Category Archives: Family Life

Sibling Fighting

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This post is geared toward children aged 7 or 8 and their younger siblings…Sometimes it can seem as if there is bickering or fighting much of the day, especially when the younger child hits about 4 or 5.

What to do?

Here are a few thoughts, in no particular order:

1.  Always go back to looking at your rhythm; are you holding the space enough?  Are you present enough?  Many times when the children are just playing all day, they need something more structured to hang their hat on for a bit, and then some time of free play, and then something with a bit more structure.  The “structured” part doesn’t have to be anything insane; perhaps you all go for a walk together, play salt dough molding or crayoning together; perhaps you all cook something together.  Just something where you, as the parent, are involved and engaged and present.

2.  It is difficult to leave small children unsupervised; if you are in the kitchen baking and they are in their room playing, things may go well or they may not.  It may be worth it to think through what your thoughts are as to where the children can and cannot be when you are doing something; it may force you to look at the usage of space in your home such as do you have an area in which they can play in the kitchen?  How can you be present with them?  What part do they have in your work?

3.  Outside time.  I cannot stress the importance of outside time enough.

4.  Who is in a stage of developmental disequilibrium and what do they need to function best?  More rest, more outside time, more one on one time with you?  How are they eating and what are they eating?

5.  They may not be able to “work it out”.  Children under the age of 9 are pretty immature when it comes to “working it out” (sometimes mature first-born girls can be an exception and be fair).  You need to be there to help.  And to be helpful, you cannot judge what is going on.   You can distract, re-direct, and listen!

6. If this is usually  happening around dinner time, here are some suggestions and pick and choose what resonates with you:  start dinner earlier in the day with a crock pot or by at least doing prep work for dinner after lunch; make sure dinner is not too late; look at what activities are occurring around dinner time and can those be moved at all so you are not rushed; and here is the biggie:  ALL HANDS ON DECK!  Everyone eats, so everyone should be helping to get dinner ready, to set the table, to take out the scraps to the compost pile, and everyone should be helping to clear the table and do the dishes.  Chores are often the least-used method of guiding family bickering, and yet doing chores whilst you are PRESENT (NO SENDING A FOUR OR FIVE OLD OFF TO DO CHORES ALONE!) is one of the most effective methods of keeping everyone out of trouble.  🙂

7. Respect how your children feel in the moment, but DON’T read too much  into it and think their future relationship as adult siblings is going to be permanently marred by this single interaction…  Children are going to say they hate their brother or sister.  Try to help your child move forward with a hug and warmth and “Wow, that is so hard.  Something he/she did really upset you!”  Don’t add a whole lot of words into it for them either. Sometimes just saying it, and getting it out is enough.    “You REALLY didn’t like that!”     “That really bothered you!”

You can always “fall back” on a “house rule”, but this means you must have “house rules.”  Things that just are not acceptable in your family.  What are those things?  For those of you with tiny one and two year olds who are the oldest child in the family, you are MODELING those house rules for them more than just saying words and expecting them to obey your words.

8.  For those children who are a bit older and have a steady stream of complaints, you have a right to not hear all of it!  Sometimes we are just “full”, we have heard them and we will carry their feelings with us but now it is time to peel the carrots, etc.    See if you can involve them in physical work with their hands!  I have also  moved on into repetitive chores and told my kids they could draw it or go outside and tell the trees or tell the dog, but I was full for the moment. (PS, and to get your children to do this on their own, you may have to model it for them when YOU are angry! LOL). I tell them I will be ready to discuss it again after “X” but not right now.

9.  Listening is the best cure. Judging doesn’t help; most at likely you don’t know the little one was torturing the bigger child (or vice versa) up until this incident happened. With the children closer to nine, take up a pencil and write all the complaints down and read it back to them.  Don’t judge it, just read it back.  Sometimes they just want to be sure you heard them.

10.  Check out what kind of language or name-calling goes on in your house.  I have seen husbands and wives call each other some pretty nasty things when they were upset.  There should be a rule of being polite across the board, and when someone is angry, that person needs to chill out before we can even discuss the problem. Discussing things in the heat of anger rarely, if ever, solves anything, because no one can be calm or rational or discuss anything.  So see how you and your husband handle being irritated and angry. 

11. Are you comparing your children?  Again, not helpful and often leads to incredible resentment.  With older children, you can describe what you see.  With younger children, stop using so many words.  You also describe what you think the child would be feeling, such as “You must be proud of the picture you drew!” for the older child.

12.  Fair and equal can be very, very important.  Try to stress what the individual child needs.  “So you are hungry and would like more?” in response to the wailing of “He got two more apples slices than me!!”

13.  Stop labeling.  Those of you with only two children, please erase the “big boy” or “big girl” and “baby” terms.  Children move forward, regress and run the gamut in between.  Accept where they are….

I am sure I will think of more to say later; but that is not a bad start.

Blessings,

Carrie

Renewal: Computer Time

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Ah, managing the beast……

No, I am not talking about my huge dog who is now learning to pull a cart, LOL!  I am talking about  this wonderful tool, this wonderful place to connect and get information, but that which  has the potential to be addicting in a way: our friend the computer!   It’s funny, but I don’t really know anyone my age or younger that has an issue managing watching television, but almost everyone I know has a harder time managing the computer.

I asked some questions in the past about computer usage here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/06/08/a-vacation-away-from-the-computer/

It is so easy to turn on the computer and get sucked in for hours more than you intended, isn’t it?  All those beautiful Waldorf blogs and all those rabbit trails!  All those things we MIGHT need for future homeschooling grades that we should be storing in files!  And the thing is, when we are on the computer, I think our children can really feel our life forces  just being whisked away from them.  If we are on the computer at night, we are not meditating, praying, reading, or most importantly, giving our husband the attention he deserves.

So, during these forty days of renewal between Easter and Ascension, how about experimenting with some rules of usage for yourself in relation to the computer?

  • You could plan only certain days of the week to be on the computer
  • You could plan to only check it at a certain time of the day.
  • You could plan to cut back and scale back to a few very essential blogs/yahoo groups plus your email to check daily.
  • You could set a timer for when you are on the computer and get off when the timer goes off.

In this forty days of renewal, I would love to hear how all of you are managing your computer time these days. 

Many blessings,

Carrie

Renewal: Rhythm

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So, we will be taking these forty days between Easter and Ascension as our time to discuss all things related to the renewal of your life and your family culture.  For today, I want to circle back around to rhythm.

I think many Waldorf homeschoolers are feeling this sense of renewal regarding rhythm!    Melisa Nielsen had a lovely post here about “Rhythm Or Routine”: http://waldorfjourney.typepad.com/a_journey_through_waldorf/2010/04/rhythm-or-routine.html .   Everything she says is right on!  I especially liked the part where Melisa talks about developing our own will enough to STAY HOME.  When you have children under the age of eight, it is important that you firmly entrench children in the home.  It is important that they learn how to create their own play and fun at home instead of relying on going, going, going, to stimulate themselves and to change their emotions.

In a family, there is a daily rhythm, a weekly rhythm, and a yearly rhythm.  This is there whether you create it or not, so I feel it is worth it to take an intentional look at these areas along with parenting.

The yearly rhythm is celebrated through the festivals of the year and is seen as a yearly process of in-breath and out-breath. How you implement this is up to you, I find it lovely to celebrate with the liturgical year of our church.

For a weekly rhythm, one must decide how many days a week one is going to go outside of your home/yard/neighborhood (because even if we stay home we still go outside for many hours a day!).  This is important for small children, to be home,  and it is also important in homeschooling once you reach the grades..  If you are interested in homeschooling, I would say it is very difficult, if not impossible,  to throw homeschooling on top of a completely chaotic flow of events to the day, and also on top of a chaotic house that is cluttered and dirty.  No, your home does not have to be perfect, we actually live in our houses because we are home!  However, keeping the house up and running is part of the rhythm to it all, and in order to do that, we have to be home.  We need to plan when to get groceries, what to cook,  when to do laundry, when to run errands,  so that not everything is completely last minute.  Therefore, it is never too early, nor too late,  to create a bit of an order or flow that suits your family life.

For a small child, the weekly rhythm includes what PRACTICAL work takes place when and planning on your part regarding HOW they may be included.  In cleaning, can they scrub the bathtub whilst taking a bath?  Can they manually grind a cup of flour to add to more flour to bake bread?  Can they use water to clean the sidewalk whilst you plant flowers? 

For a daily rhythm, this is where one needs to think about the flow of the day for times of in-breath and times of out-breath.  For example, when will rest and meal times will be, and when bedtimes and awake times will be?  If the baby needs a nap, will they sleep in a sling?  If you put them to sleep in a room, where will your older children be and what will they be doing?  When are the outside times and when is it time to tell a story?

But most importantly, how will you show reverence and the sacred parts of life throughout these rhythms of life?  When will there be singing and joy, when will there be silence, when will there be time to go outside and look at one small bug or bird and listen and feel the wind?  Reverence and gratitude is the thread that winds itself through all of these yearly, weekly, and daily rhythms. 

Many blessings during these forty days of renewal,

Carrie

More About Easter in the Waldorf Home

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Mrs. Marsha Johnson wrote about this on her list, for those of you who are not members of list, please go sign up here:  waldorfhomeeducators@yahoogroups.com.  This is a lovely perspective on celebrating Easter in the Waldorf Home, even if you are not Christian. 

Here is what Mrs. Johnson wrote:

“As Easter approaches, many people begin to wonder about the role of this festival in their homes….memories of traditional religious practices resurface, concerns about melding two streams of traditions often arise, we wonder about the seemingly cruel aspects to the Christian history of Jesus, affixed to the cross of wood, a far more violent and cruel story than any Grimm’s tale, really.

How do we, as parents and adults in 2010, recognize the fundamental need for the sacred in our lives, in our children, in our communities? A need as deep as hunger, as real as weather, as great as other basic human needs.
Many turn to the voracious maw of the commercial devils, waiting with open grasping bony fingers to take attention and focus into their own mad schemes of materialism and self-gratification…buying gifts, buying toys, buying or even making a literal mountain of things to add into the already present mountain of things that occupy every square inch of giant Mc-Mega style homes. Store windows, mail order, on line, shopping screams at us to purchase our festival happiness and then we sit, in the discarded packaging, wondering where the Normal Rockwell moment went.

Children need to feel the divine, to see the sacred, to experience the feeling that reverence has value, that we can ‘perceive’ the invisible power of the cosmos, that we are held indeed by the larger impossibly infinite unknown, the sacred.

 

How can you help your children, your class, your community to feel this sacred allowance, this space dedicated to the ‘temple’, the room that has been allotted and set aside for the ‘shrine’? Shall we rise above the commercial and the material and create a real home for the sacred in our festivals and in our homes?

 
Yes, we can do this. We can take a small table and cover it with the seasonal colors, for Easter, using soft chick yellows and golds, along with fresh lily purples and whites, and we can drape that small table and add a few elements that remind us of the events hand, times remembered, perhaps a few small wooly lambs, or carefully made beeswax lilies with green leaves, a small vase with a few easter egg bright tulips, some small dishes filled with dirt and wheat grass planted, and a candle, rising, in a small candle holder…here we can place a tiny dish of thorns perhaps taken from the rose bush, along with a few hips left over, bright red, from last fall, that help us visually recall that nothing comes without great striving and challenges in this life, nothing is sewn together without a few pokes from a sharp sticker, we can accept this situation in a visual sense without lengthy verbosity, feeling inherently that the soft wooly lambs and chicks recognize the sharp thorns of the rose….

Creating a special space, and then before supper, to gather in the soft dusky time of eve, to stand before this space and light the candle and quietly speak of old Easters, remembered customs, those people who made it all happen, how it was to find a hand made sugar egg with a scene inside on the table every Easter morning, how it was to rise before sunrise to go to the service on the hill in the dark, how it felt to sit with the Passover table and how grand-dad made everyone laugh with his antics, how sweet the dishes were, how the country home or the city apartment resonated with our love and those loved ones, now out of sight and away in the starry heavens…

Besides the sacred table or corner, you can also create some rhythms with routines that fill that need in your family during these special times of year: a walk through a deep forest at a certain time, a visit to a recognized holy space or shrine, a grotto, a labyrinth, a special geographic location that has meaning in the greatest sense of the world. Holding hands in a circle and saying aloud a small prayer, a verse, a song, a poem, giving space to individual contributions and allowing children to really feel part of such a ceremony will have positive life long consequences.

Bringing love and light to the children, even for a few minutes, is just as important in parenting as are food, shelter, clothing, encouragement, guidance, financial support, and so on. Doing nothing is really a kind of deprivation in my point of view. Take responsibility as the parents of that child or those children and make some decisions about your plan to provide for the sacred and then commit to those traditions and keep them alive for your dear ones.

Not much, really, to do as some kind of onerous task. Just gathering, holding hands, lighting a candle and a simple verse, can allow the child to feel closely held by the eternal arms of the sacred.
Mrs M

Hope you enjoyed that perspective!”

I added the bolded areas; and I hope you too enjoyed that.  It is worth contemplating for the next 40 days, this time of renewal between Easter and Ascension:  what is your spiritual path? How do you show this to your children?  How is the sacred manifested in your life?

Many blessings,

Carrie

Talking In Pictures To Small Children

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A small child under the age of seven needs to hear you paint a picture with your words instead of a direct command.  This can really be a very difficult thing for us to do as adults, and as such we find ourselves barking commands (politely, of course :)) at our small children all day long.  “Come to breakfast!”  “Use the potty!”  “Get your shoes on!” “Now please!”  “Stop doing that!”  Even if we frame things positively and say what we do want, the point is that a million times a day we are asking our child to do something.  And when we only use a command, we are essentially giving the small child a chance to think, a chance to decide their behavior, and then we get angry when they don’t do what we want when we want it.  How funny how that goes.

Small children are often in a fantasy, imaginative world much of the day as they play and create games.  They are not adults, they do not view time as adults do, they do not have the sense of urgency that you do.  And nor should they.

A small child lives in the physical realm and in their bodies.  So, to most effectively parent, we must reach to that for the small child as often as possible instead of playing commander, or worse yet, trying to drive the car with our horn by yelling at the small child. 

Here are some examples:

  • Think of animals that involve what you need.  Can the child hop like a bunny, run as fast as a roadrunner bird, swim like a fish?  Can they open their big  crocodile mouths to have all those teeth brushed?  Can you be a bear that needs a big winter coat ?  (And as you say this, you help put the child’s arm into the coat)….It is the imaginative movement plus the physical piece that gets it all done.
  • Can you involve their dolls or their imaginary friends?   Quietly take their favorite doll and start to get it ready for bed and sing to the doll. “ You and Tim (the imaginary friend) can sit right for dinner “( and lead the child by the hand to the table).
  • Can you employ gnomes, fairies, giants, leprechuans?  Today a four- year- old and I looked for leprechuan shoes by my back door….  Oh, look at these leprechuan shoes sitting here, do these fit YOU?  Oh my, look at the turned up toes on your shoes, I wonder if those shoes will lead you to a pot of gold!  How about gnomes exploring the mouth cave for teeth brushing?  Big giant steps to settle into a big giant bed?

You do not have to do this to the point where it is tiring to you, but do try here and there, because I find most parents employ very little imagination with their children during the day and the children really do respond to it well and do just what needs to happen.

Your part though, is to plan enough time so things are NOT rushed.  Rushing is the death of imagination and the beginning of stress.  Please plan ahead! 

Also, rhythm is your friend.  It is in that space to help you and your child.  If you do something different every night to get ready for a meal, to get ready for bed, what cues does your child have for when things are going to happen?  Again, their sense of time and urgency is not that of an adult.  Also, please seriously evaluate how many places you are dragging a small child.  Are these places for them or errands and would your child just rather be home?   I am just asking you to consider this piece of the puzzle; only you know the answer for you and your family. 

The last piece is the physical end of it, DOING something with a child whilst using the imagination and movement goes much better!  Yes, it is tiring that that is what small children need.  But better to do that than to complain and moan and groan that your small child, who is perfectly  normal, is “not listening”. 🙂

Try it out, I think you will find life to be much easier. 

Many blessings,

Carrie

Five Things Every Parent Needs

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These are five things every parent needs to have right now; these are the keys to parenting!

Compassionate Connection :  Connection is the number one tool to parenting and to discipline, to that guiding of a child throughout these years at home.  You get it by choosing to connect with your child, by  choosing to view you and your child as being on the same team instead of being against each other.  You get it by choosing to love your child as you guide them over the bumps of life and development instead of being mad at them for being immature and making mistakes, which is what small children are and what small children do.

Kindness :  Kindness in the home is of utmost importance.  Your small child is watching everything you do and say and how you treat other people, including how you treat yourself.  How do you promote kindness in your home?  How do you model forgiveness for yourself for being human?  Try this one for ideas:   https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/05/03/kindness-in-your-home/

Gentleness:  Your child always deserves to have gentle hands.  If you cannot be gentle with them, you must take a parent time-out.  You can set a boundary, stick to a boundary, and still be gentle.  It is possible!  You can parent peacefully!   See here for one of the many posts about this on this blog:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/01/05/an-emergency-how-to-how-to-parent-peacefully-with-children-under-age-9/

and here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/08/17/raising-peaceful-children/

Patience:  Many parents will ruefully sigh and say, “I am not patient enough with my child.”  I agree it is important to have patience regarding the day to day and minute to minute interactions with your child; I have many posts about that,  but the kind of patience I am really talking about right now  is being patient with the process of DEVELOPMENT. This means not rushing a child out of childhood, and being willing to set boundaries to preserve that child’s innocence in early childhood and in the grades of school as well.     Understanding developmental stages and having realistic expectations for each age is vital.  There are many posts on this blog about this, all the developmental stages are currently covered from the age of twelve months through age nine.  There are also many posts regarding  babies under the “Baby and Toddler” header.  Here is one post regarding patience for your reading pleasure:

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/10/15/the-power-of-patience-day-number-18-of-20-days-toward-being-a-more-mindful-parent/

Maturity:  Having a baby and a small child in the home SHOULD cause a change in your lifestyle.  Please do not use the fact you are breastfeeding and can carry your child in a  sling as an excuse to drag your child to all kinds of adult places.  Why should your toddler  behave while you have coffee with a friend?  Why should your small baby sleep through the night when biologically they are not there yet?  Why should your toddler or preschooler willingly separate from you when they consider themselves to be a part of you?    Have the maturity to know that this is a season, this too shall pass, and that these early years of childhood are remarkably short. 

A Positive Attitude! I have written about this repeatedly.  Here are a few back posts for your reading pleasure: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/09/19/day-number-three-of-20-days-toward-being-a-more-mindful-mother/

and here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/06/17/the-power-of-being-a-positive-mother/

Simple Parenting at its best!  Peaceful March with Simple Parenting!

Many blessings,

Carrie

More About The Spring Cleaning of The Mind

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This can be a tough time of year for homeschooling mothers; serious burn-out and lack of motivation seems to prevail.  Our minds sometimes are more on our seed catalogs and what to get for next year’s curriculum than the here and now.

I think this a great time of year to stop and take stock of where you are in your homeschooling, where your children are, and what are the essential things to get done before the end of the school year.  I also think it can be a nice time of year to plan some things for outside once your weather cooperates and to think of the DOING and the experiences one could create with your grades children, and how to bring awe and reverence to the younger children.

I think every year it is also wise to look at each child, to look at their homeschooling adventure this year and to decide with fresh eyes to homeschool again.  To really commit to that with a new heart, a new love.  Do you have a mission statement for your homeschool?  Are you happy overall with the way things have progressed in your homeschool this year?  What needs to be different?

If you are not homeschooling, perhaps this is a wonderful time to re-commit yourself to your family.  Write that family mission statement or update it.  Commit to that date at home with your spouse after your children go to bed.  Commit to that Family Game Night with the kids!  Connect with each other and love each other!

And dig deep within yourself; replenish that well.  Spend time in creativity, and with good friends and build yourself up.  Think about what your dreams are, and whilst this season of child-rearing is busy, perhaps there are ways to work toward your dreams in small increments. I just signed up for an Internet course that I am very excited about, for example.  It is a small, do-able step toward my eventual goals.

What are your dreams?  Journal, draw, write it all down.

Happy Spring Cleaning!

Blessings,

Carrie

Easter And Its Forty Days In The Waldorf Home

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Easter can be the beginning of a lovely forty days leading up to the festival of Ascension.

In the days of Early Christianity, Easter was the most important festival of the year (and it still is in the Orthodox Church).  Easter itself is actually more aligned with the cosmos than one might think.  In “All Year Round”, the authors write:  “There is no fixed date for Easter.  It moves in the calendar between the middle of March and the middle of April, and the festivals of Lent, Ascension and Whitsun (Pentecost) move along.  The moment of Easter arises when the four great rhythms which we use to order our lives meet as they run their course.  When the sun has moved through a full year from one spring equinox to the next, then the monthly lunar cycle must be fulfilled with the sighting of the full moon.  After that, the rhythm of the week must draw to a close.  Finally, the moment which marks one day from the next- midnight- must have passed before the Easter Festival of Resurrection can truly be celebrated. 

On Easter Day, there are several wonderful traditions one can consider.  One would be to have your children deliver decorated eggs to your neighbors to celebrate the renewal of life; this suggestion is offered in the little pink book, “An Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten”.  Eggs are of course a symbol of new birth and in the creation myths of many cultures the egg plays a distinctive role.  Eggs have also been found in graves from pre-Christian times.  Red eggs are central to the Easter celebration in the Orthodox church and sometimes still left on the graves of people who have died in the country of Greece on Easter.  Eggs are a symbol of resurrection for Christians.  If one plants seeds in a bowl on the nature table to sprout in time for Easter, a red egg could be placed in this bowl to find on Easter morning!

Another suggestion offered in the Kindergarten  book is to work with Easter with a verse regarding caterpillars and all the children go to “sleep” as the teacher comes around and tucks a silk around them and then they awake and use the silk as wings!  I especially love that idea.

Another almost forgotten tradition is the one of the “Easter Tree”.  In the past, it was a barren tree with four cross branches decorated with green and also eggs hanging on them in colors associated with the four elements (earth-purple; water-blue; air-yellow; fire-red).  I actually like this idea for Easter baskets as well – can one include all four elements in the Easter basket? 

There is also a custom of “Easter water” in some traditions.  Children aged six and above can go and get water from a well or spring as their “Easter water”.  Brigette Barz notes in “Festivals With Children” that, “We are dealing here not with magical actions (one can simply use the water for the house plants afterwards) but rather an experience of the holiness of the world woken through silence.” 

In a separate article in this book, Barbara Klocek writes, “…if one is aware and awake, the forty days following Easter can be a time of healing and replenishing.  This was the time when the Risen Christ walked upon the earth bestowing wisdom and blessings…..Can we create the time to witness this wondrous gift of forty days?  To take the same walks everyday, or to observe one place at the same time each day will allow the senses to create a window for our soul to drink in this feast….The balance of the forty days of Lent is given in these forty days after Easter.”

“Festivals With Children” suggests an Easter tree be left up for the forty days with forty blown eggs as decoration; stories for the forty days could include The Frog Prince, Rapunzel, The Crystal Ball or The Two Brothers – all from the Brothers Grimm.  Also suggested in this book is activities involving braiding, weaving, folding paper or working with clay.  These activities have an underlying theme of transformation about them. 

Many blessings on your celebrations,

Carrie

Peaceful March: Simple Parenting

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I think this is a wonderful month to have a “spring cleaning” of the mind for peaceful, simple parenting for the expansive Spring and Summer months that are coming.  What do I mean by that?

  • Look, really look at your children.  What developmental stage are they in?  What areas are they having a hard time with?  What could you do to help guide them?  What have you tried in this regard previously?  Don’t do that again if it didn’t work – you know, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over and expecting different results!  Try to think outside the box! Get support, gain fresh and new ideas!
  • How am I doing with gentle discipline?  Am I falling into places I would rather not be? How can I change that? What is my plan?
  • What am I doing to protect and nourish my child’s twelve senses and movement?  How much are we getting outside?
  • How many hours of screens is my child seeing each week and can I cut that back, down, out completely?
  • How is my child eating?  Homemade nourishing foods?  See if you can refrain from buying processed foods for a week and really focus on whole, simple foods.  How many raw fruits and vegetables is my child eating?
  • How much sleep and rest is happening in the family?  Do we have a rhythm toward bedtime and rest times?
  • Am I happy with the number of things I, my spouse, my kids, our family is committed to?  Does it need to be less? Can you take a break this Spring?  Will the world come to an end if the kids take one season from sports off and you all hike together instead?
  • How are you doing with your spouse?  Do you really know him and where he is these days or is he last on the list at the end of the day?  What is going on these days at work?  What are his favorite things?  Does he feel loved and respected in his home?  Are you spending time together? 
  • How are you doing?  Are you feeling healthy and energized?  If not, what are you eating, are you exercising, are you getting enough sleep and rest?  What time are you going to bed?
  • What are you reading these days to increase your skills as a positive person, a positive mother, a homeschooling teacher or as a wife?  What artistic work are you doing each week to replenish your own soul?
  • Does your family have a mission statement?  If not, now would be a great time to write one.  If you have one, does it need updating?  There is a back post on this blog regarding family mission statements, actually there are several.  If you use the search engine, it should come up for you.
  • Finally, are you in connection with that Creator that is higher than yourself if that is in your belief system, or what are you doing to nourish your own spirituality, your own sense of reverence toward the world, your own sense of gratitude and love?

Take that sketch pad I suggested you keep around at the beginning of the month, those colored pencil and crayons and draw yourself a map of these areas and write down or draw your ideas for change!

Happy Spring Cleaning,

Carrie

Favorite Spring Tales For The Waldorf Kindergarten

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Like the Fall Tales List for Waldorf Kindergarten, this is NOT an all-inclusive list, these are just some tales I have enjoyed or I know other mothers have used at these ages…..Happy finding the tales that speak to you and to your family!

 

January (Okay, still Winter!)

Four Year Olds:  Shingebiss (Winter Wynstones)

Five Year Olds:  The Snow Maiden (Plays for Puppets)

Six Year Olds:  The Twelve Months (www.mainlesson.com); 

February

Four Year Olds:  “Pussy Willow Spring” from Suzanne Down’s “Spring Tales” or a story about how the snowdrop got its color

Five Year Olds:  “The Rabbit and the Carrot”  a Chinese Tale found in the Spring Wynstones and also in “An Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten”

Six Year Olds:  “The Three Brothers” by the Brothers Grimm

There are also a few Saint Valentine’s Day stories on mainlesson.com

 

March

For  ages three and a  half or so  and up for Saint Patrick’s Day:  “Lucky Patrick” from “Spring Tales” by Suzanne Down

There is also a great “leprechuan” circle adventure/movement journey in the book, “Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures” based upon “Tippery Tim” the leprechaun in “Spring Tales” by Suzanne Down

Four Year Olds:  The Billy Goats Gruff

Five Year Olds:  “Little Brown Bulb” from “Spring Tales” from Suzanne Down or “Little Red Cap” from Brothers Grimm

Six Year Olds: “ Bremen Town Musicians” from the Brothers Grimm;  or “An Easter Story” from “All Year Round” or “The Donkey” by The Brothers Grimm

 

April: 

Four Year Olds:  Goldilocks and The Three Bears

Five Year Olds:   “Mama Bird’s Song” from “Spring Tales” by Suzanne Down  or”Rumpelstiltskin” by the Brothers Grimm

Six Year Olds:  “Frog Prince” from the Brothers Grimm

 

May

Four Year Olds:  “Chicken Licken” or “The Pancake”  with Spring details

Five Year Olds:  For Ascensiontide, the story “Forgetful Sammy” from “All Year Round” or “Twiggy” from “Plays for Puppets”

Six Year Olds: “The Magic Lake at the End of the World” (from Ecuador, found in “Your’re Not The Boss of Me!  Understanding the Six/Seven Year Transformation)  or “Queen Bee” from the Brothers Grimm  or “Forgetful Sammy” or “Twiggy”  as listed for the five-year-old.

 

June

Four Year Olds:  “The Pancake” with spring/summer details

Five Year Olds:  “Goldener”  (Plays for Puppets)

Six Year Olds:  “Snow White and Rose Red”  or “A Midsummer Tale” from the book “An Overview of the Waldorf Kindergarten”, also in “Plays for Puppets”

What are your favorite stories?  Please add them below!

Many blessings,

Carrie