This is a big topic, and we probably can only brush the surface of this today.   And this is long, but I felt I should keep it all within one post, so feel free to read part and come back or settle in with a cup of tea.  This post goes with the two other previous posts regarding Waldorf and Unschooling.

Let’s start with the very ending of “Practical Advice to Teachers” in which Steiner relates the four essential tasks of the teacher:  (this is, of course, the “Cliff-notes” version so to speak):

1.  “….teachers must make sure that they influence and work on their students, in a broader sense, by allowing the spirit to flow through their whole being as teachers, and also in the details of their work:  how each word is spoken, an dhow each concept or feeling is developed.”  “They must be filled with initiative.” 

2.  “….we as teachers must take an interest in everything happening in the world and in whatever concerns humankind.” “The teacher should be one who is interested in the being of the whole world and of humanity.”

3.  “…the teacher must be one who never compromises in the heart and mind with what is untrue.”  “Our teaching will only bear the stamp of truth when we ardently strive for truth in ourselves.”

4.  “The teacher must never get stale or grow sour.  Cherish a mood of the soul that is fresh and healthy!  No getting stale and sour!”

Now let us look and see where the student is.   Donna Simmons writes in “The Christopherus Waldorf Curriculum Overview For Homeschoolers” regarding  ages 7-14 “The child learns primarily through the authority of the love expressed by those around him.”  “During this time, the child is most active in his imagination and needs a healthy awakening of his feeling life to learn best.  This is most appropriately achieved by an imaginative and lively artistic approach to all academic subjects.”    During ages 14-21, “The youth learns primarily through the truth of the expertise around her.”  “During this time, the youth’s intellectual powers must be allowed to stretch and grow. Care must be taken to avoid dogmatism and apathy.  The youth’s natural state of idealism must be cultivated.”

So, what does all this have to do with Unschooling and Waldorf?

In the grades, we see a progression of sorts from one seven year cycle to the next.  We see that the curriculum is designed to meet the age of the child through an artistic, feeling, imaginative, creative way, through movement.  We see that whilst many of the subjects seem set, it is up to us how we bring them alive to our specific child.  Steiner himself said a lesson should never be stale or sour!  He also said there is really no education other than self-education and how as teachers we set up the environment and provide the most favorable conditions for learning.

So, if we understand WHY certain subjects are brought at certain grades, then we can look at how we want to meet that at home and how we want to develop a relationship with all of that within our own homeschool.  For example, in First Grade, some people are very uncomfortable with Grimm’s fairy tales.  We should never try to teach that which does not resonate within us, so we can change that for the archetypal imagery of other tales as long as we carefully explore why areas of the curriculum don’t fit in with us because the Waldorf curriculum really is the human journey.  We also  have to be careful in some regards, because many  of the experiences of the younger grades builds up to lessons in the older grades (ie, wet on wet watercolor painting is really a bridge to the study of color in physics later on), but within reason and with understanding and mindfulness, we can work with the subjects normally studied.  

As homeschoolers, we can also wait on things, to a certain extent, if our child is not ready. My oldest detested knitting in the First Grade, it always ended in tears and crying and frustration,  so we let it ride until Second Grade.  She is now an avid knitter and she loves handwork. 

There are some areas in particular, math especially, where it seems okay to move forward faster than the curriculum.  The science and the language arts seem to more be based upon age/grade because of the content than the math, but obviously also things like the amount of writing can be increased if a child is writing well.  However, it is very important that other areas are balanced – handwork, music, movement…  The one thing that really can’t be moved, though, is “moving ahead” on the content – Norse myths belong in Grade Four for a reason, for example.

People ask all the time what to do if their child has interests in things that don’t come up in the Waldorf curriculum until much later….I addressed that to a certain extent here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/01/09/can-waldorf-work-with-other-homeschooling-methods/  and would like to reiterate a few things.  First of all, see how strong an interest this is:  many children are wholly passionate about something and then that interest fizzles out within a week.  Take a bit of a ho-hum attitude about it and see if it still burns so incredibly brightly.  If it does, can you meet it in steps and stages rather than going whole-hog wild?  This is prudent for all parents, not just Waldorf homeschooling parents.  You don’t want to run out and buy a Baby Grand when your child has never taken a piano lesson but has an “interest”.  But you can encourage the exploration!

Do you worry your child is gifted in some way and the curriculum will not meet your child’s needs?  Whether your child is  reading at a six-year-old level or a twelve-year-old level, you can be creative in meeting the child with Old Testament Stories in the Third Grade.  The academic piece can be adjusted up or down.  And in my experience, those who are “forging ahead” often need “balancing out”, which the Waldorf curriculum supplies beautifully. 

Some people, I think, have not seen Waldorf Education in the Grades in action and have this thought that it is two hours of a Main Lesson sitting at a desk.  I would like to refute that!  Here is an example:  one may start the morning with verses and singing whilst standing up and moving, limericks and tongue twisters and some mental math with tossing of beanbags or throwing a ball.  One may then move into some sort of movement, whether that be a true circle time, an obstacle course, work with copper rods, drawing with a crayon between one’s toes, etc.   Then perhaps time for a break!

Then we may gather for more of the Main Lesson, where we take more time for movement,  look at some vocabulary or math concepts, hear a wonderful story.  Perhaps then we  draw, paint, build or create or cook or delve deeper into what we are studying in another way….. Then another break and movement and playing and perhaps after lunch and quiet time,  we regroup to bake, do handwork, play the recorder.  I used to think that Head, Hearts and Hands meant very specific things (such as the “Heart” part could ONLY be foreign language, painting, eurythmy, etc), but I am realizing the further along I go that different teachers do different things and some of it can depend on what block you are in and can only be limited by your own creativity. 

Some people worry that with any sort of method of homeschooling, their time for siblings to play will be underminded, that it will take too big a chunk out of the day. I can assure you that in the Early Grades, the Main Lesson can be short,  and you can intersperse breaks to play or snack.  The number one joy of any method of homeschooling is being with your family!  You also don’t need to homeschool five days a week either – in most states it is the total number of days per year that must be met.   In the Early Grades, I have heard many Waldorf homeschooling mothers take things nice and slow until the nine-year change.  Only you can decide your relationship to this healing education.  (And homeschooling this way will be healing for you as well!)

There will be days that you feel you must buckle down and get to work.  This is part of homeschooling, no matter what method.  Just like when you worked outside of the home, some days inside the home with homeschooling may go awry.  There may be days when you decide to go hiking instead of doing school, and you adjust your plans accordingly.  There may be a day when your child doesn’t want to do math because it is “too hard” and you work through the tears together and bring it all  home and the tears stop and your child gets it!  How exciting! 

What you bring to your Waldorf homeschool must above all be an expression of yourself and the things that resonate with you within the curriculum.  If you are a gardener, perhaps you will be basing much of your math, science, even history of different societies by looking at how people work with the land, calculations for gardening, the science of botany and agriculture.  If you have other skills, this will come out as well.  This tends to worry parents, who want to make sure their child isn’t “missing” anything, but  really, even a Waldorf school teacher has his or her own strengths and weaknesses and picks and chooses how to bring things into the classroom.

Most of all though, the student-teacher relationship is one based upon respect for each other, and through the child loving “natural authority” of the teacher and other revered, kind adults.  “Gratitude- Love-Duty” is how the first three seven year cycles can be summed up.  Roberto Trotsli, in his book, “Rhythms of Learning” talks at length about this in Chapter Two of that book (Chapter Two is entitled “Teacher and Child”).  Love for the world and everything in it becomes the basis for duty in the ages of 14-21.   During the early grades, we connect children to their world through love.  This is what we make our academic lessons up with this piece in mind.    We also work with the children of this age through their temperaments.

The final piece of all of this, also brought up by Trotsli  in this chapter, is that, “Each of us is engaged in the process of becoming.  Our students are often our teachers in this process, for they force us to face our shortcomings and limitations and inspire us to continue to strive to transform ourselves.  By working on ourselves, we work on behalf of our students.  By coming to know ourselves, we come to know our students.”

Many blessings on today,

Carrie

We have had a really interesting discussion over at Melisa Nielsen’s Yahoo Group regarding Waldorf homeschooling with larger (ie, 3 to 5 children or more) families and also Waldorf homeschooling when your children are far apart in  age.

At any rate, this wonderful mother posted a link to her adventures in Unschooling with Waldorf with a larger family here:  http://www.ahomeschoolstory.com/2008/10/unschooling-meets-waldorf.html  and I really thought it was worth sharing with all of you. (If you would like to join Melisa Nielsen’s Yahoo Group, please see this link:  homeschoolingwaldorf@yahoogroups.com).

I have read the work of John Holt and even spent some time on a radical Unschooling  Yahoo!Group to see what it was all about when my oldest was younger, so I do have some ideas about Unschooling but admittedly no real world practice per se, so please take that under consideration in this post.  (I also started out with the notion I was going to homeschool using some sort of Classical Curriculum, so you can see how far I have come and also how scattered I was in some ways because I was looking at EVERYTHING and wanted to take all the things from every curriculum and bring it in for my child.  Then I discovered  Waldorf and there you go!  No turning back, and very, very happy!  But I digress!)

To many people, Unschooling means just the ability to follow your child’s interests.  I think it is possible to do this within the Waldorf curriculum.  I wrote about that in integrating Waldorf with other methods here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/01/09/can-waldorf-work-with-other-homeschooling-methods/  

I think there are a points where Waldorf and Unschooling agree :  both have great respect for the “unfolding” of the child and meeting the child where they are.  Both have no lost sleep over a child starting academics at a more appropriate time (ie, most likely not in the Early Years).  Both have a great love for learning through life – through play, through being outside, through practical activities around the home.  

I think the major difference between Unschooling and Waldorf is  the role of the parent.  And yes, I do have Unschooling friends who “strew” things around their house for their children to find and ignite passion and learning, but I think fundamentally the role of the parent in Unschooling is typically more as a facilitator for what a child expresses interest in.  In Waldorf homeschooling, the parent introduces the subject material through art and movement at a time that we feel coincides with the development of the aspects of the human being.  So, in Third Grade we have Old Testament Stories as a history of the Jewish people and how those people handled authority because we feel the nine-year-old is grappling with these issues in development.  In Sixth Grade, we have the Roman and geology because we feel the 12-year-old is grappling with being solidly set on the Earth and interested and ready for the facts of history. 

I think there is also a major difference in the Early Years as we look toward a rhythm in order to develop, protect and nurture the 12 senses in the Under-7 child. We assume the child will need help with balance, with rhythm, will need some help in incarnating into the body.  Unschooling has no basis for this, because Waldorf’s philosophical basis is the development of the  three-fold and four-fold human being during these seven year cycles.

Boundaries in parenting could be another major issue and difference between Unschooling and Waldorf.  In Waldorf Education, we assume that an under –7 child is neither good nor bad but learning.  Learning implies they are not quite ready to be the one to set the tone of the home, and it would not really be fair to ask them to participate in a democratic way of setting what they are learning or playing with yet.  They may, in fact, be attracted to things that are detrimental to their health or well-being  and the parents needs to be the one to step and help set boundaries.  Again, not all parents who Unschool don’t set boundaries,  many certainly do!,  but I know on the radical Unschooling list I was on, letting the child experiment with going to bed late, eating what they wanted for breakfast (even if  it was candy or such) was part of this notion that  the family was “Unschooling Life.”   Again,  the child may be attracted to things that are not healthy, they may be lacking a rhythm and a balance in these Early Years,  and it is our ability to set boundaries that is important for the health and development of the child. 

People comment that they feel Unschooling is a better fit for the child because it is more respectful of the child.  I have responded to this before in this rant here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2009/01/22/waldorf-and-attachment-parenting-the-mini-rant/  

Essentially, I think there are ways Unschooling and Waldorf can work together, but I do believe Waldorf has such a strong philosophical basis that it  is just a  different perspective.  It is not about searching for the”best” reading program or the “best” math program because the whole curriculum is laid out in such a way that every single thing not only builds on each other, that head, hearts and hands are integrated, that  the threefold and fourfold human being is developed, and that in every subject (even grammar, etc) a relation to the spiritual realm, the relationship of man to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms are there.  Essentially, the curriculum to me sometimes is just that reinforcement of the way a human has the potential to be Noble, to be Pure, To Make the Right Choices.  This is something that really cannot compare to “just” a curriculum in reading, or even  a “not” curriculum. 

I choose Waldorf because I felt it was actually the only way to educate a human being holistically. I chose it because I believe in the development of the human being so my children grow up to be adults who can think, problem-solve, who are balanced and able to cope with technology, with stress, and with life.  I chose Waldorf because I want my children to learn through art and movement and to have high academic ideals at the right time in the curriculum, and to have a sense of stewardship for the Earth and her resources.    I chose Waldorf because I wanted to introduce academics at the right time, the time when it would make the most sense and to start slowly and build up as the neural pathways for learning were laid down.   For me. whose background was in childhood development, it seemed the only curriculum that seemed to recognize different subjects made sense to come in at different times and that subjects shouldn’t be “dumbed down” to meet children in the Early Grades, but instead brought in at a later time. 

The idea of  salient teaching, of teaching  the right subject, at the right time, really set my heart on fire. 

Does it yours?

Many blessings,

Carrie

These are some of the questions left by mothers on this blog that I thought I would try to answer in this post.  If you left a question that requires a longer answer, please expect to see a blog post coming up!

Q.  Where can I find the “Curative Education” booklet by Carlo Pietzner you reviewed?

A.  Hhmm, well I got it at Bob and Nancy’s around Christmas, and now it does not seem to be there.  I also checked at the Rudolf Steiner College Bookstore, and it does not seem to be there either.  My suggestion is to email Nancy Parsons at Bob and Nancy’s Bookshop and ask for it.

Q:  What edition of Mother Goose should I use?

A:  I have several, in some the language is “old” and in some the language is updated.  I find it easier to memorize the ones with the more updated language, but like the completeness of the edition with the older language (ie. “hath” for “has”, etc.).  Example of a modern-day English one is here: http://www.amazon.com/My-Very-First-Mother-Goose/dp/1564026205/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263467609&sr=1-3.  This is an example of one I have with less modern language:   http://www.amazon.com/REAL-MOTHER-GOOSE-CARTWHEEL-BOOKS/dp/B000OQKEAQ/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263467724&sr=1-17.  I think it is personal preference, you also may end up owning more than one, and you also may find a bunch of these verses on-line.  I say whatever is easiest for you to memorize.

Q:  What do I do with my child that goes outside and just stands there?

A:  I addressed this a little bit in this post: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2010/01/13/waldorf-in-the-home-with-the-three-and-four-year-old/

and I also thought this book had some good ideas to get your creative juices going:  http://www.amazon.com/Natures-Playground-Activities-Encourage-Children/dp/1556527233/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263467982&sr=1-5

In general, for small children under age 7, I would think of what fairies and gnomes might need for housing or things in their houses, what we would do to create an outside room for ourselves.

This book may also be helpful to you:  http://www.amazon.com/Sunflower-Houses-Inspiration-Children-Grown-Ups/dp/0761123865/ref=reg_hu-wl_list-recs  (or really any of the books by this author!)

Q:  What do I do with my four year old child that is wanting to know how to write her name or copy words?

A:  Ho-hum attitude.  Let your child copy words if they initiate that themselves, help them write their name   (a proud moment for many four year olds!), don’t say anything negative, keep trying to steer into typical Kindergarten activities, don’t worry about inversions of letters or numbers.  There is a big difference between wanting to write one’s name and being ready for formal academic main lessons in Waldorf.

Q:  But my kindergartner is so advanced!  They are already doing x, y, z!  Shouldn’t I just go ahead and start First Grade?

A:  The Waldorf Curriculum is based upon development of the human being in all aspects.  The subject content is really made for the seven-year-old in First Grade, the academic end of it can be adjusted up or down.  The reverse would be true if you have a 10 year old at a 6 year old academic level, you would still need to bring in the Fourth Grade stories as those are age-appropriate.

Q:  What do I do when I try to set up great play scenarios on a larger scale for my 4 and 5 year old and my toddler ruins it?

A:  That is challenging!  Sometimes doing it during nap if the older one is no longer napping works, building some of it yourself the night before so the little one is not so excited to see *you* building (after all, the toddler is just trying to imitate you), building a scene for said toddler, playing with toddler whilst older one builds,  give ways the toddler can participate in the building,  using a sling if toddler will stay there, and most of all realizing this is a phase that will pass.

I think another thing that happens here frequently is that mothers feel guilty the older one is building on their own and they can’t help as much because of the toddler.  Please try to reframe that in your heart and mind, because the older one really does pick up on that and starts to see the little one as this intrusion who not only is ruining the game but is taking mommy away from helping!  Cultivate the attitude that what your older one creates on their own without as much of your assistance is a great step developmentally and in no time at all you will have two little builders and isn’t having a sibling wonderful and you can show your little brother/sister what you have built?  They are so interested in you, Big Brother.  Use this opportunity as a time to build up their relationship rather than viewing it as a negative, it sets a great foundation!

Q. How do I become a peaceful parent?  Why does it always come back to me, why do I have to be perfect?  How do I start this Inner Work stuff?

I know it is such hard work, challenging work!    Sometimes we all feel grumpy that we have to be the one to set the tone and hold the space.  You don’t have to be perfect, but now that you know much of this rests on you and the rhythm and the words and actions you take to create your home, the intangible home for your spouse and your children, it does become a place to start your work.

There are many posts on Inner Work and also on rhythm on this blog.  There are also posts on anger in parenting, kindness in your home and realistic expectations for each age.

For Inner Work, I suggest just setting aside time to meditate or pray in the morning.    Then, one night a week, I suggest you wet on wet paint, or draw or sculpt or create music for an hour.  This is also development of the soul. Finally, you can start looking at your own biography. Tapestries by Betty Staley is a nice place to start with that, and there are reviews of each chapter of that book on this blog.

With rhythm, start with getting up at the same time each day and getting to bed at night.  Then work in rest times and meal times and then branch out to the other areas.

Seems like there were more questions, but at least that is a start.  Keep those questions coming!

Love,

Carrie