Category Archives: Homeschooling

A Great Blog to Read

Posted on by
1

 

(Sorry everyone; as of 1/2011 this link may not be working — If you know of an Islamic Waldorf Homeschooling blog, please leave in the comments below!  Thank you).

My cyberfriend Shireen Pashdadi has a wonderful series of articles on an Islamic blog.  If you ever wondered about Waldorf from an Islamic perspective, please do check out my friend Shireen’s lucid, thought-provoking writing when you have a chance to sit down with a cup of tea.  The whole blog is entitled, “See! Hear!  Speak!” and you can can get to Shireen’s articles through this link:  http://www.seehearspeak.com/?cat=10

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

A Letter to All Those Dads Undecided About Homeschooling

Posted on by
4

This letter was written by my wonderful husband for all the dads who are feeling rather undecided about the whole homeschooling thing.  Maybe it will help provide some thoughts for your family.

Dear Undecided Dad,

Carrie asked me to talk about this since I had many of the same concerns you have about when talking to colleagues about homeschooling.   Having worked as a Director of IT and now working as a Senior Consultant at ABC Company (a large, global company),  I understand the hidden pressure when talking with colleagues and clients and the subject of kids and school.  At first, I was very hesitant about the conversation, but as time went on, I found that people were very interested in the subject.  I never felt judged.  Usually, the conversation went like this

Friend: My kids are at XYZ academy, how about you?

Me: Actually, my wife and I homeschool our two girls.

Friend: Really? How does that work?

Me:  It actually works very well.  My wife deserves all the credit, though.  She has spent hours researching and preparing curriculum and teaching class.   One of the things we realized was that in a “typical” school, the teachers are spending time with those who are at the bottom of the class educationally and expect the others to just follow along with workbooks.   We found that by homeschooling, we can tailor the environment and get great results.  Heck, my daughter  is  reading well along with working on both German and Spanish languages and has lots of time to play outside.  Her childhood is still there while she is learning a lot!

Friend:  What about the social aspect?  Don’t you worry about your kids socially (or some variation on “is your child going to be socially stunted by homeschooling”)

Me: Interestingly enough, my wife gets out with the kids quite a bit.  Because with homeschooling, you have a lot of flexibility, my wife meets with other homeschooling mothers.  Of course, it helps that Carrie also assists a homeschooling support group in our area, but there are quite a lot of interactions.

Basically, people begin to understand that we’re not “weird” and with the noticeable wins by homeschooled kids in things like the National Spelling bees, it’s becoming more common.  I always stress how much work my wife does, and how well she does it.  I also stress that my wife and I felt that having a parent at home with the kids is important for both of us.   That can give some people a “hidden guilt” because they’ve given that up and both parents work.  We, who have chosen to have a parent stay home,  have smaller houses, older cars etc, but in the end, hopefully we have kids who enjoy learning and who are strongly connected to their siblings and to the family.. ..That’s the legacy I want!

I think, Undecided Dad, you would be surprised how many people homeschool that you don’t know about, and how interested people are when you do.

Sincerely,

Carrie’s Husband

Carrie Here:  Thanks to my husband for putting this together for the Undecided Dad! 

Just a few thoughts from our little corner of the world.

Resources for “After Schooling” Waldorf First Grade

Posted on by
Reply

Julie recently wrote in a comment on one of my First Grade posts regarding her first grader who is in public school.  Her oldest had been in a Waldorf school, and the public school experience was going fairly well for her first grader, but as a parent she was missing some of the beauty and depth that Waldorf brings to the educational process.  She wondered what resources were available without buying an entire curriculum to bring some of the Waldorf magic into her home. This is a great question, Julie, and I am happy to be able to give some suggestions to you and everyone else out there wondering the same thing!

First of all, I think a place to start would actually be your physical space.  To me, if my child was in public school, I would want to make a big effort to have a very special Nature Table to celebrate the seasonal changes.  A little book that may give you some wonderful ideas is “The Nature Corner” by M v Leeuwen and J Moeskops.  The other thing I would consider is to have open-ended toys available for play.  Since a school environment is fairy directed, it will be important for your child to have time to just play.  Play is the work of every young child.  A good source of ideas and how-to’s for making some open ended toys is the classic, “Toymaking with Children”, by Freya Jaffke.

Secondly, I think festival preparation would be very important for your child’s soul life, so just figuring out what festivals you would want to celebrate, gathering ideas, and then sitting down with a calendar and counting two weeks or so before the festival and writing down what you would like to do each day to prepare to celebrate is something wonderful.  A good festival book such as “All Year Round”  or “Festivals, Families and Food”.    The Wynstones series of Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer have great verses, poems and songs to learn.  They are available through www.wynstonespress.com or other Waldorf booksellers.  The book “Earthways” by Carol Petrash could also give you some excellent ideas for seasonal craft ideas that may fit into any festival celebration.

The heart and soul of Waldorf first grade is fairy tales, so a good book with all of the wonderful Grimm’s fairy tales may make for wonderful storytelling time.   I personally enjoy the Pantheon edition of Grimm’s fairy tales as my own resource for teaching.   You could also look for fairy tales from other cultures around the world at your local library.  Please see my blog post entitled,  Great Fairy Tales for Waldorf First Grade,  for suggestions of what fairy tales may be appropriate for a first grader.  Making up your own little stories and nature tales is also so important.

Some other typical Waldorf first grade experiences would be wet on wet watercolor painting, modeling, knitting and playing the recorder, pentatonic flute or pennywhistle.  Please be on the lookout for future posts of these subjects.   They are very important tasks for soul development and also for future academic success.

Last but not least, however, I would imagine with being in a school setting all day long, your child may just need time to be when she comes home so planning lots of free play in natural areas may be a very important thing to provide for her.  Please do see the posts entitled “Fostering Creative Play”, “More About Fostering Creative Play” and “Connecting Your Children to Nature” available on this blog.

Please do look for some future posts on wet on wet watercolor painting, modeling, knitting and music in the home.  These are the wonderful things that make the world go round.

If you have questions or topics you would like me to address, please do leave a comment in the comment section.  I am open to helping and encouraging you in any area you have doubts about!

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Top 10 Essentials of the Waldorf Kindergarten at Home

Posted on by
9

Whew, almost every day people ask me where to start with Waldorf homeschooling with their young children under the age of 7.  My recommendation is to take a deep breath, get yourself a cup of tea with honey and come and sit back down at this screen.

Okay, have that cup of tea?  Are you ready?

Let’s start with a quote by Rudolf Steiner himself, to get us in the mood.  This is from page103 of the lectures compiled into the book, “Soul Economy” :  “Anyone in charge of young children – especially those who work in children’s homes- who is aware of the activity of destiny, must ask, Have I been specifically chosen for the important task of guiding and educating these children?  And other questions follow:  What must I do to eliminate as far as possible my personal self, so I can leave those in my care unburdened by my subjective nature? How do I act so I do not interfere with a child’s destiny? And, above all, How can I best educate a child toward human freedom?”

This quote gives one a clue as to the framework and tools Steiner sees as appropriate with young children.  It is not that it is only destiny, but that as a caregiver or parent one must act in the right way with the right thoughts as we are the utmost model for our children to imitate.   It is a great quote to ponder and meditate on what this means to you and your work with small children. 

[This is from the comment section below, maybe it will help explain this quote a bit:  Steiner’s point was not just  “hands off” for the early years; he had a strong notion that we are parents and teachers ARE the leaders within home and school.  However, he also felt strongly that teachers and parents do the WRONG thing doing these early years by intellectualizing the child, by providing the child with toys that do not require imagination…I think the quote above was more the call to get out of our own way, to disregard what we think we know about childhood development from a traditional perspective and to look at the child from a spiritual perspective and what we can do in these early years to lay the best foundation for adulthood].

Here is my Top 10 List of the Essentials of Waldorf Kindergarten at home:

1. Understand what Waldorf kindergarten is – -> NO ACADEMICS.  Yup, that is right, and there is a reason for this.  If you are new to anthroposophic thought, a brief and probably unsatisfying summary would be to say that Steiner based Waldorf education upon his thoughts of the knowledge of the human being.  The years from birth to seven are for forming the physical organism of the child, the memory is not seen as freed for academic work until the seventh year.  The young child should be surrounded by joy and happiness, toys that encourage the imagination,  but only the physical body is ready for influence by the outside world.  Hence, no academics because the child is not yet ready.

2.  So if there are NO ACADEMICS, what should I be doing?  Preparing yourself in two areas is  the first thing.

Inner work:  Inner work is the hallmark of Waldorf education.  How you do it is up to you.  Many people use Steiner’s exercises.  Other people use prayer, meditation, yoga, tai chi, walking meditation.  Identify your strengths and your challenges for this homeschooling journey.  Meditate on the quote from Steiner above and how to put that forth in your care of your small children.

Preparation of skills you will need to be able to show your child:  oral storytelling, choosing fairy tales, knowing your local fauna and flora, singing, playing a blowing instrument (pennywhistle, pentatonic flute or recorder), washing and carding wool, spinning wool, dyeing wool and silks, toymaking, gardening, woodworking, knitting, other forms of handwork, drawing with block crayons, wet on wet watercolor painting, modeling, seasonal arts and crafts.  Pick something and practice at night after your children go to bed.

3.  The second thing to do is to prepare your ENVIRONMENT.

Screens:  How much time are you spending in front of a screen?  TV, computer, other?  How much time is your child spending in front of a screen?  Please see my blog post entitled, “Children and Media.”

Clutter:   Is your house organized so you can find things?  Do you have 10 of everything?  Do you have too much furniture for your house? 

Simplicity:  What can you get rid of and be free of?  What toys do your children actually play with and how many books and toys do you have out at one time?

4. The third thing to do is to start to establish a rhythm.

Awake times/naptimes/bedtimes:  A wonderful place to start your rhythm is around awake times, naptimes and bedtimes.  A wonderful cozy bedtime routine at an early hour sends your children off to peaceable sleep and starts your day off on the right foot the next day.  Then start work on times of outbreath – outside time- and times of inbreath-storytelling, art.  You can tell the same story for two weeks to a month!  Repetition is the foundation of childhood!

Weekly:  What practical work are you going to do when?  Baking, laundry, housekeeping, gardening, handwork?

Yearly:  What festivals will you celebrate and in what physical way will you show your small child?  We do not explain the holidays, the festivals, only show these are the things we DO at this time.

5.  Now that you have that in place, start reading about child development.  Steiner said that this was essential, and the anthroposophic view of childhood development is much different than the traditional view of development.  I highly recommend The Education of the Child, Soul Economy and The Study of Man.

6.  Work on how you ARE with your children – are you a warm presence?  can you just BE with your child?   Are you completely running around after your child, is every day a frenzied day or are you setting the tone of your home by getting up at a consistent time with a plan and a rhythm for the day?  Are you there for your child but letting your child see your work, your interests?

7.   Protect your child’s 12 Senses.  Steiner felt there were 12 senses instead of the traditional five senses we think about. 

8.  Work on getting your child into his or her body.  This is the most important thing you can do for your young child under the age of 7 – games, circle time, free outside time, play and movement – are all critically important.  Donna Simmons has some great suggestions in her book, “Joyful Movement.”  Another book I really like from my pediatric physical therapist work is the book, “Activities Unlimited”, which was written by a group of Neurodevelopmentally- trained pediatric therapists. (This book is available through Amazon, and for more i nformation regarding Neurodevelopmental Treatment please see www.ndta.org).   “Activities Unlimited” is not Waldorf by any means, but it would be fairly easy to put these activities into some sort of game or fantasy play. 

Another great source of movement and getting children into their bodies is through all the circle time kind of games and fingerplays that go on in a Waldorf classroom. Please see the Rudolf Steiner College Bookstore or Bob and Nancy’s bookshop for books that have pre-planned circle times, or get adventurous and make up your own!

9.  Watch how you frame discipline – are you using imitation, movement and fantasy to re-direct your child?  Are you a chatter box and explainer with your child? Please see my blog post entitled, “Take My Three Day Challenge”.

10.  Okay, now is the time to start slowly bringing in the skills you are learning – start with storytelling and puppetry, bring in baking once a week, needle felt something  for your nature table…Bringing it all in and to your child  is the last step.

You have the years of birth through age 6 to work on this…it is a process, it is an evolution, it is a learning.  It will not happen in one day.  But begin with your end in mind and work toward it.  Hope that  this will provide you with some inspiration and encouragement.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

The Adjunct to “Did You See This” ?

Posted on by
Reply

I have gotten some private emails and such, apparently this post has hit a lot of raw nerves.  First of all, I would like to give all of you struggling with these issues empathy.  Some of you have grown children and you are worried that perhaps people judge your parenting skills by the state your adult children are now living in.  Some of you worry for your child’s safety. Some of you have taken over care and responsibility for your grandchildren.  I too, was raised by grandparents with involvement from my father and uncle.  I probably understand more than you think about this.

Please give yourself a break and be easy with yourself.  There are no guarantees for how children “turn out”.  It is a fallacy in our society, especially that for mothers, that if we provide our child undivided material goods, unlimited opportunities, that if we are the “perfect” mother our children will turn out just fine.  This is a fallacy, but it should also not be an excuse to bow out of parenting in the best way we know how.

I believe the skyrocketing rates of  childhood ADHD, depression, alcohol and drug abuse are definitely related to not only parenting but also the position we assign children in our society.  Many people have told me out right there is no way there would have more than one or two children with the often unspoken message that children are a liability in this society- a cause of worry, a cause of stress and doubting yourself as a human being and who would want that?  Motherhood is the invisible job that no one seems to value anymore, yet it is the most important one to be able to provide peace and stability in your home to the best of your ability.  The work of motherhood should be well supported and encouraged for the future of our children and our country.

Children are a joy and a blessing.  I strongly feel the work and education of attachment parenting and Waldorf for the early years is at least the best hope we have at this time to stem the tide of all the problems we are seeing now in teenagers and young adults.

Thanks for all your comments and thoughts, keep ‘em coming.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Did You See This?

Posted on by
2

According to an article detailed on msn.com this morning,  1 in 5 young people (college-aged) in the United States have a personality disorder, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, phobias and bipolar disorder.  This was the findings of a study where 5,000 people aged 19-25 were interviewed face to face and asked about a variety of personality disorders.  Researchers also found the rates of substance  of abuse by young people was higher than the rates of personality disorders.

Obviously, personality disorders have always been around. Hopefully this study will highlight the prevalence of these diseases and encourage those affected to seek help.  Hopefully this study will encourage discussion amongst families as to family history.  Hopefully this study will encourage more research to be done into the genetic and environmental factors that contribute to personality disorders.

Some children seem to you with their own biology, circumstances and destiny.  The best parenting techniques may not be able to change the reality some children, step children or foster or adoptive children, enter into your home with.  This post is not intended to be directed toward those children per se, unless you think there is something here that will help your circumstance. 

Here is just a thought for what may compose the best stability and the most security for our children so they can grow up into healthy, stable adults.

1.  Marriage before having children is an excellent place to start.

2.  If you work outside the home and are happy with this and your family is thriving, please skip this paragraph and go on!  If you are not perfectly happy, read this.  I feel having a parent that stays home with the children when they are young, and is home daily  throughout the child’s years, even the teen-aged years, is essential. I personally  have had a variety of work situations including working 12 hours a week with on=site daycare when my oldest was little and now working one weekend day a month when my husband can be home with my children.  I have stressed and agonized and felt torn like so many of you.  So please know I am not saying these things lightly or without feeling or compassion. However, if you have thought about staying home and have the possibility of doing so, I am here to encourage you.

I have two thoughts on the subject of working, and I am sure  you all can add more perspectives and comments.  My first thought is actually for the mother.  If you are caught up in work, chances are you are not present at home, even if you are physically there.   I have seen mothers tearing themselves into little pieces in order to be the perfect  mother, the perfect wife, the perfect worker, the perfect everything, only to be stressed out, worried, disappointed and feeling like they are not doing the best job at either place. If this is you, change it.  Your children need your warm, loving and caring presence.

My second thought on this subject is  for the children. Some children seem to do “well” (whatever that means)  in daycare of any kind – group daycare, in-home daycare, nanny etc. – but some children just do not do well, even if it is care provided in their own home.  I do wish there were more studies regarding the number of hours a child is in daycare and future health ramifications for the school-aged child and the adult – studies that look at  mental health and physical health outcomes.   The difficult thing about this  is sometimes you just cannot tell until your children have grown and matured who seemed to survive in an alternative care situation and who really did not. 

All that being said, if you are going to work, please be happy about it and confident about it and carry that to your children in your energy. Please do not use your worry about working as an excuse to jellyfish parent or to shower your child with material things to make up for what you believe is lacking.  Have a rhythm for when you get home from work, and work hard to be with your child outside of work.  Seek out support from other caring, working parents through your local La Leche League and Attachment Parenting support groups.

If you wish your work situation was something else, and many of us do in this economy, know from the bottom of your heart you are a caring parent for even worrying about it, and that you are doing everything you can do,  the best you can do,  right now.  My heart goes out to yours.  Support is vital in this situation, please do find a community to hook into about this important subject.

Onward and upwards.

3. Get your own stability in check – do what you need to do, but get therapy, help, advice, do your  own inner work through prayer, meditation, tai chi, yoga, energy work.  Align yourselves with mothers whose parenting you admire.  Look deeply into what you feel the role of a homemaker should be, could be, is now for you.  Think about how you set the tone for your home, the peace in your home, the tone and model for your spouse and your children.   Think about your relationship with the other adults in your extended family, and what you are modeling for your children.  Do not assign your adult baggage a role in your child’s life.

Also, mothers please take care of your bodies.  It is the only one you have for your life here on Earth, and how you feel in your body affects your mind and your attitude and your ability to create peace in your home.  Please show your children how to care for their own bodies by  limiting your own screen time, by being active, by eating healthy and by receiving whatever preventative  health care you need to keep yourself in balance.

4.  Start things right by breastfeeding and practicing other measures of attachment parenting. If you need more advice or thoughts regarding this, please see www.attachmentparenting.org and www.lalecheleague.org.

5.   Learn about protecting your child’s senses (all 12 of them!  Yes, there are 12 senses according to Rudolf Steiner).  Warmth is a very important sense, and start working on this early to provide your children not just with physical warmth by keeping their heads covered, but also work on being emotionally warm with your children.  They need this to thrive!

6.  Establish a rhythm in your home that benefits your whole family.  This includes gently guiding yourself and your child toward better, healthier sleeping patterns, and adequate time in movement and outside time.  Repetition is a healthy cornerstone for the early years.   Work toward providing healthy boundaries that protect everyone in the family’s dignity and respect.

7.  Understand normal childhood development and the best ways to guide behavior in a loving way during different stages of development.  For the early years, this includes  respecting that young children live in their bodies, distraction, having a strong rhythm, limited choices, using fantasy and movement as our friends to encourage the behavior we do want to see, keeping ourselves calm and grounded, and yes,  even use of the word “no”.  You can still set limits and be a loving parent. You can still be a warm, loving parent and not explain away the mysteries of life and chatter away to your child. Practice your singing and humming instead for some really beautiful energy in your home that words and explanations cannot touch.

8. Enjoy, protect and nurture childhood.  I feel so sad when parents say to me, “Yes, my little one is six and in school and all grown up.”  I feel sad when I see the little girl  third graders at the bus stop experimenting with make-up.  I feel sad when all the wonder of childhood is gone before it even starts in our rush to sign our little ones up for organized sports, teach them reading and writing, and force their independence too early.  What is our hurriedness doing to our children?

Let them have the wonder of childhood. Protect them from media for awhile.  They will not be behind if they do not use a computer when they are five, and they will not be behind if they haven’t seen all the Hannah Montana TV shows by the time they are nine.  Childhood should be a time of imagination, fantasy and wonder. 

The world our children will inherit will be even more fast-paced than it is now.  We are going to need good, solid leaders who can make difficult decisions, innovative out of the box creative thinkers, inventors, and people who can help other people.  Protecting their childhood and letting your child have a childhood will contribute to this in a most important way.

9.  Look into Waldorf education for your child.  It is the most healing educational system I can find, the only one that seems to correlate the educational process with the possible health of the future adult, the one where the entire curriculum is set up to feed a child’s soul based on the child’s developmental level.    Please see our own personal  reasons for choosing Waldorf for home education on my blog post entitled, “Wonderful Waldorf”.

10.  Create opportunity and moments of wonder and reverence in your home for your child through nature observation and being outside, the wonder of stories, the wonder of beautiful art and music, the wonder of the mysteries of life.  Wonder, joy, reverence is really what it is all about.

Take  what resonates with you from here. I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Just a few of my thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Waldorf First Grade With A Fluent Reader

Posted on by
3

Many parents are concerned that somehow their child will be “behind” by waiting until First Grade to start learning the letters of the alphabet.  The flip side to this is the parents that say, “Won’t my child be bored in Waldorf First Grade?  My child taught himself to read at the age of 5 and can read almost anything.  Should I just skip Waldorf First Grade and move onto Second Grade?”

No,no, no.  I have one of those fluent readers, and I think Waldorf First Grade at home provides so many wonderful opportunities for your little one.

First of all, look carefully at your child.  How is their health?  What are they like in their bodies?  Socially?  How are their fine motor skills?  Work in the areas in which your child is lacking or challenged.  If your child would be happy to sit and read a book all day, I do think it is our job as parents to introduce them to other things and yes, even to limit the times when they read and how many books are out at a time.  You would do this with TV, and books can be the same way to stimulate oneself and avoid having to think of something to do out of one’s imagination when one is bored.  The boredom is necessary, let your child go through it!

One special consideration is the switch in First Grade from hearing a tale several weeks or a month in a row to a three day rhythm.  If you talk to a six-year-old, a fluently reading six-year-olds who is reading chapter books (LONG ones, not just Frog and Toad or something like that),  they cannot remember well what they read other than they enjoyed it.  That is what my little one used to say to me – she wanted “long” chapter books and enjoyed reading it, but then would say, “I think I need to read it again.  I can’t remember it very well.”  

In First Grade, presumably your child is still only six and a half or seven years old.  He or she still needs the soul-nourishing qualities the Waldorf First Grade curriculum provides through the fairy tales.  This is another reason why you should not skip ahead to second grade content – the curriculum is carefully set up to match up to your child’s age, no matter what their academic level. 

All that being said, let’s move on to what you can do within your homeschool to satisfy your first grader.  Homeschooling provides a distinct advantage for children and gives them lots of time to play, to dream and to create.  Many children who are fluent readers will start making up written projects during their free time.  This may range from little comic strips to making up stories in a special journal, to writing down little poems or even their own language or menus for playing restaurant.  This is ideal because the first readers in Waldorf First Grade are created by what the student has written.

Many good readers of this early age display handwriting skills that are below their reading level and also many enjoy “silent reading” but not reading aloud.  So these are two important areas to work on.  Have your child read aloud to the dog or to their siblings.  Work on handwriting as you work through the alphabet – after you draw the picture that the letter of the alphabet is coming from.  Work on vocabulary by writing down a list that your child dictates of all the words that begin with “B” for example,  or work on writing a short sentence about the fairy tale if they are interested.  At the end of First Grade, many parents do work toward a small writing block with the beginning of punctuation and word families.

But please, above all, do not push.  Many fluent readers I know are very happy to just go through the letters in First Grade and work on writing simple sentences.  They do continue to read a variety of things on their own time, to listen to a parent read orally to them, but they are not in the least distressed at listening to the fairy tales and drawing the letters.  I attribute this to the fact that the Waldorf curriculum is so tailored to the age of the child and what feeds the child’s soul.  The child knows this, even if we are the parents put our adult baggage on it and think they should be doing “more”.  Please see my post on this blog entitled, “Letting Go.”  This is an important lesson for the parent to learn in First Grade. 

I would love to hear from those of you who have homeschooled a fluent reader through Waldorf First Grade and your experience.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Great Fairy Tales for First Grade

Posted on by
12

These were some wonderful fairy tales we have shared in First Grade:

For the Alphabet, (since everyone asks this!), this is what we have done/will finish by the end of the school year:

A- Angel (fit in with my container story, not a Grimm’s tale)

B- the BEAR from Snow-White and Rose-Red (Grimm’s)

C- the CAT from The Master Cat (otherwise known as Puss in Boots)

D- the DOOR of the DWELLING of the DWARVES from Little Snow White (Grimm’s)

E- the eeee sound from KEY in The Golden Key (Grimm’s) not my favorite, you may be able to do better!

F- the FISH from The Fisherman and His Wife (Grimm’s)

G- the GOOSE from The Golden Goose (Grimm’s)

H- the HOUSE from Hansel and Gretel (Grimm’s)

I- the “I” that the Prince was from “The King’s Son Who Feared Nothing” (Grimm’s)

J- For JACK from “Jack and the Beanstalk”

K- the KING from “The Princess of the Flaming Castle”

L- Long Legs Longshanks from “Longshanks, Girth and Keen”  (Slovakian tale and I had to include it because it is my favorite tale!)

M- the MOUNTAIN from Semeli Mountain (Grimm’s)

N- the NAIL from “The Nail” (Grimm’s)

O- the hole in a shape of an O from “The Gnome” (Grimm’s)

P- the PINK from “The Pink” (Grimm’s)

Q- the QUEEN from my container story

R- RUMPELSTILTSKIN from “Rumpelstiltskin” (Grimm’s)

S- the SNAKE from “The White Snake” (Grimm’s)

T- the TROLL from “The THree Billy Goats Gruff”

U- the UMBRELLA my Fairy Queen has in my container story

V- a VALLEY, also from my container story

W- WATER from  “Iron Hans” (Grimm’s)

X,Y.Z – the Three Wise Men from my container story – see Donna Simmons’ work for this inspiration, the reasoning behind it and the drawings! 

We will cover some more fairy tales during a writing block toward the end of the school year.

For the Qualities of Numbers-

1 – pick a sun from any tale (we did “Brother and Sister” – Grimm’s

2- “The Two Brothers” (Grimm’s) (this is my other favorite fairy tale)

3- “The Three Sons of Fortune” (Grimm’s)

4-  “The Lion” from the book “Active Arithmetic!”

5- “The Star Money” (Grimm’s)

6- “How Six Men Got On In the World” (Grimm’s)

7- “The Seven Ravens” (Grimm’s)

8- “Eight” by Dorothy Harrer

9-  “The Gnome” (Grimm’s)

10-  we did not do a story

11- we did not do a story

12- “The Twelve Hunstmen” (Grimm’s)

We have also done all the Fairytale Stories from Dorothy Harrer, including The Prince Who Couldn’t Read, The Secret and Magic Name of the King (also great for the letter “I”!), The Princess of the Golden Stairs, The Soldier, the Huntsmen and the Servant, Three Sisters, The Fir Tree.

Nature Stories:

All of the ones by Dorothy Harrer including The Lazy Gnome, The Lazy Water Fairy, The Four Seasons, The Rainbow, The Prince of Butterflies, The Snowflake, The Stag, The Lion, and the Eagle, The Four Brothers.

I have also found a Slovak tale regarding “The Twelve Months.” Excellent!!  I have also taken our local animals, found them in Anna Comstack’s “Handbook of Nature Study” and taken some of the characteristics I wanted to highlight and put them into a little nature story.

Other Favorite Fairy Tales:

The Fairy Tales collections by Virginia Haviland are really wonderful and you can get them so cheaply used.  Other favorite fairy tales include “The Castle Under the Sea” (www.mainlesson.com); The Three Princesses of Whiteland (J. Moe) and Soria Moria Castle (PC Asbjornsen); many of the Grimm’s fairy tales not covered in the alphabet stories; many Irish fairy tales; tales from Czechoslovakia such as Budilinek and Zlatovlaska the Golden-Haired; some of the Russian tales such as The Little Humpbacked Horse and Wassilissa the Beautiful.

Fairy tales are great fun, and I hope this list helps you as you put together a wonderful experience at home for your First Grader.

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Making Waldorf First Grade Come Alive!

Posted on by
2

It is hard to believe we are almost half-way done with Waldorf First Grade at Home.  I have a few friends with six year olds in their second year of Waldorf Kindergarten who asked for pointers for preparing for First Grade.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Now is the time to be working on the skills you will need to be showing your child in First Grade – this means being able to draw with block crayons, working with beeswax for modeling, being able to play the pennywhistle or recorder, woodworking, gardening and knitting at least a knit stitch.  Now is a great time to practice one night a week after the kids go to sleep whatever new skill you are working on.

2.  Start reading through the Grimms Fairy Tales and mark the ones that resonate with you and ones you think will resonate with your child.  Look at fairy tales from other lands – for example, Celtic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian – and really see what lives in those tales and what lives in you.

3.  Breathe deeply into that three-day rhythm and see if you can start bringing it to yourself.  Memorize a fairy tale for your six year old kindergarten year  by reading it every night for three nights and tell it to your child.  Your  Kindergarten aged child should  not be working in a three day rhythm, but it might not be bad to practice after your child goes to bed with  the story.  The first day you tell it, the second day bring the artistic piece in and the third day the academic piece.  Think about how you would do this!

4.  Think about what festivals you want to bring to your child and start planning.  You can start small with the new festivals and add a little on every year, but at least think about which festivals resonate for your family.  If there are festivals that are traditionally Waldorf and make you uncomfortable, explore that!

5.  Start making up lots of stories.  You will need this in First Grade.  Some mothers write a “container story”  (more below) to carry the alphabet stories along, or weave a large story with lots of different forms in it for form drawing.  You do not have to use gnome stories for math.  Think what would appeal to your child and also carry the moral qualities that they need to hear in a subtle way.  Waldorf Education is all about the morality of the child as he or she grows into this wonderful human being.

I used a container story for my alphabet fairy tales.  It is the story of a princess who is not allowed to wear the crown until she turns seven and undergoes a training period of meeting 26 loyal fairy subjects.  In this process, she discovers that the fairies are becoming besieged by trolls within the kingdom and what her father and the fairy queen know is that the princess alone has the power to defeat them (and of course, this is through love), but the princess must discover this for herself.   The Grimms tales are all there as each fairy subject has a tale that highlights a letter of the alphabet, the three day rhythm is there with the artistic and academic piece off of the fairy tales, and of course the container story with the moral is there.

6.  Look at your own inner work – what do you need more of?  Less of?  Where are you in your life?  Are you lost and depressed and feeling chaotic or are you happy?  If you are not happy, then change it!

7.  Look at your physical space of your house and work hard this year to find a place to put things, a cleaning rhythm you can stick to.   This is important.  Make sure clean-up is an important part of your child’s play.  Make sure your child has opportunities to see you work and do work themselves.

8.  Look once again at the overall tone in your home. Is it peaceful?  Fun?  Is there joy and laughter?  Or is it aggressive and stressful?

These are just some questions to ponder as you prepare!  Please do keep in mind that First Grade is just the bridge from Kindergarten,and to put lots of activity in your lessons, in your festival preparations, and to know when to go outside and play and when to buckle down a bit.  Also remember, First Grade is a time to just START explaining things, whet their appetite through imagery and art, but leave the dry, textbook explanations behind as this does not speak to a child’s mind or spark their learning process.  You are creating First Grade through experiences, not through a bunch of words!  Stop explaining so much and DO!

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.

Connecting Your Children to Nature

Posted on by
18

Our children are in grave danger of losing connection with nature and the four elements.  The emphasis in American schools is on computer skills and literacy.  Some programs say they bring children outside for a good while, but when pressed the reality is the children are going outside for perhaps 20 to 30 minutes a day and only if the weather is good. 

In fact, a whole best selling book has been written about this topic.  It is called “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv.  I highly encourage you to read this book for the sake of your children.

.Our European friends are attempting to do something about this.  In Scandinavia and Germany, there has been a recent  explosion of Kindergarten programs that take place in the woods all day – not just that the children go outside for part of the day, but that the children literally have their program outside. I have a friend who experimented with this at home and you can read about her experience on her blog at this link: http://naturesrhythm.blogspot.com/2008/11/wood-kindergarten.html

Mothering Magazine (www.mothering.com)  recently covered the topic of forest kindergarten programs in the article, “Forest For A Classroom” by Andrea Mills in the November-December 2009 issue.  In this article, Ms. Mills writes:  “American parents and educators can learn a lot from the Waldkindergarten.  The media ensure that American families are plagued by fears of strangers, bug, sharp items, and other threats, both real and imagined.  Technology makes it more likely that our children will be spending their free time plugged into TV’s, computers, or other media.”

The only forest preschool program I am aware of in the United States is the one Marsha Johnson runs in Portland, Oregon. If anyone knows of any others, please leave it in the comment section for me.

We recently spent several hours outside at a Nature Center.  Typically attendance slows down in the winter months because not every family feels the way we do – that there is no bad weather, only bad clothes. Despite the chill in the air, we got outside every day for 2 to 4 hours.  It is that important to the life of a small child (and to the grown-ups as well!).

Here are a few excellent reasons to get your children out more:

“The four elements, earth, water, air and fire, are the basic elements which children are nourished by and from which they grow. No shaped toys-be they wood or plastic-can compete with these materials. The seriousness with which the children play, the deep concentration speaks for itself, and shows how important this “playing” is. Nobody needs to fight about anything –there is plenty of mud for everybody.” —You Are Your Child’s First Teacher, page 184

“Young children are close to the realm of nature because they are natural beings. Because their consciousness is not yet parted from the environment, because they still live in the consciousness of oneness, of unity, they still belong to the natural world…..The process of separating from the parents and from the environment buds only around age seven..” –Heaven On Earth: A Handbook for Parents of Young Children, Sharifa Oppenheimer, page 99.

Rudolf Steiner wanted the children to be able to connect to and feel at home on the land, to feel at one with the cycles of the year and the cycles of night and day, to really care for the land and he wanted the children to be able to work together socially and value the work that was done before them so that the children understood we all depend on the work of others  (Adapted from -Gardening With Children Audio CD, informedfamilylife.org).

So, if you are trying to think about creating your own playspace, perhaps in your backyard or somewhere wild you have access to ,  here are some thoughts of things to include:

-flat grassy areas

-a hill of some sort

-natural screens (bushes, hedges, places to hide)

-building materials

-play structures – tipis, igloos, houses. Sharifa Oppenheimer talks about letting your child add things to the igloo or tipi structure – give hints for adding things to the structure – “When I was a small girl, we used to put pine needles on the floor as a carpet.” Or “I wonder what it would be like to put a few seashells around the outside, as decoration.” – page 102, Heaven On Earth

.-classic structures such as swings, slides, seesaws, hammocks

-sand play

-water play

-mud play – digging is important

-sensory play area inside or outside…….Some children need these sensory areas and inputs more than others. Waldorf kindergartens rarely have a “sensory table” available, but this may be something to work with at home, and it could be a way to bring the outside in if you have no yard. I have a dear friend who taught in a traditional three year old classroom for over ten years before having children of her own, and she volunteerd some of her wonderful sensory table ideas as follows –For example, a sensory table could be filled with:

sand-add water, shells, sticks, (sand will mold if it left very wet and covered), animals

beans-start with one kind and over time add different varieties-

water-add color, bubbles, funnels, waterwheel, clear plastic containers of all sizes, animals

soil-add rocks, sticks, acorns, etc.  It is fun to add in lima beans or corn kernels as they will start to sprout in the moist soil when left for a few days

For autumn-Indian corn, acorns, seed pods, colorful leaves, pine cones, cranberries

Winter-build dens from bark, there are directions for making snow in the Earthways book, wooden snowflakes, ice cubes (freeze a dish of water for pond)

Spring-soil, seeds, small gardening tools, new leaves, flowers from trees, buds to explore

Summer-water, sand, green plants, wild flowers,

Thank you to my dear friend!

Think about equipment:

-small shovels, rakes, wagon, basket of tools (including hammers, wrenches, paintbrushes, pliers, nails), nails half driven into a log or stump for the children to hammer. There are also more ideas in that little book Toymaking With Children.

how about using your GARDEN as a playspace?

-“Care of plant life is a fundamental lesson in outdoor play.” –from Heaven On Earth

-Make a child-sized scarecrow in the fall or even early spring as you are planting

-Choose seeds that have a short time until maturity – lettuce, radishes, berries, snow peas

-try potatoes, pumpkins, corn

-make a bean tipi

-think about gardening with bees and butterflies in mind, with night blooming flowers for the moths

-encourage backyard wildlife – bird feeders, bird baths, bird houses, squirrel feeders, bat house, hummingbird feeders, owl houses, toad hotels

-Think of exploring the garden with all 12 senses!

Steiner discussed the importance of agriculture within the Waldorf curriculum, and “Being a teacher, we should avoid botanizing, taking the botany drum into class and showing the plants to the students. We should rather take the children outside to really emphasize the understanding of the context between the plant kingdom, the earth and the radiant sun.” – Steiner, Dornach, 1921-22. (Gardening usually occurs between the 6th and 10th grades as a yearly subject, but more and more Waldorf teachers are bringing beekeeping, composting, gardening etc into their classrooms as early as Kindergarten and First Grade).

Bring the Outdoors Inside!

-Try raising tadpoles, butterflies, praying mantis, ant farms, ladybug houses

-Try bringing play equipment inside – swings and small trampolines

-Try container gardening inside

-Try sprouting sunflower seeds and other seeds and beans

Other Major Ways to Connect Your Child to Nature:

Spend time outside every day, no matter what the weather – there is no bad weather, only bad clothes!

If you take a daily walk, focus on exploration, not distance, and have a basket to collect small treasures

Assign parts in fairy tales to dramatize which include the natural elements of the story – ie, children can be the trees, streams, etc. in different tales.

Celebrate FESTIVALS (see blog post regarding Changing Your Rhythm with the Seasons).

Celebrate the moon and phases of the moon – some Waldorf teachers have made hats with the moon phases on it for different fairy tales where a moon phase is mentioned

Have a color of the month that connects it to nature – ie, March is the color green and grow wheat grass on your nature table

Which of course, leads to the inevitable :Have a nature table!

Celebrate the elemental beings – gnomes who take care of the earth, fairies, etc. in circle time or fairy tales

Think about joining a CSA or going to farmer’s markets so children can meet farmers, beekeepers and other folks who work with nature and love it!

Crafts should involve natural items, playthings as well!

Experiences with Nature connect us with the Mysteries of Life and help the young child learn wonder, awe, reverence and respect!

For More Ideas See the Following Books, CD’s and DVD’s:

-Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots – Sharon Lovejoy

-Sunflower Houses – Sharon Lovejoy

-Gardening Classes At The Waldorf Schools – Krause

-Gardening With Children: The Waldorf Curriculum – Carolyn Brown, Audio CD from the Children, Nature and Us Conference  -Available from www.informedfamilylife.org

-“Creating a “Kindergarden” for Young Children by Betty Peck, DVD from the Children, Nature and Us Conference – Available from www.informedfamilylife.org

Just a few thoughts from my little corner of the world.