So, in my last post I urged you to get your resources ordered by the end of this month so you will have plenty of time to sit down and read it all.

With this in mind, you might be thinking you have  nothing else to do until your resources arrive!  Well,  I have a few suggestions for things to do to prepare this month:

1.  Contact the Waldorf homeschoolers in your area if you can find any; see if you can get together to look at resources in person to decide if you want to buy these resources or not.

2.  Sit down and look at the calendar. How many days do you  have to homeschool by law in your state?  What are the other requirements of your state?

• Figure out what your start date will be, and figure out your holidays and festivals.  There are typical “Waldorf” festivals, and you may also have religious holidays to consider as well.
• When will you stop for the Winter Holidays?  Will you take two full weeks off around Easter – Holy Week and the week after Easter?  Will you schedule in any fall, winter or spring cleaning days?
• When will you stop for summer?
• Are there going to be field trips or other things that you do seasonally every year, such as apple picking or berry picking or visiting a farm to see the sheep shearing?
• You can start to plan this even without resources in your hand.

3.  Now is an excellent time to plan for any toddlers/early “preschoolers” in the house.  They need a language-rich environment, so think ahead for each school month.

• What verses or fingerplays will you use with your really tiny children?
• What songs will you sing each month?
• What simple nursery rhyme or very simple “everday”  story will you tell each month?  Do you need to make puppets?
• Does this story have a worker character?  If it does, what practical work will you be doing this month that may tie in with that worker character?  Small children need to see, and be a part of practical work…(Big children as well!)

4.  Is there anything for festivals you could get a jump start on?  Anything you saw that you would like to have this year to help you celebrate? Maybe it is that wall hanging you wanted to sew or something you wanted to needle felt?

5.  Are there any supplies you need for fall?  How is your schoolroom doing?  Do you need to go through and cull old books or papers? 

Do you need a schoolroom table, blackboard, main lesson books, chalk, block or stick crayons, a blowing instrument?

6.  Is there anything you need to work on so you can bring it to your child in the fall?  Kniting, music, drawing? 

7.  Do you have a general idea what this grade is about?  One resource I suggest is the Christopherus Homeschool Resource Waldorf Curriculum Overview.  I reviewed this resource here on my blog. 

8.  What in your home needs to be pared down or organized?  In the fall, will you be ready  to find everyone’s shoes and coats?  Your bread making supplies?  Are your children’s clothes organized?

Many blessings,

Carrie

Are you getting ready yet to start thinking about your next homeschooling year? 

I know some of you out there may be getting ready to end the school year for your children in a public or private school setting and are thinking about starting to homeschool in the fall.  This probably seems both exciting and overwhelming!

Some of you may be veteran homeschoolers with at least several years under your belt and are starting to plan for the fall by looking at curriculum or other resources you will need to plan over the summer.

Some of you may be transitioning from a “kindergarten” experience of lots of healthy rhythm and rich language development and mathematical foundations to the wonders of two and three day rhythms, main lesson books and formal academic work.  You might be wondering where you will fit all your practical work, and what is going to happen to your toddler now that you will be having more sit down time in main lessons.

Some of you may be thinking about bringing “more” in for that six year old who is kindergarten for the last year.

Wherever you are, let’s jump in together.

My challenge to you is to get your resources ordered by the end of this month so you can start planning. 

Mothers ask all the time about this or that curriculum, what curriculum is out there  that is true to Waldorf but at the same time understands the homeschooling family.  It is of course preferable that you create your own curriculum but I have certainly spoken with so many mothers who are new to homeschooling, new to Waldorf Education, perhaps in a challenging time in their family life, and really need a curriculum to help them lay it all out.  So, here is my list of questions to help you evaluate what you are looking at in terms of products:

I ask you to read the following paragraphs and see if it resonates with you as criteria to evaluate a pre-written curriculum:

• Does the author(s) have a strong understanding of the seven  year cycles, of the three and four fold human being?  For me to use someone else’s curriculum, personally, I would need to know that the author(s) have studied Steiner, that they understand it on some level, and are true to the seven year cycles in their curriculum and that they take into account the developmental arc of the human being from that holistic standpoint. 
• What is the authors’ background?  Have they homeschooled their own children at all?  Do they understand the dynamics of homeschooling, that things are more intense, that you and the dog and a four year old don’t make a Circle Time, that home has certain advantages that really should play into the curriculum that is different than Waldorf School?  Have they ever taught other children or been in situations where they have worked with other children?  After all, not every child and family is like your own! Do they have an understanding of the academic and artistic pieces of each grade?  That is important in order to educate for academic success! 
• Do they have knowledge of the twelve senses and the importance of the protection/development of the twelve senses throughout these seven year cycles?  How is movement incorporated into their curriculum?
• The other area that is a bug –a- boo for me is to ask whether the authors  are advocating academics within the first seven year cycle?  Are they talking about Main Lesson Books for the Early Years and blocks and such?  Are they talking about being able to tell a child’s temperament within the first seven year cycle?  To me none of that fits, so even if you are looking at grades materials, go back and look at what they propose for the Early Years.  This will give you a good barometer as to how true to Steiner the curriculum is!
• If you are an Early Years mother and you are contemplating buying curriculum,  please do go through this blog and look at the resources I recommend.  There are many posts and reviews on here.  Work on yourself, your rhythm for your family, the tone of your home.  Look at what you might want to bring in when .  Create some of these things, and then worry about “curriculum”!
• Lastly, what are the practicalities of using this curriculum?  Is it truly open and go, or do you need to do work to put it together?  (And both answers are okay, it depends what you are looking for!!)  What additional resources do you need?  Do you know how you will open school – do you have verses or songs, a longer poem each month  for your grades children to memorize and recite?  Does the curriculum show how to incorporate the form drawing,  knitting, crafts, cooking, gardening, movement, music or what other resources do you need to get? 
• Or does all that overwhelm you, you are new to Waldorf, and you feel you just need the main lesson ideas?  Starting with “just” a main lesson might be all you feel you can handle, and some families do ease into Waldorf Education this way in the homeschool environment.  Again, you must know what you are looking for.
• Does the curriculum provide samples of what a third grader might write, examples of math problems, etc?  Does it give you ideas for the Main Lesson from an artistic standpoint beyond drawing and summarizing?Not every lesson has to have a spot in the Main Lesson Book –for some things our family has made diaromas or modeled something or painted something or any number of other artistic endeavors– those things don’t fit in a Main Lesson Book!   Remember, art is the vehicle through which the lesson is taught!  The art is NOT separate!  Otherwise the curriculum becomes dry!

If you can ask yourself these questions of the curriculum and be satisfied, then you will have most likely found the right curriculum for you!  There are many products on the market, and we must be careful to know what we are buying.  Nature-based doesn’t mean true to Steiner, and if nature-based is what you are looking for, that is fine, but don’t confuse that with Waldorf Education!

Spend your money wisely; if there are Waldorf homeschoolers in your area please see if any of them have the resources you are considering purchasing so you can look at it and get  a feel for it before you buy it for yourself. If you are looking for Waldorf homeschoolers in your country or state,  please try this link:  http://www.christopherushomeschool.org/resources-for-waldorf-homeschooling-and-conscious-parenting/networking-for-groups-and-individuals.html

Once you decide, trust your intuition and just do it! Stop agonizing!  You must get what you are using, and sit down with it, and READ it from cover to cover so you know what you need to do, what you might need to add, how you need to plan. 

I would love to hear how your planning is coming along and what grades you and your family will be working on in the fall.

Many blessings,

Carrie

There really are no homeschooling curricula/homeschool products out there for Anglican homeschooling families that involve religious instruction every day.  It seems most Anglican/Episcopalian  homeschooling families piece together their own religious curriculum based upon the liturgical calendar of the Church Year, Feast days of the Saints,  and various resources. 

I have done some digging, though and did come up with a pretty fabulous FREE resource from the  Virginia Theological Seminary.  This program would work for a once a week lesson and you could easily add things so there could be  something in the form of religious focus each and  every day of homeschooling.  There are three age groups with three years’ worth of material for each age group and the resources include not only the teachers’ manual and ideas for art but much more: http://www.vts.edu/podium/default.aspx?t=122314

Some other resources to think about:

• Creating A Family Prayer Space: http://theten0clockscholar.blogspot.com/2010/04/family-altar.html
• I have also thought about creating portable prayer spaces – little drawstring bags with a cloth that coincides to the liturgical season, and icon cards or other objects that would assist the children in speaking to God. 

Here are a few other resources I am considering for Fall in addition to the Daily Office ( http://missionstclare.com/):

• The Anglican Family Prayer Book:  http://www.amazon.com/Anglican-Family-Prayer-Book/dp/0819219401/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300984720&sr=8-1 
• Lessons on Christian Symbols:  http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0806649313/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Many blessings,

Carrie

I am reading these five lectures given at the West Coast Waldorf Teachers Conference in Fair Oaks, California in 1998 by Michaela Glockler, MD.  As a physical therapist and as a homeschooling mother, I am really enjoying these lectures. 

Dr. Glockler posits in these lectures some of the basic questions about Waldorf Education and health.  In the preface of this book, Astrid Schmitt-Stegmann writes:  “Doctors, educators, and therapists have a special need to meet the ever increasing illness manifesting on all levels in growing human individuals – be these attention deficit problems, behavior problems, sensory integration problems, psychosomatic disturbances, or genetic disturbances.  Whatever the manifestations are, we must understand that underlying them are physiological problems……The key task for the educator, therefore, is to insure for the child a health physical development, for this is the basis for a healthy soul-spiritual development.”

These lectures underscore the basis of Waldorf Education, and what should be the basis in concrete thought and action in all educational methods:  that children are physically growing and developing in addition to whatever they are “academically” learning and that the physical body and movement is a vehicle for learning.

We are in a situation in the United States right now where our educational system no longer seems to respect the developmental progression of children.  Even mainstream childhood developmental resources state that early six is a terrible time to teach reading and writing (and so is four!)  So how is it that our current educational system is not built upon development and ignores developmental norms?

And how is it that we can take the holistic human child and essentially boil learning down to an interaction between eyes and hand only?  We have taken away anything that would marry the body and soul of a child.  This is dividing the human being into chunks, and I think we are reaping the effects of this with the rates of suicide, violence, bullying, drug abuse and sexual abuse and misconduct.  Waldorf Education seeks to include the whole child.

We relate the physical body to the emotional and spiritual.  Dr. Glockler writes, “The whole physical body speaks a language; everything in the human being speaks about its function.”  (and my physical therapists in this audience are nodding because HOW many times in physical therapy school does one hear over and over, “Form follows function?”)  “We can take all the details and we can take the whole; it is always the same.”  (There are many detailed anatomic drawings in this book of bones, embryonic development in this book to look at whole and at parts in the upright human being)    We rightly speak of the image of the human being which reveals what it is.  I already mentioned earlier that we carry our whole body in uprightness.  What does the language of the body say though this upright posture?  Our very body says that we are upright beings.  We can take this both in the literal, spatial sense, and also in a spiritual sense in that “upright” is another word for truthful, to be upright.  So our body’s language speaks about our spiritual function, that both outwardly and inwardly we are upright beings.  Due to this uprightness we have a center between above and below, and this center is the seat of the force of the heart, of love.  Love is the center of our upright being.  The extreme polarities of our being are  wisdom and power, but the most central force is love.”

I have more to say about these lectures, but that is a great place to start today.

Many blessings,
Carrie