Musings On The Twelve Senses

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I just attended a weekend of lecture regarding the twelve senses.  As a therapist, this was highly interesting and entertaining to me!  Many people assume there are only five major senses; in physical therapy we tend to work with eight senses; in Waldorf Education we work with twelve senses although there is now a catalog of hundreds of senses.  Our lecturer described the senses much like a tree, with senses coming off of trunks into branches, twigs, twiglets, etc.

The twelve senses can be broken down into three groups of four:  the lower sense of touch, life, movement and balance are often what we should as parents and educators be working on in the Early Years, because they have such strong correlation to the sense we are working so hard to develop in the high school years (the sense of hearing, the sense of word, the sense of thought, the sense of Thou).  In the middle are the middle senses that help us take in our world and mediate between the lower senses that concern our own body and those higher senses that include how we relate to others.  Those higher senses include how we hear and listen to others, how we perceive speech, how we understand the thoughts of others, how we know “Thou” – the others in our life and where we end and they begin.   If all this is new to you, have a peek at this past post:   https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/06/22/the-twelve-senses/

All the senses work together; most functional tasks in life use more than one.  To me, though, touch is a bedrock of so many of these senses and one that so many children have challenges with.  If touch is defined primarily not by the surrounding circumstances that involve other systems (is it hot?  is it cold? etc), but by the experience of “this is where I end, and this is where something else begins”, we can see this connection to the very highest sense of the twelve:  the sense of Thou.  Where do you end?  Where do I begin?  What are the boundaries between us?

This is one of the first senses just assaulted in American society. Continue reading →

Ten Year Old Girls In The Homeschooling Classroom

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Ha!  Long title, but it reflects exactly what I want to talk about today.  I have been talking to other mothers of nine and ten year old little girls, and it seems we all have a common problem…The nine year old girls seem to either cry and crumple with many of their studies at that age, and the ten year olds do their work but with the pacing of a slug.  Is this happening to anyone else out there?  For those of you with nine and ten year old boys, is the behavior similar or different?

I have found for my ten year old personally, the lessons have to be extremely enlivened.  Art, music, poetry, movement are all exceedingly important to teaching.  Those things are the learning.  Today we practiced fractions through an invention of my dear friend Samantha Fogg who is a dog trainer, by looking at the number of trials our dog got right in different tasks.  What fraction of the trials did she get right?  What fraction did she get wrong?  Can we add fractions across trial tests to garner totals?    At the same time, my first grader painted giant letters with washable tempura paint and a roller, walked the letters, and then walked the letters with our dog, training her to walk on a loose leash and not pull.  This, of course, would not be any kind of a main lesson in a Waldorf school, but in a home environment it was very enlivening and very practical.  I think Rudolf Steiner might have liked it.

However, don’t we always worry?  We think, well surely there also has to be a point, “that something has to get done!”   Not that art, music, poetry, movement, cooking, etc are not “doing something” but that sometimes perhaps just as adults, we like to see something of our own traditional learning background in Main Lesson Book entry and pencils.

It can be easy to get into a very dry two or three day rhythm:  present the material, work with the material artistically, draw in the Main Lesson Book and write a summary and yet this is not all that a Waldorf teacher would do at school and it is not all we should be doing at home. (And I am not suggesting we abandon a two or three day rhythm here – sleep is an integral part of learning in Waldorf Education!  However, I am rallying against only a  Main Lesson Book.  Maybe you do a puppet show as part of your block and it arches over several weeks; maybe cooking over several weeks fits in..etc)

At home, we want to keep things simple.  I think we must face it that by the time we get through a long and complicated opening of verses, songs, poetry, flutes with older and younger children present that someone will need to go to the bathroom, someone will need to eat, someone is crying!  Have you all ever experienced that?  I sure have! Meredith, a sixth grade Waldorf Teacher, has some fine tips here for managing a classroom that I think could work well in the home environment as well: http://www.awaldorfjourney.com/2011/10/managing-the-masses/

But, it is good to keep in mind:  how can this be enlivening?  What needs to go in a Main Lesson Book or is there another way to do this?  And, when do I need to push a bit – does this child really need to complete this artistic presentation, this summary?  Because sometimes it becomes more about life than just the simple lesson.

I also like to go back and review the parts of the Main Lesson on Meredith’s blog:

New Content, the end of a Main Lesson:  http://www.awaldorfjourney.com/2011/01/new-content/

Bookwork/Practice:  http://www.awaldorfjourney.com/2010/12/bookworkpractice/

Recall:  http://www.awaldorfjourney.com/2010/12/recall/

The Warm-Up (the beginning of the Main Lesson):  http://www.awaldorfjourney.com/2010/12/warm-up/

I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts.

Many blessings,
Carrie

Paring Down

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This is the time of year where I always start to just withdraw a bit…the colder air, the darkness, the holidays coming and needing time to prepare….it always causes this shift in me.  Does it in you?

I think about…

Clothing for myself and the children:  what do we really need, what do we really wear?  How much is enough?  If I have just a few outfits, I especially like skirts, and some tops, I am fairly happy.  I find the more clothes my children have, the more overwhelmed they are.  I love paring down clothes.

Clutter.  This is such a good time of year to really go through closets, drawers, and really get things to be neater and simpler before the holidays.

The garden.  What needs pruning, what needs fertilizing, what needs mulching?

The kitchen.   What can I pare down and give away and what will I really need for holiday baking and cooking?

Our schedules.  We often are much better at cleaning up our homes than we are to say no to things in our schedule.  (At least I am!)  But, almost every winter we take breaks from things and honor our need to be home and together, to celebrate that inward journey of Advent.  This year I am making my way through this little book for Advent:  http://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Journey-Christmas-Victor-Antoine-DAvila-Latourrette/dp/0764820818/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320292679&sr=8-1  and want to have the space and time to just be.

It feels good to let go of things, to pare down, to relax and slow down.  Where are you these days?  How are you feeling?

Many blessings,

Carrie

Links To Love

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November is the time of year when I think we could all use a little love, a little light, a little fun…I mean, after all, the days are getting darker, homeschooling has gone on for several months now, and the holidays are coming…

So here are a few links to resonate with your spirit and inspire you:

I really enjoyed Annette’s post here:  http://ourseasonsofjoy.com/musings/nostalgia/  The closest place I can think of right now that is close to what Annette is talking about is www.homespunwaldorf.com because it is not associated with any curriculum provider.  I don’t get over there as often as I would like, but when I am there, folks are friendly and helpful and kind to others and there are reviews of all kinds of Waldorf related books and curriculum, along with good old-fashioned parenting and homeschooling advice.

I love this link about “Imperfection” over at Simple Mom: http://simplemom.net/imperfection/#more-15872  The blogosphere is so odd; folks assume you must be perfect if you have a blog that talks about homeschooling or parenting and yet here we all are: human with our flaws, our quirks, our fallacies.  I have many!   Many!

I thought this post was really inspiring:  http://simplehomeschool.net/sarahs-mistake/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SimpleHomeschool+%28Simple+Homeschool%29

I am sure many of you have seen this article in the NY Times about Waldorf Education: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/technology/at-waldorf-school-in-silicon-valley-technology-can-wait.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

And what could be more inspiring than muffins?  I come back to this recipe again and again:

http://lifesafeast.blogspot.com/2010/02/chocolate-chip-buttermilk-muffins.html

Oh, and I nearly forgot this really important post about the benefits of taking your children to church:  http://charmingthebirdsfromthetrees.blogspot.com/2011/10/take-kids-to-church.html

Anyway, please do link to anything you have found recently that resonated with you or inspired you. I would love to read it!

Many blessings,

Carrie

The Christopherus Questionnaire

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http://surveys.verticalresponse.com/a/show/169523/bc48187947/0

Here is a questionnaire that Christopherus Homeschool Resources Inc is running in order to garner feedback.  If you fill out this free survey, you have a chance to enter a drawing to win one of three twenty-five dollar gift certificates……

http://surveys.verticalresponse.com/a/show/169523/bc48187947/0

Many blessings,

Carrie

Squirrel Fun

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I know much of the Northeastern United States is currently buried under snow and even some power outages, so I feel almost bad for saying that fall is finally here in all its glory in the Southeastern US.

I love fall; I always have.  Crunchy leaves of many splendored colors, smoke rising from chimneys, crisp air and sunshine, squirrels and chipmunks scurrying about, fall foods such as apple, squash, greens and pumpkins!  Oh yes, my favorite time of year!  I am gathering up Thanksgiving recipes and getting ready to start on some holiday crafting as well.

So, in that vein, I wish to bring some fun poetry, verses and movement about squirrels to our homeschooling this week, especially for my sweet little toddler who has finally figured out that not every four legged animal is a doggie like his giant Leonberger!

Here are some squirrel ideas for this week if you would like to play along with me: Continue reading →

“The Music Of Language”–Chapter Five of “The Well-Balanced Child”

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This chapter was so interesting; it started with a story of the author’s second son who was diagnosed with a hearing impairment and despite how his hearing continued to hover at 60 decibels and  he would not speak outside of the home and nor could he read, he became a chorister.  The Master of Choristers mentioned that in his choir all the choristers’ reading ability improved dramatically, whether they were poor readers to begin with or not.  The author’s son eventually went to university on a choral scholarship, and she noted that the years her son made the greatest progress was when he started to sing.

Music becomes the second language for a child after movement.  An infant in utero can hear  from external sources only low to medium frequencies that correspond to the range of most vocal melodies and the range of notes on a piano.  The rhythm, cadence, and timbre of the mother’s voice, a intra-uterine source of sound, provides the first link for the development of language and speech.

An infant’s ears are partially filled with fluid for a few days after birth.  In this way, “the baby inhabits an auditory hinterland between the uterine and extra-uterine world.”  Once the fluid clears up,the infant narrows down hearing to the frequency range used in his or her own language.  (What was not mentioned here, which I wonder about, are infants whose parents speak to them in two or three separate languages from birth.  It would seem the range of frequencies would be ever expanded).  The author does remark,  “In the first three years of life, a child has a potential to learn any language on earth if it is exposed to the sounds of that language regularly over a long enough period of time.  After three years of age, the window of opportunity starts to close, and by six years of age the capacity to learn language as an innate skill starts to diminish.”

Hearing starts to develop also with auditory orientation, the way we can locate where a sound is coming from even without seeing the source.  The author remarks on page 73: “Vision tells us what is happening in front and to the sides; hearing and balance help us to know what is happening behind.” This ability to match sounds and sights become the basis for reading and writing.

Using voice in play, through chanting,  through speech and through song are vitally important for hearing and speech development.  Our next chapter is about music and the brain and will explore this further…

Many blessings,
Carrie

An Effective Sensory Diet For Your Homeschool: The “Under- Responsive” Child

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Some children are under-responsive to sensory stimuli.  They essentially can end up functioning in one of two ways:  either being a “sensory seeker” (you know, those children who are rather bouncing off the walls) or being sort of “bumps on the log”, (essentially because it takes such a high input of sensory input to get them to a normal state that they give up!) but share at their core challenges in processing sensory stimuli.

These children typically crave touch, sometimes repeatedly touching objects.  They can be unaware of Continue reading →

Relaxed Waldorf Homeschooling

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I wanted to thank all of you who participated and left comments in regards to the post Donna Simmons of Christopherus Homeschool Resources on Catherine’s blog.  You can see the original post here (and do be sure to read the comments, because that is where the discussion really is, including an interesting side thread on forming the space between two siblings who are very close in age): Continue reading →

And The Winner Is…

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As generated by a random number generator, the winner is Irene!

Irene wrote:  congrats! ❤ I would love to get some kite paper and make window stars to brighten up our home as the days get shorter and shorter and to give away as gifts for the Holidays.

Thank you Irene, and thank you all for participating, and all your kind wishes for The Parenting Passageway.  The past three years have been fun ones!

Much love,

Carrie