Category Archives: Homeschooling

Some Quick Ideas for September for the Waldorf Kindergarten Crowd

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Here are some fast ideas for September for the Waldorf  Kindergarten crowd:

Have some verses or songs to call your child to a circle/fingerplay time:  Come, Follow, Follow is a classic one that comes to mind along with this easy verse (that seems to have a few variations out there, so don’t fret if this is not the version you know!):

Good morning Dear Earth,

Good morning Dear Sun,

Good morning Dear Trees and Stones every one,

Good morning Dear Beasts and Birds in the Tree

Good morning to You and Good Morning to me!

What songs will you be bringing to your child for the whole month of September?  You can bring the same songs for a month!  I like to base our songs of the month around what festivals are upcoming.  There are many wonderful pentatonic Michaelmas songs one can play on a recorder, Choroi flute or pennywhistle.  Classics include “A Knight and  A Lady”,   This is a great chance for  you to practice learning your own blowing instrument so you will be able to teach your child in first grade!

Choose some fingerplays or plan out a whole circle time with songs and verses if your family likes circle time.  Common circle time themes for September, at least in the United States, include squirrels and other little forest creatures getting ready for Winter, harvesting,  apple picking and apples, leaves and changing of the colors of leaves, ponies going to and from the harvest and pulling carts of the harvest.  Fingerplays can include such things as counting, colors, shapes.   

You may want to go into your  practical work for the day here, or you may want to sing a song and transition into a fairy tale.  For a three or four year old, this would be either a very repetitive, simple tale or a nature tale.   www.mainlesson.com has a number of wonderful tales.  For a five or six year old, you could start getting into the Grimm’s fairy tales.  Fairy tales that have repetitive phrases or songs are usually attention-getters and pleasers.  The book “Let Us Form A Ring” has some tunes set for some of the Grimm’s fairy tales, along with “pre-made” circle times and a few stories that include music in the back of the book.  For example, the story “The Pancake Mill”is in this book, complete with music and that would be a lovely fall story.  What props, puppets or craft items will you need to complete this experience for your child?  Do you have a song or verse to transition into a time of listening and sharing your told story?

Next, what practical work will you be doing?  Housekeeping, wet on wet watercolor painting, baking, gardening, arts and crafts?  Again, for September in the United States much can center around apples, the star inside an apple, baking and cooking with apples, apple drying, the changing of the seasons so perhaps leaf painting, rubbing, leaf banners, dipping leaves into glycerin wax to make a leaf banner, making little figures out of pinecones, collecting things from outside and making little “carpets’ with them on the ground……Just as a note, six year olds need longer and more complex projects than a three-year old! Think a bit on it!

Work in your outside time, creative inside play time (what can you add to your indoor space for fall, what will change, what play scenes will you arrange),  preparations for the time of Michaelmas if you celebrate that festival and wa-la!  A very loving Waldorf Kindergarten in your own home!

You also need a simple closing verse!  Don’t let your school time just fade away into nothing!  Close it up, and be satisfied at a job well-done!

There is a lot more to say on this subject, but that literally is a very fast skeleton to plan from for a small child. 

Many Blessings,

Carrie

Foundations For A Healthy Childhood

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Waldorf education is all about health; the health of the child and where that child is today and where that child will be in the future.  I urge you to go and listen to this FREE audio download regarding Waldorf as a Therapeutic Education if you have not discovered it  already, here is the link:   http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/bookstore-for-waldorf-homeschooling/audio-downloads.html   This talk has a playtime of about 67 minutes so you can plan accordingly.

As you are planning for fall for the big and the small kids, let’s take a moment to remember some of the essentials for  a healthy childhood:

  • Happy parents comes to mind first.  Your work on your marriage or partnership, your own inner work is of utmost importance.  I know I keep saying it over and over, but it is so important.   Your child only starts to separate from you beginning at age 9, and views themselves as part of you.  If you are unhappy, not joyous in the home, unhappy in parenting, then please take the time to meditate, pray, talk to a counselor or whatever you need to do to get yourself centered and peaceful and joyous.   I hear from parents all day long who truly seem to be miserable being home.  This is why many families evaluate their decision to homeschool their children year-by-year, child-by-child.  No, I do not believe sending a child to school gives one more time “to work on oneself” or fixes the problem typically.  I have heard some parents say the worse thing they ever did was send their child to school for a year and then try to come back to homeschooling (and other children and families seem to handle this fine!!).    However, the recognition that there are things going within the family and the family dynamic is of utmost importance.
  • Within your planning of your rhythm for fall, please do plan in some time just for you.  I  am not one of those people who believes that one needs to be away from one’s children to be fulfilled or recharged, but some people do need that and I respect that, and I do think many mothers are very guilty of not scheduling appointments for their own teeth, their own physicals, time with their spouse or partner which does lead to problems later on.  These are things that also have to happen.  Make them happen, and you won’t be sorry!
  • RHYTHM.  Children who are high-needs, children who have sensory processing disorders and other challenges often actually need a bit of a tighter rhythm than others.  A rhythm should not be a stranglehold schedule, but it should provide a flow to the day.  Younger children may have a rhythm that includes different practical work or activities each day, while older children may work within a head-heart-hands approach where some of the same activities are repeated over a block of time more than once a week (otherwise it would be hard for them to complete any projects, wouldn’t it, if the child was only working on said project once a week!). 
  • Sleep and rest.  These are biggies.  All children who are not napping, and this includes the biggest children of them all, the adults, should have quiet time after lunch.  As a homeschooling parent, you will need this break.  And, if you cannot figure out why your four, five or six year old who is no longer napping cannot settle down during quiet time, I have to ask you:  What are YOU doing?  Are you laying down quietly and resting, or are you running around, on the computer, on the phone, doing chores?  If you lay down and rest, your children will imitate you!
  • Healthy diet.  In this day and age, there are so many food allergies, food sensitivities.  If your child is having behavioral issues, many parents have shared with me that the child’s diet needed adjusting in some way.  Perhaps an allergist, a homeopath or other health care provider can steer you in the right direction. 
  • Many folks believe that Waldorf for the Early Years involves children being able to totally entertain themselves, but I personally find in this age of the “restless child” that they need a rhythm and a play area set up to assist in this.  They may even need you to not be involved in play, but to at least give them a bit of an idea. “I am the elderly woman washing dishes, and you are the traveler coming to my village.”  They may need you to set up play scenarios at night after they have gone to bed, or to move the playroom around so the toys seem “brand new”.  Fostering creative play is very important, and there are ways that as adults we can help that process along.
  • Time in nature, nature games that use all senses, and gardening is very important.  Another thing to consider in your planning as this forms such an important basis of childhood. 

 

Cheers!

Carrie

Carrie’s Laws of Childhood

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I am sure many of you have read Dr. Helmut von Kugelgen ‘s famous article “The Laws of Childhood”, published in the WECAN publication “The Developing Child:  The First Seven Years:  The Gateways Series Three” .  It is an excellent article and I thoroughly enjoyed it!  It really got me thinking about  my own “laws of childhood” or “Truths in Parenting for the Under 7 child”.  Lots of fun.

1.  You must start with yourself.  If you are not happy, if you are not joyous, if you are finding the transition to mothering difficult, then get some inspiration and some support for you.  Make some time for you as well.  If you need professional help for your own baggage, for depression, for a physical ailment, for your marriage – get it!  Your children are relying on you,  on finding a centered and peaceful you, and you can do this!

2.  Get connected and stay connected with your child.  Breastfeeding, co-sleeping, baby wearing are all  important  tools to do  this, as are consistent and loving, gentle limits as your child grows.  Get clear about gentle discipline:  what it is and what it isn’t.  I do not advise “time-out” for any small child at all (and we won’t even mention other so-called discipline tactics such as hitting, spanking, yelling, verbal abuse, sarcasm, etc.)  Also, watch your words like the pearls they are!  Have positive things to say about your small child and their temperament!  Build up the positive image of them in your head, and all their capabilities and wonderful traits!

3.Development takes a long time, and infants and small children are not miniature adults.  Do not rush developmental phases.  If you do everything before they are 7, what is there to look forward to?  Keep asking yourself, is this activity or  this information for a four-year-old, a six-year-old or a ten-year old?

4.  Protect your child’s childhood!  Keep things light and use lots of creative humor; protect their 12 senses, keep them from being over-stimulated.  The most important thing the under-7 child experiences is NOT field trips, or vacations to exotic places or early learning, but being home and learning how to be a rhythmical being.  Which leads us to……

5.  It is part of your job to set limits and a flow to things, ESPECIALLY if you have a high-needs child who by definition needs help in this area.  It is okay to set a general flow, and it is very important that this flow includes ample time for rest and sleep and plenty of physical activity outdoors.

6.  It is also your job to foster your child’s feeling that the world is beautiful, and that there is something Higher Than Man.  Check your adult religious baggage at the door and do not dump it on your children!  Explore your own path, you are a spiritual being on a spiritual journey just like your child! 

7. If you are in a committed relationship, keep working on that relationship.  You are modeling adult relationships for your child who is soaking all of these impressions in.  Your child is not a replacement for the intimacy of your spouse or partner.  Check out what communication patterns you and your partner are using and modeling for your children to see.

8.  Work with your small child out of your sense of their need for rhythm, less stimulation, imitation, movement, imaginative play, and quit talking to them out of your head and dumping explanation upon explanation on top of them!  This sounds harsh, but please receive it in the spirit of love with which I intend it:  I can tell you your child does not honestly care about all the explanations that you are providing and many times are puzzled, but they just learn this question and explanation game  is a lovely verbal game to play and  a way to get attention from their parents who communicate this way!

9.  Help your child to play, and show them what real work looks like!  Learn something to show them that you can do with your hands!  Bake, knit, sew, paint, fix things, clean!  There are posts on this blog regarding the fostering of creative play, and look for some more coming up!

10.  Spark your child’s soul through music, finger plays, rhymes and verses, festival celebrations, snuggling together, special warming foods, outside time in nature to be free, the telling of  stories and fairy tales.  This can be hard work for many of us who have forgotten these things or never had these things from our own childhood, but it is worth recapturing!

Catch the joy of childhood,

Carrie

More Planning for Fall 101

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So, many folks I know are now  knee-deep in planning for fall.  I have many posts on this blog regarding planning for Waldorf Kindergarten, Waldorf First Grade and Waldorf Second Grade that you can access via the “tags” box.  I also wrote two separate posts regarding planning during the summer here:  and here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/06/14/summer-planning-for-the-five-and-six-year-old-kindergarten-years/   and this one:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/06/13/summer-planning-waldorf-and-the-early-years/

What else is there to consider?

Four things came to my mind today:

1.  Planning for festivals – For those of you who are new to festival celebrations, you may wish to consider those which are typical of a Waldorf home and then see if those resonate with you (or not).  Obviously you can add in the festivals that are part of your own religious or spiritual path as well!

Typical Waldorf festivals include:Michaelmas, Martinmas, Saint Nicholas Day, Santa Lucia Day, Advent, Christmas, The 12 Days of Christmas, Epiphany, Candlemas, Lent celebrations, Spring/Easter Festival, May Day, Whitsun, St. John’s Day/Midsummer Eve – along with many others. Some folks include solstices and equinoxes as well.   Steiner himself had many lectures regarding the indications of these festivals that you can find on-line at www.waldorflibrary.org or through the Rudolf Steiner Audio Archives.  Look into them, see what resonates with you and your family.  If you find a festival that resonates with you, count back two or even three weeks from the festival date and plan festival preparations as part of your homeschooling experience.  This could include making crafts, learning songs and verses, and baking and cooking and storytelling.   Remember, with small children under the age of 7, the festival is about the DOING, not the explaining WHY.

2.  Planning for homemaking along with homeschooling as part of the flow of your day – a large opportunity we have as homeschoolers is the ability to teach our children practical life skills.  What significant tasks about your home will your children be learning and practicing (or imitating alongside you) this school year?

3.  How often will you leave the house?  As a homeschooler, I could go out all day, every day!  In the major metropolitan area where I live, there is always something going on.  Many mothers I know restrict their “going out” with the children to one day a week, and try to grocery shop or run other errands at night after the children are asleep.  This may be difficult if you have small children that need your presence at night, but I do think it is something to consider thinking about:  what errands do you typically run on a daily (I know some folks in the city or over in Europe do stop by the market daily), weekly, monthly, quarterly.  Make a list and see where this will fit in with your homeschooling experience.

The other area to consider is how many activities your children are involved in, because especially as they grow and the world “opens up” a bit, it can be easy to run in different directions with different activities depending upon what your children are interested in.  Personally, I know this fall with being very late in pregnancy and expecting a new baby, the activities of our family will be decreased.    At the same time, though, one of our children is an eight-year old expecting a new sibling, (not a two- or three-year old!) , and her needs are different than the under –7 child.  So, it is always a balancing act to see how to meet the different needs of the different aged children in your family.

4.  Where is the time for you in your homeschooling flow?  Do you have anything you can call your own?  Do you ever get to leave the house, even for an hour, with no children at all?  Usually even a small baby can go for a walk with Dad and the older siblings with you at home.  It is important to remember that you set the tone for your home.  There are many wonderful parents who seem to be able to do this with no need for solitude for personal rejuvenation and balance, but I personally find a little time to myself is helpful. If this is also you, then perhaps this is something to consider within the daily, weekly or monthly flow you are setting up. 

Hope this stimulates some good planning ideas for you,

Carrie

Some Inspiration for Summer Planning and Parenting

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Try this link from Lovey-land  to Melisa Nielsen’s “Planning” topic on her show (the show is audio, so fold some laundry and listen!)

http://lovey-land.blogspot.com/2009/07/key-to-waldorf-homeschooling.html

She has some great things to say that will inspire you, and would be great just for general parenting and homeschooling as well!

Be inspired today!

Carrie

Video Samples of Waldorf-Inspired Music Curriculum

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See here:

http://homemusicmaking.blogspot.com/2009/06/video-tutorial-music-curriculum.html

Enjoy!

Carrie

Waldorf-Inspired Music Curriculum

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Here is a new Waldorf-inspired Music Curriculum!    Jodie Mesler writes:

“Hello Everyone!  My work of volume 1 is finally complete!  I am so excited to share this with you!

It is called Living Music From the Heart: Music Curriculum Volume 1 Book and 2 DVD tutorials. (Prices $20-$50, I am offering ebooks or booklet form, 2 DVD’s, and the option to buy penny whistles at the discounted price of $10 with the purchase of the music curriculum)

It is an easy and creative approach to teaching through a child’s world of play using the penny whistle, singing and movement.  (It is Waldorf-inspired)

There are 27 lessons on the DVD’s- The 7 teacher lessons have instruction on how to play the penny whistle, how to sing, and how to teach your child simply through imitation and play. 

The 20 lessons are set up for the 6-year-old revolving around the whole year and starting in September. Included in each lesson are imitative play, call and response, verses for hand claps, Mother Goose songs (written in the pentatonic scale), movement and games. 

“Children’s songs must make pretty and rhythmical impressions on the senses.  The beauty of sound is of greater value than the meaning,” states Rudolf Steiner in his “The Education of the Child” lecture. During the first years of music, the primary focus will be on pleasing sounds, rhythm and listening skills taught through imitation. 

Let go of any worries about reading music, for you will learn and teach your child music when he is older, in my approach it is best to wait until your child is 10, as they would do in a Waldorf school. 

I am currently a private music teacher in my home studio offering flute, piano, bass guitar, guitar, penny whistle, and general music lessons.  I have been teaching for 12 years.  I was introduced to Waldorf education in 2004, and I began home educating my three children with Waldorf-inspired methods.  I have self-produced and published “Waldorf-Inspired CD and Songbook” and finally, I am bringing a music curriculum to homeschooling teachers.

How to order: go to homemusicmaking.blogspot.com.

Peace, Love, and Joy,
Jodie Mesler
“Bringing living music back to the home.”
http://homemusicmaking.blogspot.com”

 

Hope that helps some of you planning for fall,

Carrie

A New Rant: This Just Out Today….

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(This post is more about COMPUTERS than TV, but at the bottom you can read a lot of comments about TV and how different families deal with TV and other screens. This post is written from a Waldorf perspective and the Waldorf perspective actually is NOT that TV or screens are “evil” or “forbidden”, but that there is a proper time and place for these screens in development of the child according to the development of the three and four fold bodies.  That is all!)

Okay, you all can agree or disagree, but here is my rant of the day:

From Nielsen Online:

“Kids from two to 11 years of age are spending 63 percent more time online than they did five years ago, says a report released Monday from Nielsen Online. Children in that age range were online an average of 11 hours in May 2009 versus just 7 hours in May 2004.

Over the past five years, the total number of kids surfing the Net has shot up 18 percent to 16 million, says the report, while the overall Internet population has risen only 10 percent. The younger set now represents 9.5 percent of the online community.”

This just saddens and sickens me.  Really, children age 2 have nothing else better to do than to sit in front of a screen??   Is it not enough that we are already fighting  the insane levels of television watching and corresponding obesity and lack of outside play time for our children?

Are our children truly happy and carefree these days?  Are they healthy?  I would say not.  I have talked with many, many pediatric health care professionals (because I am one!!)   ranging from pediatricians to naturopaths to chiropractors to mental health care professionals who are all saying the same things: kids today are stressed out, they are seeing mental and physical health problems in our children that were never seen before except in middle-aged or elderly people, that children today are anxious and by the teenaged years can be completely depressed, “jaded”, old ahead of their time.

Stop the madness now!

What do children need?  If you all have read any post on this blog you will know what I am about to say:

For Small Children Under the Age of 9:

Imitation and having parents doing something worthy to imitate!, warmth, protection of the 12 senses, outside time in nature, free play with open ended toys, less talking, singing and music and art, practical work around the house, parents who are warm and loving and kind but yet will set limits, a rhythm that does most of the limit setting for you for the under 7 crowd especially, repetition,  less choices, education that focuses on the whole body and all the senses and not just the head, education that focuses on lighting up the imagination and not just stuffing the head with facts, keeping children in their bodies, regular sleep and rest times each day, warming and healthy foods…

Whew!  Did I miss anything??

Television and computers are not needed at such an early age.  Children who start using computers at such an early age are not going to have any more of a technological advantage over a child starting a computer later…Why our educational system has gone to using computers in the classroom for the Early Grades and even Kindergarten and Preschool, I will never know!  Children need to be in their bodies, not with their eyes focused on a screen and their hands tied to a keyboard with rapidly moving images!

This boils down to Parents Feeling They Need Something To Do With Their Children.  And We Don’t Know What To Do, so Let’s Use A Screen.  Small children do not need a screen, they need your loving presence. Instead of popping in a video to get some cleaning done, involve your child in the cleaning.  It may take twice as long, but are you truly in a rush?  Why?  Slow down!  Children are not something you can take and stuff time for them in a day planner.  Children needs copious amounts of Quantity Time.  Unhurried, unrushed time.

Yes, they need your time, in your home, in a peaceful and warm and loving environment.  They need parents who can slow down, and make hard choices to slow down if this is possible.  If you are a single parents or struggling to make ends meet, you may not have a choice whether to stay home or work.  But you do have a choice how you structure the time with your child after work  it most likely should involve not more stimulation, but learning how to be home and be okay with being home…..

Enough ranting now,

Carrie

Planning Waldorf Second Grade

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There are several things to keep in mind whilst planning second grade for a seven and a half or eight-year old: one is what academic and practical skills one will be teaching, and the other is through what vehicle one will be teaching through.  The “vehicle” in second grade is the stories of Saints contrasted with the trickster tales of the animals, perhaps Celtic fairy tales or the wonderful King of Ireland’s Son, nature stories for Science, a few gnome or other types of stories for math.  The way you “drive” this vehicle is through art, movement, rhythm, in-breath and out-breath. 

There can be a wide disparity where second graders are academically.  I have a very fluent reader who can read anything she would like, (including things I have to hide because I feel the themes are just too mature at this time as they involve great sympathy with a main protagonist!).  Remember, we are still working within fairy tales to a certain extent, and moving into fables and folklore as our main thrust this year due to the spiritual and soul development of the eight year old.  For my second grader, we will continue to introduce some simple grammar and punctuation, writing longer summaries and paragraphs, higher level vocabulary.  Another child may still be working on reading what they have written and more simple phrases. 

For math, one is most likely working with a  deepening understanding of the times tables  as taught rhythmically and by heart, mental arithmetic,  place value, simple money sums, development of symmetric form drawing, translating large numbers into words and vice versa, moving from the horizontal kinds of math problems to the vertical.

For science, one is looking at more pointed nature tales with characteristics of the animals.  I personally am also looking at bringing a Spring block of the 4 elements with lots of play and building of projects (again, may not completely coincide with the Waldorf curriculum at a Waldorf school). 

For social studies, one is still looking at  local geography through actually being outside and using the 12 sense to observe local flora, fauna and weather,  and through the tales of local folklore, including local American Indian stories.  For example,  I live in an area where the Cherokee used to live, and we will be doing a block of Cherokee Trickster Tales.

Other activities that may round out your curriculum may include continuing with a pentatonic instrument or learning a pentatonic scale on a blowing instrument, kinderlyre instruction, knitting with knit stitch and purling, introducing three secondary colors with wet-on-wet painting, modeling with beeswax, games including jump rope, hop scotch, rhythmic games, seasonal festival preparation and arts and crafts and cooking and baking.

Once you decide what academic or practical skills one is teaching, then one must decide HOW to bring this.  Will you use Fables as a Nature Block, or a Language Arts block?  Will you use Trickster Tales as a way to pick forms out of the stories for Form Drawing or will you use Nature Stories?  These are the questions that make the curriculum come alive for you and your family.

Here is an outline of what I am planning as I write my own curriculum, and this is not set in stone as I have only written September and October so far!!  I do try to plan each day around Head, Heart and Hands and also to find the ACTIVE part in all the lessons.  Very important!

(Totals are around  8 weeks of Form Drawing plus weekly Form Drawing some blocks, 14 weeks of Math, 9-10 weeks of Nature, 13 weeks of Language Arts which may very well not be enough for some children if this is a weaker area.  Eugene Schwartz has his second grade divided between 16 weeks of Math and 16 weeks of Language Arts, 6 weeks of Form Drawing and doesn’t include Nature/Science in the tally.)

September:  2 weeks of Form Drawing from Cherokee Trickster Tales and 2 weeks of Math (review Roman Numerals, moving from horizontal to vertical, review of 2s, 5s, 10s multiplication tables).  Family play for Michaelmas

Other work:  Wet on wet painting of geometric forms, Introduction to Kinderlyre, German and Spanish, Seasonal Arts and Crafts, gardening, cooking and baking

October:  4 weeks of a Nature/Language Arts  Block with writing in Main Lesson Book  from the Fables, work on simple grammar and punctuation and a bit longer summaries, will also wet on wet watercolor paint and model with beeswax as part of this block, pentatonic flute and singing, Seasonal Arts and Crafts, more gardening, cooking and baking, knit stitch to make hat, German and Spanish

November:  4 weeks of a Math Block, more Kinderlyre and  knitting, German and Spanish, cooking and baking and gardening (terrarium making!), weekly Form Drawing

December: 2 –3 weeks of a  Nature Block/Language Arts Block   from Saint Francis of Assisi, Advent Crafts, cooking and baking and such, German and Spanish.  Family Play for Advent. 

January:   end of December – January 2 weeks of Form Drawing,  4 weeks of Math Block, Kinderlyre and Sewing,  cooking and baking, German and Spanish, preparation for Candlemas, weekly Form Drawing

February:  3 weeks of a Language Arts block from Saints, Pentatonic flute and singing and more hand sewing,  cooking and baking, German and Spanish

March:  3 weeks of a Nature Block from the 4 Elements, probably no Main Lesson Book, will include nature games,    German and Spanish, cooking and baking, gardening, Easter Crafts, weekly Form Drawing

April:  4  weeks of Form Drawing from Jataka Tales, wet on wet watercolor painting, Knitting , Woodworking  and Gardening, German and Spanish,  cooking and baking

May:  4 weeks of Math, Pentatonic flute and singing, Gardening, cooking and baking, seasonal crafts for May Day, Whitsun, Ascension, German and Spanish.

June:  3 weeks of Language Arts from Saint Stories where cursive may be introduced ?? (still deciding!), Wet on Wet Watercolor Painting and Gardening, German and Spanish, cooking and baking, weekly Form Drawing, festival preparations for St. John’s Day.

As I have said, I have not written all of it yet, so I don’t  know everything yet!  It is just a skeleton work in progress!

Some resources that may assist you:

Grade 2 Curriculum Package from Donna Simmons:  http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/bookstore-for-waldorf-homeschooling/curriculum/2nd-grade.html

Grade 2 from Melisa Nielsen:  http://alittlegardenflower.com/store/

Eugene Schwartz Grade 2:  http://knol.google.com/k/eugene-schwartz/the-waldorf-curriculum-grade-two/110mw7eus832b/18#

Saints and Heroes from Donna Simmons:  http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/bookstore-for-waldorf-homeschooling/curriculum/2nd-grade.html

Grade 2 Math from Donna Simmons:  http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/bookstore-for-waldorf-homeschooling/curriculum/2nd-grade.html

Animal Tales from Donna Simmons:  http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/bookstore-for-waldorf-homeschooling/curriculum/2nd-grade.html

Teaching Mathematics in Rudolf Steiner Schools for Classes I- VIII by Ron Jarman

Hear The Voice of the Griot!  A Guide to African Geography, History, and Culture by Betty K Staley (Trickster Tales, Saint Stories, longer fairy tales for Grade 2)

Stories of the Saints – Siegwart Knijpenga

Teaching with the Fables: A Holistic Approach by Sieglinde de Francesca

Read-aloud List here:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/05/29/great-books-for-second-grade-in-your-waldorf-inspired-homeschool/

Various festival books and book regarding tongue twisters and riddles to “warm-up”

Books of Games, singing games are especially nice

Gardening and Baking Resources

Norwegian, Jewish, African  and Swedish folktales and such – I am telling a tale for about three days in a row before Quiet Time throughout the year.

Sources of Nature, fables, King of Ireland’s Son if you are bringing that book as a block.

After you know how your blocks are laid out, you  can start going through and picking what stories and activities resonate in your soul, what you feel your child needs to hear and you fit it into a three-day rhythm of telling the story on the first day, artistic activity, and the academic piece on the third day.  You are always searching for the active, and adding in the artistic, the senses, the different ways to approach this.

For example, should you choose to use the fable “The Lion and the Mouse,” you may start the first day with a story of mice that incorporates their general characteristics and the modeling of a mouse out of beeswax and tell the story (Do NOT tell the moral to the child – that is for them to draw the conclusion!).  Flesh out the short fable so it is a real story with detail.  The second day you may re-visit the story and make a beeswax lion to go with the mouse.  Perhaps you act out the story with your child (only two characters, lends itself nicely to drama in a homeschooling environment!)  Perhaps you found a short poem about a mouse or a lion to share.  Then, the third day you can  re-visit the story with movement (how would the lion move and sit?  how would the mouse move?  what do their voices sound like?), draw a picture and have your child re-visit the story with you writing down what the child says and then distill this into two or three sentences on the blackboard for your child to copy.  Perhaps you play some rhyming games with the words, point out punctuation, look for doing words if you decided to bring the different types of words to second grade (or not!  perhaps you wait on that until Third Grade).  Much of this depends on what speaks to you as a family and to your child.  You are the parent, and you are the expert on your child and what they need to hear!

I am just a homeschooling mother like you, and planning just like you.  I suggest if you are very confused you contact one of the national Waldorf consultants (Barbara Dewey, Donna Simmons, Melisa Nielsen, David Darcy, Eugene Schwartz) to help you.  The little bit of money for a half hour consultation may save you so much money in curriculum spending and in  time.

Happy Planning,

Carrie

The Wonder Years: Waldorf Homeschooling Grades One Through Three

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There seems to be a perception amongst mainstream parents that children within the first, second and third grades should be “buckling down and getting to work”, which essentially means loads of worksheets and sitting with pen and paper in hand.

I have a different view, one that coincides with the way the grades are laid out in Waldorf Education, and one I would like you to seriously consider.

You will never get the ages of 7,8 and 9 back.  Seven, eight, and nine-year olds are still small, believe it or not.  The way they learn best most likely is not pen and paper and workbooks.  This only involves the head, and  nothing about the rest of the body.  Most of us learn best when we involve as many senses as possible, so why would we not offer the option of learning through movement, art, music and yes, paper and writing as well to the smallest members of our schooling community?

Seven, eight and nine are still ages of wonder!  These are not the ages for stuffing facts into their heads.  This is the age for igniting interest, for providing those valuable hands-on experiences that stimulate wonder.

Some of the physiologic parameters are not even there yet for true “sit down learning.”  A seven-year –old can still be fairly distractible, an eight-year-old finally has the development of the eyes completed, the nine-year-old is starting to be on the threshold from feeling as if he is one with the Universe and everything in it.  To treat these seven, eight and nine year olds any differently is not in accordance with their developmental level.  It is rushing, it is putting the horse before the cart, and it will set you up for problems as you actually reach the stages for greater “head-oriented” learning.

Here are some simple suggestions:

1.  Find and plan the ACTIVE part of each and every lesson!  A Main Lesson does not mean just sitting and writing!

2.  Have respect for the attention span and fatigue factor of the seven, eight and nine-year old!

3.  Realize that not every block calls for a Main Lesson Book creation.  Third Grade is full of hands-on projects, building and farming and gardening.  These bodily experiences are just as important, if not more important, than sitting and writing.

4.  Ignite the WONDER!  You are not there to stuff facts, you are there to distill the essence of the subject down into your Main Lesson, you are there to give SPACE to the child to let them form their own conclusion. 

5.  Leave your adult baggage BEHIND!  They don’t need it (and truth be told, do you really need it as well?)  Saints are wonderful other-worldly beings that the eight-year-old can still relate to as they do battle with the more heavy side of being human, the Old Testament Stories are stories of a people and how they dealt (or didn’t) with such concepts as authority and law and place in society. 

6.  Utilize REST and SLEEP as the true learning aids that they are to education.  Waldorf Education utilizes a three-day rhythm (some Waldorf homeschool curriculums utilize a two-day rhythm simply because Waldorf at home is not Waldorf at school).  This is vital!

7.  Understand the big picture for the 7 and 8 –year old, and also for the nine-year change.  I guarantee it is not textbooks and worksheets and workbooks that will speak to their heart, their soul development and their developmental stage.  I recently had the pleasure of speaking to a young lady who just finished public school first grade and she told me excitedly that her teacher had made snow in their classroom!  (Yes, making snow is a BIG deal in the Southeastern United States because we don’t really get any that lasts for any length of time).   That was the thing she mainly remembered from first grade, that is the one thing she really carried with her from the whole school year!

Work for creating wonder, for respect for the fact that 7 and 8 and even 9 year olds are still small.  Plan ahead with your 7 and 8 year olds for what they will need for the nine-year change.

Happy pondering,

Carrie