagers to talk back, but we don’t expect six-year-olds to talk back and this is really infiltrating down and down into younger and younger ages.”

I think this is an accurate depiction of what is going on in American society at least.  I am hearing from parents about talking back and what to do about it from about age five or six on up.

So, How Did We Get Here?

In general, I think part of what has gotten us to this point is that authority in general in society has changed, especially since the 1960s.  No longer are there figures of complete authority to obey without question and children see this in society.  I am not saying these changes are bad!  However, they do lead children to “question” authority more than before, and to also lead parents to be fearful of being an authority, because in our generation’s history this has often been linked with abuse of power and unfairness. Parents seem to walk a difficult line these days in regard to their views of authority and what that means in leading their own family.

The other large change has been the seeping of adulthood down into childhood, including the sheer number of choices a child has, the sheer power of decision-making a child has within the family structure and an awareness of the stress and pressures of the adults in the family.  Related to this has been the seeping of the adult world of information down to the child’s level.

Many American families I speak with feel that part of their children’s talking back is related to that child feeling entitled to experiences or things.  If you feel there is a correlation there, I would love to hear from you in the comment box!

For What Ages Is Talking Back the Biggest Problem?

From my mail, I am judging most parents are having difficulty with talking back during the six/seven year change, age eight (the age of boasting and bragging and exaggeration), and the years marketed as the “preteen years” – ages 10-12.  Surprisingly, I don’t get a lot of mail from parents being frustrated with their teenager’s talk.  I am not sure if that is because the talking back has actually died down at that age, or if parents are just used to it or something else.  Again, I would love to hear from you in the comment box!

What Can I Do To Figure Out Where We Are Right Now?

  • Always go back to the basics, especially for those under the age of 12.  Are they overbooked and overscheduled?  Too many choices and just generally holding too many opinions/ too much power?  Are they getting enough sleep, rest, time for unstructured play, eating whole and healthy foods?
  • What are your rules?  What exactly constitutes talking back by your child to you?  Does your child know what talking back really is and when they are doing it?
  • How are you treating them?  What kind of a model are you with them?  If you are constantly sarcastic and snippy with them, then that is their model.  That is exactly what they will parrot back to you.  Are you respectful and polite as well?
  • Are they more connected to their peers than to the family unit?  The privileges of a sixteen or seventeen year old  and the schedule of a sixteen or seventeen year old are not the privileges or schedule a ten year old should be having.  If you need help knowing what is appropriate for a ten year old versus an older child, please leave me a comment and I will be happy to dialogue with you.
  • What is their media intake?  Unfortunately, many of the nicer “family” shows that used to be on television or in the movies are long gone.  Today’s media often portrays a family where the children are snippy to their parents and seem to know much more than their hapless, bumbling parents.  The fathers are typically portrayed as extra bumbling.  Portrayals such as these really have not helped our society as a whole.

So What Can I Do? Continue reading →

Wrap Up of Weeks Six and Seven of Seventh and Fourth Grade

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I am trying to post a little wrap-up of each week of grades seven, four and five year old kindergarten year throughout the 36 weeks I have planned for school this year.  I hope this will encourage mothers that are homeschooling multiple children (or who want to but are worried!), and  encourage mothers that even homeschooling children of multiple ages who are far apart in age is doable.  You can check out weeks four and five here.

Kindergarten:  The momentum is back!  Week four included our usual activities and then we had a week at the beach of flying kites, digging in the sand and diving into waves.  This week began with a day at the apple orchard and back to a friend’s house to celebrate Michaelmas.  This week we have done fingerplays about apples, an apple orchard circle, Suzanne Down’s story “Little Boy Knight” with puppetry, along with making applesauce and apple crisp from our apples that we picked (and getting to use one of those wonderful apple peeler/slicer gadgets with the handle to crank!), making apple prints, cutting apples to see the star inside, and lots of verses and singing for Michaelmas.  It has been a fun week with apples and gestures for fall!

Fourth Grade:  We finished our first math block, which was a review block that went over many topics  but mainly focused on deepening measurement and conversion of measurement units in a way that worked into our Man and Animal block.  Our fifth week saw the beginning of our Man and Animal block with a presentation of the human being in its threefold organization of the head, trunk and limbs.  We worked in crayon with a painting resist for a Continue reading →

Using Mainstream Math Resources for the Grades in the Waldorf Homeschooling Family

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There has been some discussion within the Waldorf homeschooling community about when (or if)  to add in a mainstream math program  as supplementary practice for the Waldorf homeschooled child.  Homeschooling mothers often worry about daily practice in areas like math, especially if you live in a state where taking standardized tests or the possibility of your child attending public or private school is in the near future.   Here are a few of my thoughts and experiences about the mainstream programs folks are using and a few thoughts as to *how* to use some of these resources.  Mathematics in Waldorf Education has a developmental approach and often mainstream math programs do not share this same view so I think it behooves discussion and consideration in regards to how to add practice of math into the homeschool day.  I have included Making Math Meaningful and Math By Hand in this discussion, as I think they could be used no matter how one homeschools and these guides, while based in Waldorf Education, also seem to have an understanding of what is going in math education in all realms.

 

Grades One and Two:  I have seen Waldorf homeschooling parents use a mainstream math program in these grades, particularly if they were afraid they were going to have to put their child into public school at some point, or if they held allegiance to a particular math program (usually I see this in families who feel very loyal to Singapore or sometimes RightStart math from other homeschooling experiences).  However, I honestly don’t think you need a supplemental math program for these early grades where number sense is being developed.  Daily practice that you make up, along with the math blocks, should really be enough at this stage in my opinion so long as you are diligent with practice.  If you need a guide to this, please let me recommend Jamie York’s “Making Math Meaningful” for grades one through five (blue cover) and also the book “Games For Math” by Peggy Kaye. If you really feel as if you need “something else” in this stage, Math By Hand is a Waldorf-compatible resource that has some lovely hands-on kits to help you bring math in a visual way with certain activities and stories. Math By Hand runs first through fourth grades.  Continue reading →

How Old Are You?

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I had a wonderful week last week visiting St. George Island in Florida.  We did the typical beach things – built sand masterpieces (not castles, but mainly sea turtles and mermaids), jumped and dived in the waves, flew kites, walked to the lighthouse on the island, shopped a little (only a few stores), played board games, ate seafood and otherwise relaxed, rested and read a lot of books.   It was a much needed break and time to be together as a family.

It also gave me some time to look at the feelings I have been carrying around this school term.  I adore homeschooling, but I  have lately been more wanting more time to myself, .  I have vacillated between feeling a bit resentful of not having more time to myself and then thinking what would I  even do with this time –   a vocation?  a job? a midlife crisis? (Insert cheeky grin here).   I love homeschooling, adore it, but  often what I want is a few hours a day where I am not on call so to speak and can devote time to my own interests without any of the outside world intruding.  I have  also had this same conversation with many veteran homeschooling mothers, and I know many other homeschooling mothers feel this way (especially, it seems,  those of us in our mid-40s).

I wonder if this is partially just midlife – that strange time and feeling where you wonder is this what life is?  What different path would have taken me somewhere else?  Where is the future really headed?  In past generations, many women had children earlier and often their children were headed off to lives of their own by the time a woman hit her mid-40s.   At this point, a woman really had the time to re-discover herself.  My mother- in- law remarked to me awhile ago that most women in her generation hit menopause by their early 40’s (ie, when she was 40, many of her friends were already menopausal), another sign that life was taking a different turn than previously. Contrast that to this day and age when so many of us in our mid-40s are still in the trenches raising small children or even having babies.  So, part of me wonders if this is programmed from the past – this need to re-discover one’s self apart from children – and if we as a generation are not yet caught up yet  to the reality of having children later.   I feel for me as if these thoughts and feelings started with the seven year cycle that began around age 42, but now is in full swing at age 44.  I keep being drawn back to the words of Betty Staley’s book “Tapestries” about the years 42-49 here.  here..  I am even looking into the years ahead ahead.

Sometimes I also wonder if  this feeling of wanting more and needing to be alone something specific to homeschooling mothers?  We spend so much time and energy as a homeschooling family on our children (and hopefully on our spouses as well, but I guess that is a whole different post!); perhaps it is only natural after some time to feel or want a bit more for oneself.    I don’t feel like a “veteran” homeschooler by any means, but my oldest is in seventh grade and we have been at this for some time without any interruptions.  Perhaps this stage of homeschooling  just contributes to restlessness in general?

I don’t feel burned out or worn out, just thoughtful about the developmental process in adults.  Where are you, and just you alone, these days in your thoughts and feelings?  How old are you and do you think that plays into how you are feeling and what you are wanting at this point in your life?

Love,
Carrie