Category Archives: Homeschooling

Nokken: A Review of Two Books and A Few Thoughts

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(Post updated 6/28/2012)  Nokken has come up on almost every Waldorf Yahoo!Group and Waldorf forum I am on, so I thought it was about time to address the work of Helle Heckmann.  More and more, Nokken is being held up as an example within the Waldorf community of what to do right within child care for young children, and as an example of the value of outdoor play and outdoor time and connection with nature for young children.  For this post, I read both “Nokken:  A Garden for Children” by Helle Heckmann and “Nokken:  A Garden for Kids September 2003 Celebration Edition.”  I hear there is also a lovely video about Nokken that I have not yet seen.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Nokken, Nokken is a Danish approach to  Waldorf-based childcare in Copenhagen, Denmark.  The minimum age for children to enter is walking age.  Helle Heckmann writes, “The child must be able to walk away from her mother and into the world on her own,” on page 26 of “Nokken:  A Garden For Children.”  The center is open for six hours a day only, from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.  “Our idea is that we share with the parents,” writes Helle Heckmann on the same page.  “We look after the children for six hours, the parents have them for six waking hours and the children sleep for twelve hours.  In other words, the family will still exert influence on the child’s development.”  The staff at the center does not change during the day, unlike child care centers in the United States that are open for long hours that necessitate shift changes.  The children are together in one group from walking age to age 7, and sibling groups are welcomed and kept together, which is again different from the vast majority of child care centers in the United States.  Most Americans would agree this is a huge and vast improvement over the majority of daycare centers in the United States.

Helle  Heckmann writes on page 27 of Nokken,”  It is obviously difficult.  Parents often need longer opening hours, while at the same time they want the world’s best early-childhood program with a motivated and relaxed staff.  This is a difficult task, and knowing that we cannot accommodate all needs, we have chosen to favor the children.  It is a conscious choice we have made as a child-care center. Most of our parents also have to make a choice.  They change jobs, reduce their working hours, or work flexible hours:  the solutions are many and varied as they consciously choose to spend a lot of time with their children.”

She goes on to write that the role of child care has changed; in the past it was for primarily for social stimulation and now,  “The centers must teach children the basics to help them achieve the necessary skills to choose their life style at a later stage.  The parents’ role is mainly to stimulate and organize activities of a social and/or cultural interest.”

Ouch.

Okay, I guess since I am home with my children, perhaps I have a different perspective on this as a homeschooling mother.  Why as a society do we throw up our hands and say, this is the way it is?  People have to work, people have chaotic home lives, so the children are better off in child care than with their own families?  Why are we not coming up with more ways to support and develop parents?  Why in this age of abundant information (yet, often contradictory and just plain wrong information!) are parents feeling so confused and isolated as to what children truly need?  Why is there not more understanding of children as children and childhood development and such as opposed to treating children as miniature adults?

Back to the things that are good about Nokken.  On page 31 Helle Heckmann writes, “Our first priority is to spend most of the day outdoors.  We spend five out of the six hours we are together outdoors.”  The children and staff walk daily to a park with open natural spaces and also have a garden with many fruit trees, berry bushes, sand pits, a hen house, rabbit cages, a pigeon house, a vegetable garden, a herb garden, flower beds and a laundry area.  The children who are younger and need to nap sleep  outside in an open shed, which is common in Denmark.

Children are met in the morning with a handshake, which I find uncommon for Early Year Waldorf programs in the United States.  This seems very awakening for the child, and something I truly only hear of teachers of Waldorf Grades doing with their students in the United States.  Perhaps my Danish readers can tell me if this is a cultural difference?  My husband’s family is from Denmark but have not lived there for a long time, so I have no one to ask!

The daily schedule is something that is lovely and takes into account the ages of the children.  On page 60 of Nokken, Helle Heckmann writes, “We are careful not to let the youngest children participate in story-telling.  If it is a long story, the three year olds sit in another room and draw, because in my experience it is important not to engage them in activities for which they are not ready.”  She also talks about how festival celebrations are mainly for children over 3 as well.  I love this.

The part I have the most difficulty with however, outside of the few things I mentioned above, is the perspective of child development based upon the work of Emmi Pickler and Magda Gerber and their Resources for Infant Educarers.  I realize this puts me outside of most in the Waldorf community, which has embraced RIE.

I liked Helle’s description of the need of the infant to cry as a form of communication.  However, much of the thrust of her perspective of infant care seems to be “to leave the infant in peace and quiet to sleep or, when awake, to get to know herself without constant intervention from her surroundings.  Often it is difficult to show this infant respect and leave her alone. Constantly satisfying your own need for reassurance and your need to look at your beautiful baby will often influence the infant’s ability to be content with herself….By giving the infant peace and quiet for the first months of her life, she will get used to her physical life; the crying will gradually stop, and the baby may start to sleep during the night without waking up at all hours.”

As an attached parent, I believe I can respect my child and still enfold her within my protective gesture and be physically close.  I believe I can still carry her in a sling and nurse her and  have her act as a (passive) witness to my life without overly stimulating her.  I believe in our particular culture at this particular time, parents need reassurance to enfold their child within themselves and their family unit, not to separate their children in their infancy to be independent.  Perhaps this is a cultural difference than Denmark, I don’t know.

However, I also have to say that I  do not believe baby-wearing is an excuse to take my children everywhere I went before I had children.  I believe in protecting the senses but doing this in an attached way.

I do agree with some of Helle Heckman’ s statements regarding infants, including her statement on page 17 of Nokken that, “The more restless the adults are, the more restless the children will be.”  However, statements such as “The less we disturb the infant, the better chance she has of adapting to her life on earth,” rather bothers me.  I agree in not initiating the disturbance of  the infant, but I fear too many parents will take this as license to just set their infant down and let them cry or to keep them passively in a crib.  I do  agree with Helle Heckmann’s assessment that it is difficult to care for children under walking age within a child care setting  because of the high needs of care and because infants need peaceful surroundings.

As a homeschooling mother, what I take away from Nokken is the lovely thoughts of a forest kindergarten, napping outside, using action to communicate with small children and not words (see page 32 of Nokken), using singing as a way of talking to small children (page 51), Helle’s constant inner work and development, her obvious love of the children.

And as a homeschooling mother and attached parent, I don’t like the whole notion that is invading Waldorf Education that children under the age of 4 or 4 and a half should be out of their homes, I don’t like the notion that the child care center, no matter how outdoorsy “shares” the child with the parents, and I don’t like the idea that parents are not as empowered as they could be in childhood development.  Why are we positioning anyone but the parents to be the experts on their children and acting as if someone else knows better?    Waldorf schools are also taking children earlier and earlier into Kindergarten, and I also have an issue with that.   I would like to see more effort to again, empower and inspire parents within the Waldorf movement to be home.   The hand shaking to greet a small child with such pronounced eye contact also baffles me.

There are many wonderful things at Nokken, and many American parents who need child care would be thrilled to find a center such as Nokken in their neighborhood.  Many mothers attempt to create such an environment as part of their homeschooling environment or take in children from outside their family for care so they may stay home with their own children.  These are all realities.

However, I would love to see a movement toward empowering and inspiring mothers to be homemakers, to be truly spiritual homemakers, to encourage families to make tough choices to be home with their children,  because I feel this is where the power of the next generation is truly going to disseminate from.

Blessings,

Carrie

Book Review: “A Lifetime of Joy: A Collection of Circle Games, Finger Games, Songs, Verses and Plays for Puppets and Marionettes”

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This book was “collected, created, adapted and translated” by Bronja Zahlingen, a familiar name to many of us in Early Waldorf Education.  I adore this book.  Bronja Zahlingen was born in Poland in 1912 and went to Germany at the onset of WWI.  She first encountered anthroposophy in high school and after graduation and kindergarten training began a kindergarten in Vienna.  She went to conference in England at the time of invasion of Hitler’s troops and stayed in England for a number of years.  She returned to Vienna in 1950 and began her life’s work of creating linguistic games, poems and stories for young children.  She died in 2000, and this lovely book is so wonderful for small children and is such a testimony to her creative spirit. 

The rhymes and stories really are wonderful for children up to age nine and will convince you of the wonder and appropriateness of puppetry in bringing these stories.  Many of Bronja’s articles are also included.  In her article entitled “In Praise of Early Childhood” she points out this fact”:

“Human beings can change and develop beyond their natural genetic and biological dispositions, on which their spiritual, soul and moral qualities never entirely depend.  Here we begin to understand the great responsibility that rests upon us adults, as parents and educators; in fact, upon the whole attitude and environment that a particular place, culture or civilization has to offer.

In the presence of young children, this responsibility is especially great because in their earliest years, children are endowed with an immense power of imitation that can also reveal the great trust and confidence they have in us and in the world around them.  They cannot yet distinguish values, and seem to assume that everything around them is good.  During this period of life, body, soul and spirit still exist as a unity.”

In this book there are also articles entitled, “Movement, Gesture and Language in the Life of the Young Child” and “The Pedagogical Value of Marionette and Table Puppet Shows for the Small Child”.   There are verses and songs, circle games, stories and plays for puppets for every season along with Christmas legends based around nature.

These puppet plays are fabulous and could really make up the block of your entire school year for the Kindergarten-aged child.   The puppet plays do include music and songs, so it would be advantageous if you or someone you know could read music.

Consider this book as an essential book for your shelf for your young child (and those who are young at heart). 

Many blessings,

Carrie

Waldorf and “Addictive Behavior” in Children

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I recently have had questions from mothers regarding their small under 7 children and the children’s behavior or tendency to 1 – “wanting to sit around” all day rather than being physically active; 2- wanting to sit and look at book after book after book after book and 3; wanting to sit and have the parent tell story after story after story after story after story and 4; wanting the parent to play all day long with them.  In many cases this is an older child or an only child with no siblings to play with, but I have also seen this happen with restless children who are just not peaceful yet.

Part of the view of Waldorf education is that children under the age of 9 are prone to “emotional excess” for lack of a better term:  they are sensitive to the environment, the stimuli of the environment and are in the stages of learning about themselves.  The children are viewed as starting to view themselves as separate from the environment, their parents, etc around the age of 9.  I am sure we can all recount the four and five year olds who want to grow up to be an animal, a rock, (and at the same time a doctor or artist or whathave you).  That is a good example of the consciousness of a four or five year old.

If a child has a tendency (and we don’t look at temperament until they hit 7, so please don’t say they their behavior is due to their temperament quite yet!) to just sit, or want to hear stories over and over, or needing a parent to play all day long with them, please go back and do the following:

1. – Look at yourself!  Sometimes it is very hard with only one child.  Are YOU physically active outside?  Is that part of your daily rhythm?  Do you garden, walk, hike weekly, go swimming?  Your example and working this into the rhythm will be of utmost importance for this child.

2 – Look at your rhythm!  There should periods of in-breath, of out-breath, periods of being inside and quiet, periods of being outside and running around, there should be time for spontaneous stories but also for that one special story with a candle

3.  Small children under the age of 7 may need your assistance in playing.  Children of this age learn through imitation, and therefore may need your help.  However, this does not mean you need to sit down and play with your child non-stop.  You can start a child with a scenario and help them set up things for them (or set up things for them the night before), and you can move toward being “the grandmother who does the dishes where the train  is going through the town” or some other minor role.  You can help the play get “unstuck” but it is part of our job to FACILITATE play, not completely organize and lead it and be an equal playmate.

4. Have some times when you are UNAVAILABLE.  There may be times where you just need to wait “for the story fairy to bring you a story, but right now is time to peel the carrots for dinner” and hand them a peeler!

5.  Which brings us to an important point:  do not underestimate the importance of getting your child involved in helping with the chores of the day.  Practical work is the heart of the home.  There should be daily chores that are done every  day, and also focus activities of each day.

6. If your child is restless, whiny, etc do not feel you have to fix it.  If they do not want to peel the carrots, YOU go on and peel the carrots and sing a song.  If your child is frequently “bored” (and yes, I have heard very small children use this term), tell them it is okay to do nothing and some idea will come to them through the angels or the fairies.   I reassure my children that sometimes I feel like that, but mainly I can always think of some handwork or cooking I would like to do.   If you have time, you can always take a quick walk and change the scenery. 

Look for a post coming regarding facilitating play in children to come soon.  In the meantime, here is an old post I wrote regarding “Fostering Creative Play”: 

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/10/29/more-about-fostering-creative-play/

and here:

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/10/05/fostering-creative-play/

With children under the age of 9, it is our job to help them curb their “excesses” by using our rhythm, our calm presence, our help to enfold them in our love and warmth and to MOVE THEM FORWARD.  If you let your child sit and look at book after book for two hours a day, is this moving them forward in their creative thinking, their play, their prowess in moving  their bodies (which is a hallmark of what children under the age of 7 should be doing!)  Have your big picture for the first seven years in mind so you can tailor your decisions around that!

Much love,

Carrie

Summer Planning: Christian Education for the Waldorf Home

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Here are some resources we are planning to use this coming school year, perhaps they will be of interest to YOU!

Breakfast devotional: We are using “Our 24 Family Ways Family Devotional Guide.”  I will be honest with you all, I don’t love it but I have not found anything I like much better.  I am thinking I will eventually write my own!  Seriously!

Lunchtime- Lunchtime Gratitudes – If you need examples, try page 14 of Amanda Blake Soule’s “The Creative Family:  How to Encourage Imagination and Nurture Family Connections.”

Adult Bible Study:  After lunch, at Quiet Time, I spend some time on a Beth Moore Bible Study before I lay down.  The Beth Moore Bible Study typically rotates once a quarter.

Before Bed:  365 Read-Aloud Bedtime Stories by Daniel Partner for children.  For me,  I am reading through Guideposts’ “The Daily Bible: In Chronological Order 365 Daily Readings.”

Mondays are the day I usually tell a story of a “Bible Hero” before our quiet time and we have some sort of craft tying into this before dinner.

Friday mornings are the time we use wooden figures and tell a Bible story from the book, “Young Children and Worship.”  I got my book here http://www.faithaliveresources.org/Young-Children-and-Worship?sc=9&category=8264.    

I got some of the little wooden figures to go with the stories in this book here:

http://www.faithaliveresources.org/Children/Story-Figures-Young-Children-Worship

The other big emphasis we are working toward this year is making a day of rest in our week.  This little book has many, many ideas:  “A Day of Delight: Making Sunday the Best Day of the Week” by Pam Forster and available through www.Doorposts.net

Blessings,

Carrie

An Example of a First Grade Science Block

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I am a Waldorf homeschooling mother, just like YOU!  This was a block I made up for First Grade (a January block) and thought it may give some of you inspiration for working science in with all the writing, math and form drawing of First Grade.  This is not to tell you how to do a block, but to inspire you that it is possible to write your own blocks!  It is doable!

Songs:  We learned a song in German about the Four Seasons and practiced it every day when we started school

Festival Celebration:  Epiphany (Three Kings’ Day) – we made a Twelfth Night Cake

WEEK ONE:

Day One –  Call to school with singing and verses

Warm up with singing, pennywhistle,  bean bag math

I recited a poem about the 12 months of the year and also the standard Mother Goose rhyme regarding the number of days in each month

We went through the names of each month in order, what each month made us think of, the four seasons

Made a calendar in English and German

Finished by telling Dorothy Harrer’s “The Four Seasons”

Movement Games

Wet on Wet Painting

Closing Verses

Day Two –  Call to school with singing and verses

Warm up with singing, pennywhistle,  bean bag math

Recited poems from yesterday and looked at calendar

We wrote  a title page for the Main Lesson Book:  The 12 Months, The 4 Seasons on a golden path, all capitals for the First Grader

Re-visited story and children dressed up parts in the story

Movement Games

Wet on Wet Painting

Closing Verses

Day Three –   Call to school with singing and verses

Warm up with singing, pennywhistle,  bean bag math

Recited poems again, revisited calendar

Had pictures drawn on the blackboard of the Four Brothers from the story which my child drew into her Main Lesson Book and captioned the names of each of the brothers

Movement Games

Wet on Wet Painting

Closing Verses

Day Four – Call to school with singing and verses

Hiking in the morning to really feel the weather and see its effects on the plants and animals of our area

Nature Arts and Crafts – made ice bowls, told the story of Dorothy Harrer’s “The Snowflake” after crafting

Closing Verses

WEEK TWO

Day One-  Call to school with singing and verses

Warm up with singing, pennywhistle,  bean bag math

Recited poems from last week

Talked about looking at each Season separately, this week we thought about fall, what season fall came before,  what season comes after fall, what months are in fall, what we associate with fall

Told the story “The Littlest Gnome” and “The Second Gnome” together as one story from Margaret Peckham’s “Nature Stories”

German Practice

Nature Arts and Crafts

Closing Verses

Day Two –  Call to circle with singing and verses

Warm up with singing,  pennywhistle, bean bag math

Recited poems from last week

Re-visited the story and modeled with beeswax elements from the story while I recited some gnome verses!

Movement Games

Nature Arts and Crafts

Closing Verses

Day Three – Call to circle with singing and verses

Warm-up with singing, pennywhistle,  bean bag math

Recited poems from last week

Re-visited story

Drew picture in Main Lesson Book of scene from story representing Fall and captioned scene with part of a poem, “ Summer is flying,/Autumn is here,/This is the harvest of all the year.”  (written with all capitals for the First Grader).

Started to move into Winter…what the animals do in Winter?  What animals do we see in Winter?  How do we help our animal friends in Winter in our backyard?  Where are the flowers?  What is Mr. Sun doing?

Told the story of “Shingebiss” – this story is  in many sources, Winter Wynstones has it, the Waldorf Association pink Kindergarten book has it, it may be  available on-line, but the music with it is wonderful and I don’t think that is posted on-line anywhere.

Spanish Practice

Nature Arts and Crafts

Closing Verses

Day Four  – Call to circle with singing and verses

Warm up with singing,  pennywhistle, bean bag math

Revisit Shingebiss, act it out!

(We live in a fairly snow-less area, so we made “snow” in a plastic sensory table, but if you had real snow it would be great to go and build snow forts).

We also cut out paper snowflakes.

Movement Games

Nature Arts and Crafts

Closing Verses

DAY Five – Shortened Day

Call to circle with singing and verses

Revisit story

We drew in our Main Lesson Books a winter scene from Shingebiss and wrote this caption, “Now that Winter’s/Come to stay/Little Birds must fly away.”

We did some wet on wet painting in blue and coated it with Epsom salts that leaves crystals behind as it dries.

One thing we did over the weekend was to make a little diaroma in a shoebox with Shingebiss (made out of beeswax)  in his lodge and the lake…Lots of fun!

WEEK THREE

Day One – Call to circle with singing and verses

Warm up with pennywhistle, singing, bean bag math

See if we can recite poems from beginning of block

Tell story of  “The Prince of Butterflies” by Dorothy Harrer

We moved like butterflies, rolled each other up in silk cocoons and otherwise had a great time!

German Practice

Candlemas Crafts

Closing Verses

Day Two – call to circle with singing and verses

Warm up with pennywhistle, singing, bean bag math

Recited poems orally from beginning of the block

Make a caterpillar/butterfly puppet show from Suzanne Down’s book “Around the World with Finger  Puppet Animals”

Re-visited our story!

Spanish Practice

Candlemas crafts

Closing Verses

Day Three – call to circle with singing and verses

Warm up with pennywhistle, singing, bean bag math

Recited poems

Revisited story and drew a picture of Twig and Dame Nature from the story with the caption, “Trees get back their leaves/And out came bees and birds.”

We cut out felt shapes of waterfall, pool, wide stream, wide river with boats, ocean and then I told the story, “The Lazy Water Fairy” with these props about Summer.

Candlemas Crafts

Baking

Closing Verses

Day Four – call to circle with singing and verses

Warm up with pennywhistle, singing, bean bag math

Recited poems

Revisited story and acted out the parts of the different kinds of fairies

Candlemas Crafts

Closing Verses

Day Five – call to circle with singing and verses

Warm up with pennywhistle, singing, bean bag math

Recited poems

Revisited story

Drew in Main Lesson Book with caption, “The Golden Sun so great and bright/Warms the world with all its might.”

Candlemas Crafts

Closing Verses

 

Unfortunately, I am not sure from my notes at this point where the poetry came from.  I am wondering if these came from poems from Eric Fairman’s Grade One Path of Discovery book which I lent out to someone so I cannot check and see if they are in there!    If anyone knows, I would love to post the reference!

The point of this is NOT to say this is how you should do a block or whathaveyou but to point out it is possible to create your own blocks!  Get inspired in your planning!  For example, there are so many different ways one could have approached this block!

I am up to February in writing lesson plans for a second grader and a kindergartner, where are you these days??

Many blessings and peace,

Carrie

“What Do I Do? My Child Can’t Handle Fairy Tales!”

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If this is your child, take a deep breath.  This issue comes up more frequently than one might suspect. 

First of all, check yourself.  I had a friend once who said how much she enjoyed fairy tales and felt comfortable with them, but then admitted there were parts that “were not so nice”.   Okay, so not as comfortable as she thought she was!  The thing is, one HAS to look at the fairy tales as archetypal images, not from an adult perspective of literal happenings. 

Secondly, check the age of your child and what adult factoids the child has been exposed to in their educational career.  If your child has been exposed to lots of “but these are the facts, m’am” regarding science and other subjects and things usually have a “literal” answer for the child, then it will be more difficult for the child to absorb these tales in an archetypal way.  Some children are truly not comfortable with Grimm’s tales until age six and a half or seven, but there are many other kinds of tales to pick before then.  If you need suggestions, please leave a comment in the comment box and I would be happy to suggest something for the age of your child!

Third, pick tales that you are comfortable with.  Read the tale for three nights before you tell the fairy tale so you  absorb it yourself and you can TELL it to your child.  Consider songs and puppetry and props for your tale as opposed to just straight “telling”.  I think especially for children who have been “over-factoided”, they need that soothing visual imagery of silk marionettes to help them along.    There are many wonderful Waldorf resources that have turned fairy tales into Circle Times and puppet shows.  “Plays for Puppets”, available through Waldorf booksellers, is a lovely place to start.

I wrote a full post regarding the necessity of fairy tales with more suggestions for choosing fairy tales by age here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2008/11/20/the-importance-of-fairy-tales/

These tales are medicine for your child’s soul; for helping your child deal with their own fears, for showing a child the optimistic view that the world is truly a good place.  Meditate on this, find the truth in this.

Blessings,

Carrie

Science in the First and Second Grade Waldorf Homeschool Curriculum

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There is a wonderful article here regarding the approach toward science within the Waldorf curriculum:  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/ScienceDavid.pdf

As a science person, I also wrote an article on this blog regarding how I view the rigorousness of science as presented throughout the Waldorf curriculum and also traced what subjects in science are brought in when here:

https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/02/28/science-in-waldorf-homeschooling/

Science is a very important subject to me and to our family.  I think Waldorf education provides a very rigorous and age-appropriate, developmentally- appropriate way to science education.  For First Grade and Second Grade, many parents wonder what they should be doing within the curriculum for Science since most of the emphasis is placed upon Language Arts, Math and Form Drawing.  Let me assure you there are plenty of places to work science in!

Here are some ideas and suggestions:

  • Form drawing off of simple nature stories. This is especially effective during these early grades.
  • Tell spontaneous made-up stories regarding the animals around your home and in your area.  A wonderful reference is Anna Comstock’s “Handbook of Nature Study.”  Read up on what animal or plant you would like to make a story about and work those characteristics into your story.
  • Do several short one to two-week blocks on backyard nature each season.
  • Spend lots of time outside just feeling, observing, using the 12 senses every day and in every kind of weather.  Look at how the weather affects plants and animals throughout the seasons.
  • Do get Joseph Cornell’s “Sharing Nature with Children” and work nature games into your school year.
  • Do plenty of festival preparation – this is part of science:  the cycle of the year.
  • Do plenty of arts and crafts involving natural materials on your craft days.  Look at things such as the cycles of wool from visiting sheep at a farm to raw fleece washing to carding and spinning to dyeing yarn and knitting as part of your handwork.
  • Start a garden!  Garden throughout much of the year.  See my review on “Gardening with Young Children” by Beatrys Lockie here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/08/07/book-review-gardening-with-young-children-by-beatrys-lockie/
  • Cooking provides many opportunities to observe chemical phenomenon.
  • Visit farms, orchards, aquariums, zoos, beaches, mountains, grasslands and other places.
  • Start terrariums and aquariums.
  • Catch small animals and keep them overnight and then let them go! We currently have a snail that we found and have enjoyed watching the snail move with its one foot, seeing the snail’s eyes on the end of the stalks up close, finding out what  a snail loves to eat, how to build a snail habitat. 
  • Feed the birds throughout the winter, put up bird boxes, bat houses, owl houses. 
  • Get your little outdoor  space certified as a Backyard Wildlife Habitat.
  • Read stories that have to do with nature.  Donna Simmons has great lists in  her book “From Nature Stories to Natural Science” available here: http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/bookstore-for-waldorf-homeschooling/essential-christopherus-publications/from-nature-stories-to-natural-science.html
  • In first and second grade, provide opportunities to work through the elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.  Some second grade families do an entire block on these elements through toy and craft making.
  • Look at thing with the NAKED eye to really develop observation skills – you have years left in which to use microscopes, magnifying glasses and telescopes. You do not need these things yet!  Save your money until you really need these things in later years!
  • Work through poetry and movement.  Choose seasonal fingerplays, songs, circle time work that looks at animals and plants in the seasons.  Move like these animals.
  • Work with any pets you may have to train them.  Clicker training is just wonderful, and works with pretty much any animal from dogs to cats to Oscars (the fish).   If you google “clicker training”, lots of resources will come up.  Help your child to do such  things  as feed and brush the dog, but do NOT expect the child to take full responsibility  for a pet yet!  Work to include your animals in the rhythm of your day.
  • Other appropriate blocks to work in science include a block of the four seasons, length of year, length of months in First or Second Grade.  A good resource for stories involving the seasons is Dorothy Harrer’s
  • Blocks that include work with the Four Elements are great sources of inspiration and scientific thinking.
  • Blocks that include stories that revolve around the animals and plants of a specific habitat – mountain, desert, ocean.

Hope that sparks some ideas for you as you plan,

Carrie

Book Review: “Gardening With Young Children” by Beatrys Lockie

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I have to admit right off that this is one of my favorite books because I feel it brings the experience of a wonderful gardener and Kindergarten teacher and marries it to an imaginative approach to nature and gardening for children between the ages of three and seven. 

This is one of my favorite quotes in the entire book, presented in the “About This Book” section (and this is after the author presents a case that children live in pictures, in stories, in the imagination):  “Many grown-ups, by contrast, live in a world of the intellect, of logical cause and effect. This is foreign territory for a small child.  The child can make little of this approach, and quickly becomes bored.  Worst of all, a child fed nothing but intellectual fodder can later become emotionally stunted.  An intellectual adult  often finds it more difficult to conjure vivid images than does a more intuitive person.  But we can all try.  Otherwise, what we give to children goes right over their heads.”

Many parents coming to Waldorf lament that they “don’t know how to NOT teach” or they have no idea how to answer children’s questions in a pictorial way.  This book will give you some great ideas!

The first chapter of this book talks about some of the practical aspects of gardening with small children that the adult needs to be aware of: soil acidity, plant preferences, soil acidity,  weather, fitting gardening into your schedule.  The next four chapters cover each season with plentiful suggestions and examples of stories, activities, songs, arts and crafts ideas, baking and cooking ideas.  Such traditional festivals as Advent and Candlemas are also covered.    After that, there is a section on “The Town Child” for folks who live in densely populated cities and how to work with that, and the last chapter includes a month-by-month gardener’s calendar.

This book packs in a lot of information and suggestions for its 136 pages, and I feel is a resource one will refer to for multiple years.  Again, this would be an especially wonderful resource for those just starting out in gardening and those unsure of how to approach gardening and nature in a more imaginative, wonderous way.

Blessings,

Carrie

Book Review: “Earthways: Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children”

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“Earthways:  Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children” by Carol Petrash is a much-loved book by a Waldorf teacher (and her husband, Jack Petrash, as many of you know, is a Waldorf Class Teacher) and is an easily accessible place to start to learn about how to construct a nature table, how to look at arts and crafts from a natural materials standpoint, how to work seasonally within your homeschool. 

My copy was published in 1992, and has about 202 pages.  It opens with an introduction regarding the environmental problems that are facing us today, but places this within the context of the developmental age of the young child:

“They come into life with a sense that the world is good and beautiful.  Our interactions with them and the ways in which we bring them into contact with nature can either enhance these intuitions or destroy them.  When children are met with love and respect, they will have love and respect to give.  Our task as the parents and educators of young children is not to make them frightfully aware of environmental dangers, but rather to provide them with opportunities to experience what Rachel Carson called “the sense of wonder.”  Out of this wonder can grow a feeling of kinship with the Earth.

She has a whole section of how to use this wonderful book, and how the book works in many projects from whole to parts (a foundation of Waldorf Education!)

Fall includes such things setting up an Earth-Friendly home and classroom, creating a Seasonal Garden (some of us may call this a Nature Table or Nature Space that changes with the seasons), and then a myriad of arts and crafts using natural materials – leaves and paint, pinecone people, baking activities, using pumpkins and Indian corn for baking and crafts.  Winter focuses on the indoor play space, what your Seasonal Garden might look like for Winter, some finger knitting, woodworking and other indoor projects and things that would be appropriate for Saint Valentine’s Day.  Spring focuses on the use of natural products to clean your home and classroom, the Seasonal Garden, experiences with the element of wind, working with wool from whole to parts, starting a garden.  Finally, Summer focuses on creating an outdoor play space, the Summer Seasonal Garden, harvesting and eating berries, and more arts and crafts projects designed to capture the feeling of Summer.

There is a complete listing of mail-order supply companies, an extensive bibliography for teachers, and a list of picture books for small children arranged by season. 

This book can sometimes be found on the shelves of local libraries, but I do think this is one you may want to have on your shelves.  You will return to it time and time again!

Blessings,

Carrie

Start Now!

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I think this may be part of the July doldrums following we mothers around, (or perhaps panic in the midst of planning for homeschooling to start in a month of so for many of us in the United States?), but I have heard so many mothers lamenting lately:

  • “I found Waldorf so late.”
  • “My young child was so intellectually awakened and now I look back it and I don’t think it was the right decision.  She really burned out at age 8 and seems so unhappy.”
  • “The way our family handled discipline was not good, and now we are paying for it.”
  • “I didn’t know enough about connecting to my child when they were younger and I did everything wrong.”
  • “I am still doing everything wrong even though I know more now than I did!  I just can’t seem to put it all into place!”

Mothers, I am here to encourage you.  This wonderful child came to you, to your family, for a reason.  You are the right mother for this child.  No other mother could do a better job than you can with this particular child that was called to be yours. 

You did the best you could with the information you had at the time, and you did the best you could do with your child being the person you were at the time.  The wonderful thing is that we are all continually growing and learning. You are a different parent with each child you have and that is truth!  But it is okay to be that different parent and not lament the past!

The question is, what would help you today?  What would help your child  MOST today?

Evaluate – what is working for me with this child?  What I am doing that is NOT working with this child?  Where does this child need help in being balanced out the most?  What is absolutely most challenging for this child?  What is my role in helping this child?  Where am I right now?

Pray, meditate and listen.  Where you need to go from here?  Where is the Divine, the Spirit, God, leading you in this question?    Some mothers write things down and journal, some mothers just listen and absorb.

How will I put this into action?  What does it require of me?  Wayne Dyer, in his book, “What Do You Really Want For Your Children?”  notes, “Imagine going to your dentist and having him give you a lecture on the importance of oral hygiene, while all the time smiling at you through rotting teeth.  Or, visualize yourself talking to your doctor and having him tell you about the evils of nicotine addiction  while blowing cigarette smoke in your face.”

In other words, if there is something that your small child needs to work on, work on it as well.  Set the example, live by the example.

Be the change you want to see in your children.

Peace,

Carrie