Modeling is one of the oldest basic human activities and brings us to some of the most essential parts of being human – the spiritual activity of art, the grapple with the will and transformation of problem solving.  Modeling is a part of the  rhythm of work in a week for children in the Early Years, and is used extensively in the grades.  In seventh grade, hands and feet are often modeled as part of the journey into physiology, the Renaissance, and perspective and often the head is modeled in eighth grade. High School moves into more serious sculptural design as the student discovers the sculptural forces within himself.

Modeling strengthens many forces in the children.   Modeling is wonderful tactile experience to strength the Sense of Touch, one of The Twelve Senses often mentioned in connection with Waldorf Education.  It is a way to strengthen the will forces of the hand, provides an exploration into flexibility and visual perception and forces of conceptual strength and incorporate the Sense of Smell.  The Sense of Life is strengthened as a child handles materials as the materials are sometimes not the easiest to work with.  Beeswax can be hard at first and needs warmth and softening; clay can be wet and sticky.  But yet, if children move through this with willing, this medium can become moments of triumph.   You can read more about the connection of the life forces of the body to sculpture in Waldorf Journal Project 6.

For small children, beeswax modeling material is often used to strengthen the Sense of Warmth.   This article by Rahima Baldwin Dancy explains why beeswax modeling material is used when children are younger than the nine year change, and how this does not mean that small children should never play with clay, but why beeswax modeling materials are often preferred below fourth grade.

There was a book that created quite a stir a few years ago regarding using clay with grades-aged children below the nine year change. You can also see this article regarding the use of clay in the early GRADES.  http://www.waldorflibrary.org/journals/22-research-bulletin/1201-autumnwinter-2012-volume-17-2-modeling-clay-for-all-ages  This article points out that there is a lot of dogma around this subject and that Steiner did indeed talk about clay for the early grades (but not the Early Years!)  However, I will say at least in my experience, Waldorf teachers in the American Waldorf Schools that I have met are not at all open to using clay for children below fourth grade.   I am not sure if this is changing or not, so if you are a Waldorf teacher in a Waldorf School, please chime in.

Some people ask at what age should an Early  Years child begin with beeswax modeling.  I have seen some say as early as two or three years old.  I think in the home environment of Waldorf homeschooling, early experiences with modeling would include being outside with sand, beach, river clay, and also with domestic experiences such as bread dough shaping. I find bringing beeswax modeling to a five and six year old to be a good place to begin (unless you have older students and your four year old is clamoring to have a piece too!)

In our next post, we will look at how to begin.

Many blessings,
Carrie

This is the third part of looking at normal stages of sleep for children. 

Part One covers children ages four through nine.

Part Two covers children ages eight through twelve.

Today, we are going to look at teenagers and sleep.  While infants and children are often “larks” – waking up early and going to bed early, many adolescents are “owls” who wake up late and stay up late.  Sleep patterns are controlled by hormonal factors and brain signaling related to development, so this transition to a time of being “owls” is often followed back to a transition of being a “lark” again as maturation occurs. 

Early rising for school doesn’t mean that teens will feel ready to go to sleep from a hormonal and brain development standpoint, so what often occurs is actually a shrinking in the number of hours a teenager gets.  And unfortunately, a teenager needs more sleep than either adults or much younger siblings.  They still need about nine to  ten hours of sleep a night!

In the book “The Teenage Brain:  A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults” by Frances E. Jensen, MD with Amy Ellis Nutt, the authors note, “Memory and learning are thoughts to be consolidated during sleep, so it’s a requirement for adolescents and as vital to their health as the air they breathe and the food they eat.” (page 89).  There are some very interesting studies in this book noted in regards to learning, motor learning and sleep.  It has been found that studying or practicing something and then “sleeping on it” really does increase retention and performance. 

Melatonin is released about two hours later in a teenager’s system and it also lingers longer, causing a teenager to be drowsy in the morning.   There are also interesting differences in amount of slow-wave deep sleep cycles in teenagers as compared to adults, and differences in the pruning of brain synapses as related to learning and sleep.

From the book “The Teenaged Brain”, page 96:  “It [lack of good sleep] can have profound and lasting effects on teenagers and could contribute to everything from juvenile delinquency to depression, obesity, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease.  Studies have shown that teenagers who report sleep disturbances have more often consumed soft drinks, fried foods, sweets, and caffeine.  They also report less physical activity and more time in front of TV and computers.  Another study found that teenagers who had trouble sleeping at ages twelve to fourteen were two and a half times more likely to report suicidal thoughts at ages fifteen to seventeen than adolescents with good sleep habits.”

Ways to help your teen’s sleep include:

• Taking away electronic devices before bedtime.  Those should be locked down for the night.
• The bright LED light of a computer screen should be turned off an hour before bedtime.   The lights suppress melatonin
• Have your child do “non-tech” activities at night and do the same activities at the same time at night.
• Make lists of things that need to be done to help decrease any anxiety.
• Avoid television in the bedroom – associating television and food with bedtimes is often cited by experts as problematic for healthy sleep patterns.
• Keep the house as peaceful and emotionally stable as possible.  Arguments and tension disrupt sleep!
• One epidemiologist recommends that teenagers should have a bedtime that is 10 PM or before, according to sleep studies.   Keeping bedtimes and awake times consistent are helpful.
• Check to see what caffeinated drinks your teen is drinking during the day to stay awake.  Cutting those out may be helpful in a quest for sleep.
• And as always, speak to your teenager’s medical team if you feel the fatigue or sleep challenges your teen is facing seems different than the norm.

Blessings,
Carrie

Our last post regarding Chapter One of this book can be found here.  One of the major premises in Waldorf Education for the Early Years is that the child is working on the growth of his or her own physical body and that this work continues for a longer period than we might otherwise think.  For example, respiration and pulse rates do not establish consistent rhythms until the child is six or seven years old.  Eye muscles for tracking take at least eight years to develop according to this chapter (and many of the optometrists who specialize in visual therapy will tell you this is still developing up until age fourteen), the frontal lobes of the cortex are still developing throughout the teenaged years, etc.  Therefore a fundamental truth of Waldorf Education is that:

To allow the child’s forces of growth and formation to do their task without hindrance allows him to build a solid foundation for physical health throughout life.  These are the same forces that power the intellect, and as they are gradually released from their body forming activities, the intellect develops.  However, the intellect can be forced into early functioning at the expense of the developing physical body. 

The child is seen as a gradually awakening being who is born with a “dream consciousness” and children are seen as attaining and coming to self-consciousness at their own pace. 

The NEEDS of the newborn are seen not just as the need for food, warmth, dryness, being kept clean but the “soul needs” of attention, affection and nourishing touch, the need for acceptance and welcome and appreciation.  This is the basis for the child in growth to develop a basic trust in the world and in other people.

I would love to hear your thoughts on any of the topics in this book up to page 27.

Hope you are reading along,

Carrie

If you hang around at all in the world of Waldorf parenting and homeschooling, I think you quickly discover rhythm is frequently discussed and seen as the answer to many of the challenges that parents of tiny children face.

It is also something that can lead to a feeling of guilt for many parents – I was nursing on demand, and now I have to transition to having more set times on things?  I was following my baby’s lead, and now I have to lead, and how do I do that and still respect my child?  What do I do when my (older) child doesn’t “follow” what I thought/had planned?

Nursing is a separate topic from this – nursing is always on an infant and toddler’s lead.  If you need more ideas in this area and how to craft a rhythm around this, please do look up the terms breastfeeding, toddler eating, etc in the search engine box on this blog.  There are many ways to hold rhythm for a nursing infant and toddler and yet hold the whole family in a rhythm as well.

Rhythm can be your  lifesaver. Not only does it solve so many behavioral and discipline challenges just by having a rhythm of what normally happens when, it also can free you up to be helpful to not just your own family members, but  to neighbors and community outside of your immediate family.  If you feel like you are drowning in your own home under meals, diapering and potty training and sleep times, rhythm is your friend and ally to help build this ability to help yourself and others.   If you are convinced of this, it takes away much of the guilt that you are doing something that is not respectful “to” your child.  To the contrary, rhythm is the most respectful teacher of your child and in integrating the family as a whole.  Rhythm is also a way mothers can learn to be content and happy AT home, rather than having to go out every minute.

Rhythm is about helping your child meet their capacities in a developmentally appropriate way.  Rhythm is about getting the needs of the whole family met; which is very important as children mature and grow.  Rhythm is about the child being part of the family, and the family in unity.

Rhythm helps foster boundaries,  for a child who sees that parents have work within the home that nourishes the entire family and also has the time and space for patience with small children.

Rhythm helps you to learn to say “no” to fast tracking childhood through too many outside activities.   Rhythm helps you realize the limitation of one parent, multiple children, and length of time things take with small children. Rhythm gives one a sense of time and space.

Rhythm isn’t set times – it can be a general flow with plenty of  time and space around the margins.  However, it can also provide a needed push toward regular meal, bathroom and rest/sleep times.  This can be such a wonderful thing for families where this does not come naturally.

Rhythm can be built from where you are.  If the only thing you have that is rhythmical in your family is a waking up time, you can build from there.  If the only thing you have going is that you tend to eat dinner with the other adults in your family at a certain time, then you can build from there.

Rhythm can take into account your goals.  Perhaps your goal is to get your toddler to go to sleep earlier – rhythm can help you work towards that.  Rhythm can help you with potty training and also with meal times.

Rhythm  can be flexible depending upon the seasons, the day of the week and account for differences in the weekdays and weekends.

There are many, many back posts on this blog regarding rhythm, but one you might enjoy is the five secrets to setting a rhythm for your home and this seven part series regarding rhythm that begins with this post.

Many blessings,
Carrie

I have thought ahead to what our rhythm will look like in the fall with a six year old kindergartener, an eighth grader who needs not only block lessons but “track” lessons, and a fifth grader.  I think this rhythm would work well for those whose third child is in grades 1 –3 as well.  For those with three children or more in the upper grades, there would need to be more tweaking I think – please be sure to go back to this post about homeschooling Waldorf with large families:  https://theparentingpassageway.com/2015/02/23/peaceful-times-in-homeschooling-a-big-family/

This is just what worked for us last year when we were really “on task” and what I have had to add to it for eighth grade.  It takes most of the day – 8:30 to about 2:30 or 3.

Here is our sequential order, but no particular times attached:

• Daily Walk with six year old kindergartener twice a week, fifth grader will work on any independent math work or reading associated with school, math with eighth grader twice a week (like the math that should be in a math block but we don’t have time in the year for three math blocks) and once a week “life skills” with eighth grader ( I did that in seventh grade too, where we read books related to our faith or related to emotional intelligence, or the more “traditional” life skills such as personal finance, etc) .  The times we are walking either the older children will go or will be finishing main lesson book work, especially the eighth grader if we are in intense blocks.  It would be nice to have enough time for all of us to take a long, long walk but quite frankly I would rather get school done earlier and have more time in the afternoon.
• Main Lesson  with fifth grader – Eighth grader has piano practice, independent work such as writing rough drafts of summaries, finishing drawings or painting, independent math practice and also will be doing some crafts and play with our kindergartener.
• Circle, story and work of the day with kindergartener; fifth grader and eighth grader will relax or do whatever chores need to happen. I normally do our kindergartener first, but I think moving his things to the more mid-morning could work better for us at this point.
• Main Lesson with Eighth Grader – Fifth grader has  music practice and playing with our little kindergartner.
• Lunch
• Rest
• After lunch, some days each week I will work with our fifth grader on different track activities such as movement and math games and some days I will work with our eighth grader on world geography or American civics.  Our little kindergartener can play then.
• A few days a week we will have handwork and woodworking or other practical arts and our little kindergartener can join in.
• Closing verse and done!

It sounds like a lot on paper, but it really is fairly casual in terms of the fact that I don’t mind being flexible and letting things go depending upon our sanity level and what we feel up to.  I used to always try to end by lunch when my older two are younger ( and many times, most of the time have not felt successful in getting everything back together after lunch,  but last year with a seventh grader by necessity things went longer)  but with an eighth grader I feel like she needs a bit more as you just cannot fit everything into blocks…and with a lack of outside classes, I feel we really should get to our practical arts (outside of the kitchen, which we always manage to get to!)

Things change every year as they grow, so we will see if this is successful or not.  I am always willing to be flexible in trying out rhythms.

Would love to hear your daily rhythm, especially those of you with seventh graders and up!

Many blessings,
Carrie

Sometimes toddlers and preschoolers do funny things, and parents ask, “Why is it that I can’t get Little Jimmy to drink anything but chocolate milk with his school lunch?”  “Why is it Little Abby only has worn cowboy boots for the past three months every day?”

And then there are mothers of older teenagers and sometimes their list of worries can be much more serious and upsetting:  sexting, driving home with a drunk driver, car accidents, drug and alcohol use, graduating high school, teenage pregnancy, getting into college, saving money from a job so there will be something to start out in life with, the possibility of rape;  the list goes on.  Even if we have total confidence in our wonderful teenagers and their abilities to make great choices, the list can still be there in the back of our minds.

It is an interesting juxtaposition.

Thinking about some of the bigger issues that older teenagers can face makes the issue of chocolate milk and cowboy boots seem what they are – small issues that will pass in time. It is not that these topics don’t deserve thought and consideration.  Not at all!  But sometimes it can be helpful to hear and see older children in action.  The older child and teenager is where your toddler and preschooler someday will be.

This is not to negate the really important job of raising a toddler and preschooler because these years are the foundation of the years to come.  You may really not be over-thinking it, but just building a long-range perspective can take years.

I remember being a new mother and I DID feel like a deer in the headlights with my toddlers and preschoolers.  Now I have an almost 14 year old and a five year old, with a ten year old in between,  and I am starting to understand where mothers of the older teenagers are coming from with some of their worries and a bigger picture than picky eating or sleeping (although those things are super important at the time and when you are in the middle of it!). I am forever humbled at every turn.

Going back to basics always helps.  SOCIETY makes parenting toddlers and preschoolers MUCH HARDER than it should be.  We have forgotten what tiny children are all about and what the media and often even what  mainstream groups that cater to toddlers, preschoolers and their parents show us as “normal” is actually a version of adulthood brought down and made over for these tiny ages – and  so much of it is commercially driven, at least in American society.

The rules of parenting the toddler and preschooler should simply revolve around rescuing your toddler from near-death several times an hour (exhausting!), rest and sleep, trying to get a toddler to eat and potty train (exhausted yet?), helping guide a toddler’s wants and needs,  and playing!  Where society makes it hard is that it is not child-friendly, and with all the “experts” out there, mothers have forgotten how to be the expert on their own child. Also, there are no longer  great support networks for new parents that provide the “real deal” as to what these tiny ages are about!

Remember, the way to get these things “done” with a toddler or preschooler is

• Rhythm  – Rhythm and consistency, not over- talking and over- explaining, is the KEY to discipline!
• Outdoor time
• An unhurried, happy life
• Rest and sleep
• Not feeling as if a tiny child constantly needs bigger, better, to be pushed, more stimulation, more classes outside the home – RESIST the urge to bring the adult world to your child. Ask yourself, did I do this when I was a child of that age or did I do it in middle school and high school??
• The idea that childhood should be PROTECTED
• Free yourself from the idea that a small child needs to be entertained.  They need meaningful work and  over time they need to develop the ability to occupy themselves in the home environment with play

Developing a long-term understanding of the development of the human being can be a helpful guide in a society where developmental stages are not valued.  I am so grateful for all the parents out there that do try, that do worry, that do work to help guide their children.  Thank you for being such good parents!

Blessings,
Carrie

I think choosing how we spend our time outside of when our children are in school –whether that be in public, private or homeschool – is an important topic.

If your children are in public or private school, I know many families who choose to do no extra activities outside of school.  This gives children time to come home, relax and play, get homework done, eat with the family and go to bed on time.  I know families that adhere to this even when their children are teenagers, despite pressure to “do lots of things to put on a college application.”  If any activities are chosen, it might be one activity at a time that has a short life span – ie, an activity that might span 4-6 weeks and then culminate in an event.

I know many  homeschooling families that will only choose activities that the entire family can participate in (or least all the grades-aged children and therefore the younger children coming up to this age will eventually do). I find this to be especially true of families with four or more children. If the family is very large, for example, I have known homeschooling families with six to twelve children, they may choose two activities such as soccer and dance and the children divide according to their interests.  Even this can start to get a little dicey because of age requirements for different levels, but it still is a way to limit.

I think the families that are running around the most that I see in the homeschooling communities are actually those with one to three children!  There is this idea that every child needs their separate things to do.  Sometimes that is true.  However, I think it takes really careful thought and consideration so it doesn’t turn out that each child has there “own three separate things” so therefore you are running nine places between three children!

I don’t know as children below 12 need much in the way of outside, adult-led, structured activities, dependent upon the child’s temperament and extraversion levels.  Young teens  of 13-15 sometimes struggle because it seems as if many of the activities for “children” are up to age 12 and therefore those ages 13-15 need to be in a teen group of some kind.  My almost fourteen year old often feels left out in a group of older teens at this point and I have noticed this across the board in observing the 13-15 year olds. So I have tried to look for activities that still can include her with her sister and children her age (because 13-15 year olds often seem to feel left out with only smaller children as well) or activities that especially include a good grouping of 13 to 15 year olds.  This sort of grouping  also makes sense to me based upon Steiner’s pedagogy of the sixteen/seventeen year old change.

I would love to hear your thoughts.  How do you handle outside activities?  At what point do you feel children really, really need something to do outside the home?  Not to generalize, but many mothers of 11 and 12 year old girls have told me that is when they really felt their girls needed something more and many mothers of boys told me their boys didn’t care so much to do something until they were closer to 14.

Tell me how many children are in your family that are grades-aged and how you handle outside activities! Let’s have a discussion!

Blessings,
Carrie

One thing I have heard frequently in parenting and in supporting other parents is this area of the “unsupportive” spouse.  Whether it be breast-feeding, co-sleeping, homeschooling, eliminating media – it seems like this comes up a lot.  “I would like this, but my partner is not supportive.”

I can only offer you a few suggestions from other mothers  that I have heard over the past fourteen years or so…

1.  Remember your spouse is a parent too.  Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have been breastfed/have been raised with no media/were homeschooled ourselves.  Then we bring that to the table as part of us, and our future spouses and partners KNOW this about us.  However, many of us were only exposed to these ideas AFTER we had children and now it is almost like changing the rules of the game in a sense.  We feel as if we have better information and knowledge to make a better choice for our families, but we are bringing something totally new to the table for our partners or spouses…which leads to….

2.  Communication; have the honest dialogue. Communication is really important. If you set it up as “I am right and you are wrong in “X” parenting matter” ….well, you probably aren’t going to get very far.  But a heart-felt conversation in which you address your partner’s fears, assumptions, wishes in a respectful way…that can go a long way.  Be a team together.  Share information and support each other.  Talk about how you came to the conclusion you are now holding as truth; maybe that will help your partner’s journey as well.

3.  Can you respectfully compromise?  There are two of you, and you have to parent like it.  Are there baby steps?   

4.  Can you offer alternatives that  protect your child?  What compromise can your spouse make to help meet you? 

5.  Give it time.  Some families start out with a specified time frame to try things out – three weeks seems like a good time frame – and see what happens! Is everyone happier? 

If the time passes, and your spouse is not happy but overall the family seems more happy, ask yourself:  is this a parenting problem or a relationship challenge?  In other words, is this really about breastfeeding/cosleeping/media-free/homeschooling/etc. or is it really about something else? See point #7 below.

6. Be respectful.  Mothers often are the ones researching things and wanting to move things in a certain direction; be respectful and again, allow communication and time for your partner to work on this issue that you have raised.

7. How is the rest of the relationship?    I read an article once about “The Unsupportive Spouse” by Gregory Popcak in “The Nurturing Parenting”  (1996) and he wrote about how we cannot use these issues as a shield to avoid each other or not work on our relationship with our partners.  If you need help, get help. A great therapist or counselor can be the wonderful third party and objective sounding board.  You may grow even closer having worked through some of the challenges inherent in parenting!

I would love to hear your stories….how did you and your spouse handle big issues that you disagreed upon?

Blessings and love,
Carrie

The last post I wrote about language arts through the Waldorf homeschooling curriculum  brought out some terrific comments by veteran homeschooling mothers regarding finding differing expectations between Waldorf homeschooling curriculums.  One of my long-time readers wrote this brilliant comment:

Thanks again, Carrie, for your thoughts on this. There can be such a discrepancy not just between what’s done at school or home but also in comparing home ed. curriculums. Looking at Live Ed, say, or Path of Discovery, and then comparing it to much of what Christopherus suggests is do-able at a certain age for example. The expectations of the child, not just in language arts but in all areas, are quite different.
I agree with what you say about home educated children – I think they develop to their own individual time-tables, regardless of what experts might say or what other children are doing.
Perhaps being allowed to linger in a stage of development allows them to really complete it in a way that being hurried on to the next thing does not.

Yes! Oh, yes!

So always go back to basics:  read  Steiner’s lectures and  look at your child.  Know the general ideas of artistic and academic goals for each grade and know that if you are using curriculum, they do vary fairly significantly at points.  Most of all, look at the child in front of you because when it comes down to it, that is what you have:  the child in front of you and where they are and you can only build from there!  That is the reality of teaching!

Why is it that  you often hear about children in the homeschooling environment (and not even just Waldorf homeschooling, you  ofen hear this across homeschooling methodologies  unless a child is really being pushed in the academic areas or the child is just naturally brilliant) is  that sometimes a child didn’t read until 12, or they just didn’t get math until all of the sudden when they turned 14, etc. ? I think this may, like my reader suggests above,  have to do with the  time and space that homeschooling affords.  In my experience, it seems that many times the only children that meet many of these  “pre-set milestones”  are the eager beaver first-born girls.  Maybe in a group some of these children would be the little ones sort of ahead of the class in general or who get it easily and help their classmates.  Maybe  it has to do with a more esoteric reason, such the guiding hand of Spirit over  homeschoolers as a group across the land.  I don’t know, other than it just seems to be.

So, be careful with curriculums.  They can be a great guidepost to help brand-new mothers who have never seen a Waldorf classroom nor heard transition verses nor seen main lesson books.  However, I notice many mothers coming up are buying ALL the curriculums. ALL the different curriculums on the market! Are you the type of the mother that can sort through all of this?  Is there one that really matches your family better and where your child is?

At the point you are sorting through all of this, why not buy resources and make your own curriculum since the curriculums are all different anyway?  Yes, each curriculum has its gems, each one has its own voice.  But so do you! You have your own voice, your own style – and this is EXACTLY what happens in a Waldorf classroom with a teacher.  Every teacher is different and brings their own twist to the subject material.   Every teacher will design a block in a different way.

Being a homeschooling parent means being a teacher.  You are learning to be a teacher, and it will come.

Blessings,
Carrie

This is a big subject as entire books have been devoted to this matter.  I recommend that Waldorf homeschooling parents first of all read Steiner’s lectures regarding language arts. The lectures compiled in “Genius of Language”; lectures also found in “Discussions With Teachers” and “Practical Advice to Teachers”.

In the Waldorf homeschooling world, we also books of secondary pedagogy such as “Living Language” from Christopherus Homeschooling Resources, Inc which I think is very helpful for grades one through five if you are putting together your own blocks, the smattering of lessons for grades 2 through 8 such as Dorothy Harrer’s  book “An English Manual” (free as an ebook over at Rudolf Steiner Library On-Line) which includes mainly grammar (but not so much writing or progression to writing).  Also, brand new this year are little grammar workbooks from a Waldorf perspective for grades four and up here (but I think only grade four is out right now).  Unlike “Waldorf math” where a scope and sequence is laid out by such authors as Jarman or York, I have not found a true scope and sequence for language arts (writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation) other than “Living Language” (– especially for the upper grades, since, again, “Living Language” covers grades one through five).

All of this is important because, after all, in Waldorf homeschooling, we have those summaries (I say this partly with my tongue in cheek – read on).  You know, the summaries that run through all the grades in trying to summarize information in the upper grades and sentences in the lower grades.  We do use what we write to learn to read and to practice our letter and word –finding abilities in the lower grades, and in how we work with grammar and punctuation and spelling.  We find this work  in our rhythm of practice, in recall, a deepening of the subject using art as the vehicle and yes, writing as an academic piece.  (Not that this rhythm of “material-drawing-summary” should be the way to do every thing!  Trying to decide what to put in the main lesson book is part of being the teacher, and not everything has to go in the main lesson book – trying to put everything in there is a sure recipe for burn-out on both your part and the student’s part!  Is the goal of Waldorf Education writing summaries? Is art the secondary step to get to the summary?   NO, I say emphatically!)

I find that writing in and of itself is an activity that involves much thinking, and therefore I believe we really see the maturation of writing when we see the maturation of the human being.  Being able to think about a subject and write  about it clearly in order to communicate to other people involves the twelve senses – I think especially in the choosing of words, punctuation, grammar, how we phrase things, how we analyze things and can synthesize this on paper – this involves being able to put ourselves in the place of another “I” on so many levels, to be able to communicate with the “other” in our audience and in our clarity.  To me, good writing is part of the hallmark and culmination of  these senses.

In the homeschooling environment I think this takes place later than in the school setting from what I have seen and heard in working with other homeschooling families.  Therefore,  I am always a bit baffled by this push for more mature “writing” in composing summaries in the grades four and below – to me, this is more the realm of copying sentences and then copying summaries  of a paragraph or two, dictation in perhaps end of fourth and yes in  fifth grade, yes, perhaps working together to go over ideas orally first in these grades so the child can get a sense of how to start compiling things….and then composing summaries gradually and gently in middle school with excellent writing towards the end of eighth grade and in high school.  That is my  own progression in my own  homeschooling, but certainly every child is different, and you as a homeschooling teacher will need to figure out what is right for your family.

I hope to write a series talking about language arts in each grade with a few ideas.  As I have pointed out, there are many books on these subjects and it is worth your time to think about the progression normally found in Waldorf Education and how your progression will be at home. My vote and inclination is that the things we find in Waldorf Education often, again, happens later in the home environment, especially for the very active boys and girls. 

Just my two cents!

Blessings,

Carrie

Blessings,
Carrie