Category Archives: Homeschooling

Get Your Planning On: A Daily Homeschool Form You Can Use

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I want to point out here something really, really important.  You are not trying to re-create a Waldorf School in your home.  Life is the curriculum.  The liturgical year, the birthdays, the appointments, the car breaking down, cooking, feeding the animals – that is all the curriculum for home learners.

There has been bigish (LOL) debate or discussion in the past about unschooling versus Waldorf homeschooling.  This is sort of moot in a way because by homeschooling I think there is automatically going to be “what comes up” as learning.  People have asked me how to reconcile “what Waldorf brings in when” with “what comes up” or “what my child wants to learn”.  I wrote a little about that in this post:  To me, if you are familiar with the development of the child, it is not hard to bring things in a developmentally appropriate way that still fits your family.

So, I am saying all this to say:  you don’t, you won’t, you don’t want to be perfect.  Take a daily rhythm that fits your family and now make your daily planning form.  And know that because you are running your home and your life, and not a school classroom with 30 children, there is room to wiggle.

Maybe on one block you combine all your children together into one main lesson period and rotate around between them.  Maybe you normally combine everyone and on some lesson blocks you try to work with some of the children individually.  Maybe most mornings you start with a gathering time, and today you decide you everyone needs a walk.  Don’t feel like your rhythm is a noose around your neck, and stop abandoning Waldorf because you don’t think you can do it perfectly.

So, since I don’t know what your rhythm looks like, I can only really share with you my daily planning form.  I essentially do plan two main lessons that are not too long, and they may be done outside so my toddler can roam free.  Or I might combine everyone at the same time.  It depends upon my mood.  I try to shoot for one time slot after lunch where I might be able to work on a little “extra lesson” – ie, a different subject.  My second grader will have an extra lesson of math each week on Thursdays, and my fifth grader will have extra lessons scheduled M,T, W to do either grammar, math or whatever it is that we need to get to.  In the past I have done mainly the main  lesson and worked in other things at the end as I needed to, but with a fifth grader this year I wanted to try it this way. That is the joy of homeschooling:  you try things, you tweak things, you go looser, you go tighter.

So my main idea of a rhythm looks like this right now, totally subject to change: Continue reading →

Get Your Planning On: A Weekly Homeschooling Form You Can Use

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My next step after figuring out the general seasonal and liturgical tone for each block, along with careful observation of my children and goal setting comes in making up a form each week that will entail some of the things that will run each week through our block.

I usually do it in a simple list format, and for me, my weekly list looks like this: (my notes are in the parentheses) Continue reading →

Get Your Planning On: A Homeschooling Form You Can Use

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Child’s Name Child’s Name Child’s Name Child’s Name
Block Name
Academic Goal
Artistic Goal
Spiritual Development Goal
Feasts of the Church
(insert your own religious practice here)
Important Dates
Misc Notes

This is a sample of the kind of form I fill out at the start of every block for children in the grades (although I did devote one column toward themes I am thinking about for our almost three-year-old).  Once you have gone through the steps I outlined here in this post, you can go through this form and start thinking about where your individual child is, and what you are hoping to accomplish in this particular block.  Knowing the calendar of your religious practice and other important dates also helps to set the tone around the block.  Life is the curriculum!

Here is a sample of this form, filled in briefly for my first block. Continue reading →

Get Your Planning On!

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Time to get your game face on and get planning!

I actually don’t have everything planned out for my school year yet, whereas in the past I was usually done by this point!  We have had a lot going on in my family, but now I am ready to start!   Are you ready to start as well?   I know many mothers who have all their resources  lined up right now, whether that is through the library, through curricula they bought, by looking at the curriculum charts – but now really need to start detailed planning.

Planning can really save your behind during the school year, if you forgive my bluntness.  It is truly important – even if your plans get off track or you even don’t follow some of your plans during the school year – there really is security in working through the material over the summer and preparing.

The first thing to do, after gathering your resources, (or gathering your ideas about where you are going to find your resources), is to  a time each week when you can sit down for two or more hours so you can focus without the children running around and just think and PLAN.  EVERY WEEK. Slow and steady wins the race, so talk to your spouse, partner, babysitter and place this sacred time in your calendar.

The next place, where I always start, is with the BIG PICTURE.  There are several themes this can take: Continue reading →

Are You Raising A Potted Plant?

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There should be warning signs for parents on every child in America:  “Warning!  This is not a potted plant!  This is a human being that needs sunshine, free play in nature and lots of movement throughout the entire lifespan!  Warning!”

 

Too often our children today are treated like potted plants. Sterile, not moving, in a pot, watching only one view because the inherent nature of the human being to move is essentially ignored by our predominate educational system, our medical system, and our society at large. 

 

Children of all ages, birth through twenty-one, need to MOVE.  Children birth through age seven should be developing their will, their doing.  Movement also is learning.  I have read research estimates that 80 percent of the brain is devoted to taking in sensory information and deciding what to do with that information.    Almost any long-time teacher will tell you that most children are kinesthetic learners. 

 

We know from current research that school aged children need at least three to four hours a day of true rough and tumble outside play. Heavy work benefits ALL children and ALL adults.  We are wired for it!

 

In a classroom setting, just having ten minute breaks to really move every two hours can completely increase learning.  According to a 2006 study in the journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, children with ADHD who take movement breaks for ten minutes every two hours show a 20 percent improvement in “on-task behavior.”

 

In Waldorf Education, we look at movement to be about a third of our learning time if possible.  We play movement games for math, we walk our forms before we draw them, we have eurythmy and Bothmer gymnastics in the Waldorf School setting, we include folk dancing in the curriculum for certain grades, we have drama and gardening.

 

You CAN do this at home and it will not complicate your homeschool, but enhance it!

 

Simple ways to start:

 

Finally, are you moving in your free time?  Are you cleaning, gardening, working? Hiking and biking and swimming and skating?  Or are you sitting down on your computer?  Just sayin’.  Smile

 

Happy Moving!

Carrie

Get Your Planning On: Homeschooling Kindergarten

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Every year I try to write a series of posts on planning and tackle each grade that I have been through so far.  I do this because each year as my children grow older and I do this longer, I have fresh insights. It also means I have gone down some paths more than once since I have multiple children.   It is interesting to go back and look under the “Homeschooling” tab on the header menu and see how my perspective has changed over time. 

 

At any rate, I wanted to write about Kindergarten today.  The heart of Kindergarten in a Waldorf School is daily rhythm, and the circle time. There recently was a whole series regarding rhythm on this blog, so I will leave you to put “rhythm” in the search engine box on this blog and review the posts that come up.  Rhythm is the most major component of not only homeschooling, but life.  Please do go back and look at that if it is an area you are trying to establish. 

 

Now on to the other component of many Waldorf kindergartens:  circle time.  The circle time in a school is a way of building a social community, a way of bringing the foundation blocks of  literacy and mathematical skills to the children, a way of bringing in movement and an awareness of the body.

 

At home, the circle time between you, your kindergarten aged child and the cat and dog may not be as effective as a circle time in a Waldorf School.  Some families have a circle time and it works well for them; some scatter verses and fingerplays throughout the day as they transition from one activity to the other.

 

My big point to you all is, though, that MOVEMENT needs to have a high place on your list for the kindergartener.  You will not have a classroom of 18 other children for your kindergartener to run around with at home, and what I am observing in many of the small children today (public, private or homeschooled!)  is that they are sedentary even at such a young age. 

 

Can your five or six year old ride a bike with no training wheels?  Climb a tree?  Swim? Gallop and skip? 

 

Make it a priority to get out into nature and cross logs, roll down hills in meadows, wade in rivers and streams, get dirty and play in the mud and the sand, walk barefoot on sand and pebbles, inhale the scent of the pines.   This is not only good for our sedentary children, but for those children who have a lot of nervous energy and chatter.

 

Give them movement through real work – helping with cooking, gardening, and baking.  Sing with them, love them, give them sound emotional and physical warmth.

 

I have written so many back posts about kindergarten and the early years, but I just wanted to give you a small taste of what was on my mind today.

 

Many blessings,

Carrie

Planning Tips For Homeschooling Kindergarten Through Grade Four

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Some mothers have been writing to me saying that their school is coming to a close, and they are feeling badly that they didn’t get to this block or that block.  In my household, we will not be finishing geography of the United States this year and will carry it over into our study of Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean next year in order to complete our North American Geography.  It is okay, it happens, and it will be okay next year.

Many times,  and I am finding this to be particularly true as a child moves into grades four and beyond, it can become difficult to outline this “exact plan” and stick to it.  For one thing, life always interrupts (well, that is at any grade), but I think with the children who are bit older things don’t always go down the same path that was outlined – you don’t always know what will go fast, what will provoke a beautiful rabbit trail, and what will go slow.  Development and learning is not a linear line that trends ever upward, but can be this dance of back and forth and sideways too.  The job of the teacher in these middle to upper grades I think becomes one of balance, gatekeeper in a sense as to what needs deepening now and when to know that this is a layer that will be deepened later.

One thing that always helps me is to think of the overlap and the custom touch.

Overlap:  Overlap, to me, means where the grades could overlap.  Continue reading →

The Rant: Get Out Of Your Own Way!

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Okay, today I am less in encouraging mode and more in rant-y mode, so if you are not in the mood for a kick in the pants kind of post, do feel absolutely free to check back in tomorrow.  That’s the disclaimer.  And here it is, bluntly:

 

Folks, I want you all to stop researching, and start making some decisions and DOING.  If what you decide doesn’t work out the way you want, you can tweak things.  You can change your mind, if it is something to do with parenting or discipline.  If it is something to do with curriculum choices for homeschooling, you can jump off the pages and make it more your own, if it is a curriculum you bought –  bring it alive for your child (or re-sell the darn thing!)  Make a decision, stick to it and give it some time, and then tweak or change.  You can do this!  Get out of your own way!  Do what your heart is calling you to do, without fear!  I am less interested in why something WON’T work then how to MAKE it work.  Try it!

 

I am meeting more and more mothers lately who are so lovely and sweet but they seem so driven by pure and utter fear.  Fear of being judged of others.  Fear of “since I can’t do it 150 percent “right” –whatever that is- I won’t do it at all!”  Fear of failure.  Fear of making a commitment, even though they keep circling back around to the same things over and over.

 

If fear, negativity and anxiety are fueling you, no wonder you feel paralyzed in making decisions!!  The more you get used to doing a REASONABLE amount of looking at the issues and making a decision and moving forward, the more you will get used to ACTION.

 

Action takes practice.  It doesn’t always feel “safe”.  But everything in life has pros and cons, polarities.  There is no 100 percent failsafe.  Have courage, have joy, take action and move forward!  It only takes baby steps and dipping a toe in, not this headlong dive into perfection and dogmatic thinking – and that is whether it is homeschooling, positive discipline or attachment parenting.  Be proud of the small successes and keep moving forward.

 

Create an action plan for whatever challenge you are facing.  And part of your action plan should be to do something small for yourself everyday.  Some of the mothers I meet I think are partially paralyzed because there is nothing for them at all,  they are pouring everything into their children, and they are harried, hurried and worn-out. 

 

Help yourself out by taking on only what you can handle!  Are you rushing around every morning and afternoon and squishing homeschooling in around all that?  Where is your time for your action plan if you are not home?  I had a dear, dear friend say to me several weekends ago, ‘You know, Carrie, I cannot hear that still small voice of God, I cannot find and listen to my own intuition, if I am just rushing around.”

 

YES, dear sweet friend, YES. 

 

Take care of business first; discern what is essential, create an action plan, and each day do something small to help you reach your goal.  Start somewhere.  No one will fault you for being where you are, but now is the time to move forward!  Make decisions, take time to see how things work out, and then tweak or change.  But move forward, and quit swimming in circles over fear, judgment, negativity, semantics, or pressure. 

 

It is spring, there is new growth and change in the air, and  a perfect time to start getting ready for fall school!

 

There, was that so bad?

Love,

Carrie

Planning First Grade For Your Oldest Or Only Child

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I have been thinking a lot about planning first grade as I am finishing up first grade for the second time, this time with my middle child. Going through this grade again made me think especially about the differences in doing this grade with a first (or only) child, and doing it again within a larger family dynamic.  So, if you are planning for first grade for your oldest or only child, I want to encourage you that you have quite a bit of leeway, to keep it simple, to not overplan and to make sure you are including some very fundamental things that may not have much to do with those letter stories or the math gnomes!

Oh yes, please be sure to include form drawing, knitting, crafts for the season, harvesting.

Yes, you want to go through the math blocks.  Yes, you want to introduce the letters – but many parents I speak with have oldest or only LITTLE GIRLS who are already reading.  So I say, concentrate on the artistic end of drawing the letters.  Let them write a sentence for each letter and practice really good handwriting, if your little girl is bent that way.  You can start word families in the last block or so of first grade; sight words generally are better left until second and third grade unless your child has a prodigious memory and is already doing it.  Let your child read for pleasure, but you continue to read aloud to this child too.  Make music and sing!  Do chores and work around your home.

But please schedule time for the most fundamental skills of first grade:  movement and getting the child in his or her body, time out in nature, and social interaction with other children.  Does your child do well with only one other child?  What does your child do in a small group?  Are they good with children older or younger or not?  Do you have a community you do things with?  Continue reading →

The Rant: The Difference Between School and Homeschool

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This is the time of year when I feel I must make an annual plea for the homeschooling family:  your family homeschool is not a Waldorf School.  There are extreme differences, and if you are trying to replicate a Waldorf School, or any kind of institutionalized schooling in your homeschool, please let it go!

I see many parents trying to recreate the Waldorf School in their homes; I think this comes up so frequently because the curriculum is so philosophically driven; each grade is geared toward the level of soul development of that child with the subjects geared toward the development of that age.  The subjects are presented by the teacher through the vehicles of art and movement in a rhythm that utilizes sleep as an aid to learning.

So, this must mean I have to turn myself into a Waldorf teacher at home, right?  Wrong!

First of all, the homeschool environment is looser, and in many ways, richer than the curriculum at a school.  Continue reading →