Y’all are too worried about what curriculum you are going to use.

Read that again.

Homeschooling little people under the age of 9, which is most of the mail and messages I have been receiving lately regarding coming to homeschooling in place of using a school district’s online school, actually isn’t as much about curriculum as you think.

It’s about rhythm.

It’s about being outside, and movement that develops the gross and fine motor skills and hand eye coordination and eye tracking needing for academics.

It’s about being together and reading great books (yes, there are book lists by grade on this blog).

It’s about cooking together and doing chores together and gardening and singing together.

So, we kind of all know the popular mainstream choices for this age group – probably the ones I hear most includes Blossom and Root, Torchlight, Build Your Library, Moving Beyond the Page.  People find All About Reading and All About Spelling, and Beast Academy for math helpful.  You need a program, there is one out there for you! IEveryone has their personal favorites. If you are into Waldorf homeschooling, there aren’t actually too many options; the major ones have been around for years – Earthschooling, Christopherus, Live Education, Waldorf Essentials.  And of course, you can always put together a line of study from your library or used bookstore!

But don’t mistake curriculum only for homeschooling.  Homeschooling is about forging a family identity as a team, about learning to work together, about being able to know each other intimately and joyfully.  It shouldn’t be about just cramming in that last workbook page.

Establish a rhythm that involves warm meals you prepare together and clean up together, outside time, daily work like gardening, bread baking with kneading, arts and crafts with cutting and modeling, free play,  singing and creating music, free reading and reading together.  That’s what it is about.  Have the wonderful conversations and also know when to turn those wonderful conversations off and go have fun together.

Whatever curriculum y’all choose will be fine and if it’s not, you can change it.  What is much more important is the beautiful family legacy you are creating together.  Your first grader will grow up and be able to do what they want; our oldest is off to college at her top choice.  It happens, and it happens beyond the pages of any curriculum you pull out.

Love one another and find the joy,

Carrie

In the book, “Assessment for Learning in Waldorf Classrooms: How Waldorf Teachers Measure Student Progress Toward Lifelong Teaching Goals” by Ciborski and Ireland, the authors point out that: “Waldorf curriculum and pedagogy are flexible.  A College of Teachers governs the pedagogy in every Waldorf School, and has the authority to approve changes and innovations to enable the school to meet the needs of its students and families…..Most schools include community service projects in the curriculum.  Some schools have changed the foreign  languages to reflect offered to reflect the ethnicities of the student body or surrounding community; some have increased time allotted to physical education and competitive sports popular in neighboring schools; most schools have incorporated environmental issues into science, geography, and other subjects.  The curriculum is a guideline and is meant to be appropriate to the times and to the place as well as the age of the children.”

So, with this in mind you should feel FREEDOM to work within the curriculum.The curriculum itself is a spiral where if you cover grades 1-12,  you will cover subjects and skills in greater and greater depth.  Whilst the indications are based upon the indication of Rudolf Steiner and the many Waldorf teachers who have worked in Steiner Schools for 100 years, each teacher is charged with meeting the child in front of them and the needs of child within community. 

The constants within this include:

• Seeing the child as a spiritual being that has an individual and community-centered destiny to fulfill – how does the human being relate to the cosmos, the earth, the time we are living in?
• An encouragement of  the capactities of each individual child to become healthy, purposeful and one who values all of life; one who does what is right in a situation; one who can think independently, creatively.  A well-rounded individual

In developmental stages of 0-7 (doing), 7-14 (feeling but not emotions all over but rather eliciting a connection to the material that draws forth an experience and helps develop compassion and morality), 14 and above in high school (thinking), we generally teach:

• Knitting in the early grades moving into more complex handwork
• Music (singing and playing instruments), games, dancing, festival celebrations are important and included
• The use of the arts to increase cognitive capactities
• Form drawing to increase the neural connections of the brain, practice for writing, moves into geometry
• Math – developing logic and math skills through games, recitation, practical life work, skill progression in all grades;
• The history blocks – myths and legends moving into proper history; all cultures and religious traditions are explored, turning points of history, great contrasts, great biographies, hope in strife
• Science – nature stories moving into phenomenological science involving all branches of all science.
• Language arts – reading, writing, speaking; great poetry and literature; stories from every culture and religion

Subjects are taught in blocks (one subject in a main lesson period of two hours a day for 3-6 weeks being typical) with practice sessions for math and language arts skills depending on the block being covered.  This main lesson includes a rhythm of new work on one day, deepening of the material, reviewing practice the second day and the third day involves reinforced learning with collaborations in the classroom setting or writing or illustrations.  Outcomes include  projects, performances, projects, diagrams, drawings, written assignments, homework, tests, quizzes. The teacher is constantly developing themself through collaboration and nightly reflection.

I have heavily focused our homeschooling experience around service,  the different stories of the peoples of the world, social and racial justice, and science, especially focusing on marine science, ecology, biology, sustainability.  This is not to say we didn’t do math or  sing or do handwork or read wonderful literature or do chemistry.  I just think those were more our overarching themes perhaps. Your homeschool will look different!  There are not many “Waldorf” curriculums to pick from on the market and honestly almost any material can be “Waldorf.”  I use mainly used books and the library and yes pieces of varying curriculums (some Waldorf, some not Waldorf) to create my own experiences that intersect my family’s needs, where we live, and our religious beliefs as Episcopalians. I have used a variety of materials and at this point am rather eclectic within a developmental framework from my studies  that makes sense to me.  You can do this too!  I have over 10 years of posts on this blog covering birth through mainly grade 10, with general posts about grades 11 and 12 and high school overall.  We just graduated our first graduate this spring and she is off to a four year out of state university.  You can do this!

If you are interested in homeschooling this way and not sure how to adapt it for you and your family, please feel free to email me at admin@theparentingpassageway.com or to set up a phone consultation.

This is within your reach and grasp!  I feel homeschooling will be growing this year due to the uncertainty of #covid19, and now is the perfect time to start planning your year, and what you envision your children will need out of their education as results.

Many blessings and much love,

Carrie

SInce I have readers from nearly every country, from Australia to India and Nepal to many  Middle Eastern countries, (thank you readers!) who all represent many different religious, I don’t write a lot about the spiritual component to our homeschooling.  This site is about child development, healthy families, and healthy education other than to say that spirituality is an essential part of our humanity not to be ignored or cast aside.  However, every now and then I put a post out about what we doing with our religious studies, so today is an offshoot off the 2018 post about the Episcopalian/Anglican homeschooling according to developmental stages.

This year with our fourth grader, we are in the stage of Belonging/Heroes that I feel goes with the ages 7-14.  As a refresher, this is originally what I laid out for this age:

From Ages 7-14, Episcopalian homeschooling is about BELONGING and HEROES.

• We are still modeling BELONGING by the way we act toward others in daily life.  In this stage, we not only expect our children to model our behaviors that include and help people, but we hope to start to be able to see this action on their own.
• We still are going to church and celebrating the church seasons, the Eucharist, the feast and fast days, and we see now the stories in the Bible as a deeper level of encouragement in our own walk for loving ourselves, each other, and the Earth.
• As older children question things, we talk about how we use our intellect and experience as part of our experience with God.  Faith, tradition, reasoning, and experience are all part of being an Episcopalian.
• We get our older children to participate – older children can acolyte, participate in Children’s Choir and the Royal School of Church Music Program, help with the nursery, attend Sunday School and Vacation Bible School and summer camps.  We help and encourage relationships with the other children in the parish. My parish is pretty large, about 800 families, and I think there are probably close to 20 schools or more represented, so school attendance isn’t the deciding factor for friendship in our parish.
• We still use the Book of Common Prayer in daily and weekly life.
• We still spend lots of time in nature. Some at this stage will chosee to look for Episcopal summer camps – they are all over and provide incredible immersive experiences into nature and closeness to God.
• We develop more faith by participating in the life of the church.  We get involved with causes, with the classes and offering of the church, and if what we want is not there, we step up as parents and get involved.
• We start learning the stories of the heroes of our faith – the people who made the Anglican faith what it is
• My little mini-rant about Heroes of the Faith:  King Henry doesn’t count.  I shudder actually when people talk about that as if they don’t know any of the real ways and real heroes that made this strand of Western Christianity different than anything else.  Anglicanism was different than anything else because of where it happened –  The church was aligned with many Celtic beliefs and moved toward the customs and beliefs of the Western church with the Synod of Whitby, but in many ways still retains a good deal in common with its Celtic beginnings and with the church before the split of the Reformation.  So in a way, it was and still is its own thing!  If you want to debate me about King Henry, I will just delete your comment because it is a source of contention to me that people don’t know more about either their own denomination or others can’t be bothered to find out and just comment on things they haven’t researched.  #sorrynotsorry
• Heroes from the Holy Bible, and yes, the Feast Days of Saints that we celebrate (and the idea that we can all be Saints!  A little different concept in the Anglican Communion)
• Toward the end of this period, I like to talk plainly about the 5 Marks of Mission of the Episcopal Church of the U.S., which are:
• To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
• To teach, baptize and nurture new believers
• To respond to human need by loving service
• To seek to transform unjust structures of society
• To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
• We can start to talk to older children (7th and 8th grade) about the history of the church as involved in the Social Gospel period of history, our role in the Civil Rights Movement, our role in equality for LBGTQ people, and our positions on civil rights,  the environment,  and more.

So, for this year for fourth grade we have used these as our main resources (outside of attending church, singing in our children’s choir and volunteering):

• The Holy Bible
• Book of Common Prayer
• General Missionary Stories that correspond to our liturgical calendar
• “Plants Grown Up”  which is more a Reformed Protestant source, so I modify it to suit our needs
• “How The Bible Came To Us” by Meryl Doney that talks about the structure of the Bible, and how translating the Bible came to be – would be good for fifth graders as well.
• We are finishing the year studying the first part of the book of Daniel from the Old Testament and using Kay Arthur’s book, “You’re A Brave Man, Daniel!”.

For next year, fifth grade, I have plans to continue down the same vein by using the first four resources mentioned and am still researching our other plans!  We will probably be working with the last of the 5 Marks of Mission by working with the environment, which also fits in well with our plans to study botany in fifth grade.

Blessings and peace,
Carrie