Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

You can exhort, cajole, and harangue your children all day long about getting regular exercise to have fit bodies, but if they don't see you exercising, you'll be fighting a losing battle. It's the same with education. If you want children to value and pursue learning-- to build strong mental muscles-- then your first priority as a home educator is to set the pace for their learning. Your example will be their model. So before you exhort your children about strengthening their own mental muscles, be sure to evaluate your own heart for learning.

Clay and Sally Clarkson, Educating the WholeHearted Child

Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

Of course, we all have moments when we think of our children at their best and worst. Don't compare your child to any other child... Each will have a different personality and interests. Children will proceed at their own level if given the proper encouragement and instruction. Don't predetermine what your child can and cannot do. My husband and I share a philosophy about our homeschooling: We homeschool to open the world to our child, not shelter her from it. Don't limit the possibilities that your child may be interested in; you are your child's biggest cheerleader! Encourage, love, and motivate your child.

Alice Pauquette, Curriculum Workshop: A guide to writing homeschool curriculum

Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

When you are considering curriculum, look at the rhythms of daily life in your house. Plan, as much as possible, a logical sequence of events. I am not talking about an airtight schedule. Airtight schedules... are going to set you up for failure. Don't be a slave to your schedule or your clock. Instead, work with the natural rhythm of life in your household to set up comfortable, logical, manageable routines... The rhythms and routines of daily life provide comfort and security to the entire family. They remove the need for constant decision making over things that should be habits and are the oil that lubricates a well-run homeschooling family.

Elizabeth Foss, Real Learning

Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

Math cannot be confined to a written page. It needs to be touched. Your child should play with it, experiment with it, internalize it. He should encounter the "Aha!" over and over again during the years he learns at home.

Elizabeth Foss, Real Learning

Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

A morning walk provides the (young) child with a daily opportunity to experience the seasonal changes around him- whether it's a walk through the woods or around the neighborhood... By experiencing nature... as opposed to merely observing it or, worse yet, being shown it in a book, the child lays rich foundations for future learning, especially in the sciences. Further, morning walks provide rich sense experiences for the child...

Do try to this walk every morning no matter what the weather. Let your child really get to know about his environment and the weather where he lives!


Donna Simmons, Kindergarten with Your Three to Six Year Old

Planning Retreat: Getting Ready for Kindergarten

I'm not a Waldorf purist, something I think everyone who knows me well recognizes. But I do happen to think they do kindergarten very, very well and have all the right ideas. Here are some of my favorite resources for preparing for a Waldorf kindergarten year.

Article: The Waldorf Kindergarten: The World of the Young Child

If one observes children who, through proper upbringing, have developed a natural reverence for the adults around them, and if one follows them through their various phases of life, one may discover that their feelings for reverence and devotion in childhood gradually transform during the years leading to old age. As adults, such persons may have a healing effect on others, so that through their mere presence, tone of voice, or perhaps a single glance they spread inner peace to others. Their presence can be a blessing, because as children they have learned to venerate and to pray in the right way. No hands can bless in old age, unless in childhood they have been folded in prayer.

Book: The Waldorf Kindergarten Snack Book
This is a great book with wonderful recipes to make with your child. It also has some beautiful insights into the kindy years.

Blog Entry: More Thoughts on the Waldorf Kindergarten

Online Store for Materials: A Toy Garden
Be sure to join her mailing list, as she often has special coupon codes!

Book: Kindergarten with Your Three to Six Year Old
Excellent resource. If you only buy this book, I would recommend this one.

Website: Waldorf Clearinghouse Newsletter
Tons of free resources not only for the kindergarten years, but for older children as well.

Website: Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America, or WECAN
I know I linked to a specific article earlier, but their whole website is a great resource. I have many old copies of Gateways that have been a great help to me.

Book: Let Us Form a Ring
Anthology of kindergarten songs and stories from the Acorn Hill Children’s Center in Maryland. Celebrations of the rhythm of the day and of the year as well as birthdays are included. An excellent resource book for parents and teachers.

Ebook: Before the Journey and A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling Kindergarten
Melissa over at A Little Garden Family provides these resources for the early childhood years. You can also check out her blog for more inspiration.

Website: The Baldwin Project
This is my go-to site for fairy tales and other stories for all levels of homeschooling. It's a tremendous resource. You may also want to check out Selecting Fairy Tales, an article from Waldorf in the Home.

Books: Wynstones Press series, A Child's Seasonal Treasury, and A Journey Through Time in Verse and Rhyme
These are some other resources that help me get through my days.

And finally, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I do use my own Seasons of Joy books quite a lot.

I'm in a unique situation this year. Nicholas actually turned five at the end of last September, and will be turning six this autumn. We held off on any sort of "formal" kindergarten time. I still don't feel that he's ready for anything too academic, but I will be introducing him to the letters this year. I won't expect him to write them, unless that's something he initiates, but we will be using fairy tales as a gateway to the alphabet. So, several more alphabet resources:
LMNOP and all the Letters A to Z
A Spirited Alphabet
Waldorf Alphabet Book
The Wise Enchanter: A Journey Through the Alphabet

Planning Retreat: Main Lesson Blocks

Tonight was step one of planning for next year-- figure out main lessons. I mostly went by standard Waldorf main lessons, but looked at some Charlotte Mason syllabi as well. The verdict is:

Kindergarten
Easy peasy. We'll just work our way through the alphabet with fairy tales and do crafting, cooking, etc. that fits in with the story.

Third Grade
Multiplication Tables
Farming and Gardening
Housebuilding and Shelters (including building scale models)
Old Testament Stories and History
Native American Stories
Flood Stories
Life of Jesus
Astronomy
Telling Time

Fifth Grade
Decimals
Geometric Forms
Botany, including fungi, ferns, algae, conifers, monocotyledons and dicotyledons
North American Geography
Mapmaking
The Book of Acts
Shakespeare
Fractions

I do plan on doing math consistently throughout the year--as a matter of fact, my next step is to go through both of their math books so I can try to line up like chapters, so we're all doing weights and measures at the same time, etc--but there were certain topics I wanted to turn into a main lesson block/unit study. Some of these will probably be stretched into two or even three main lessons, spaced throughout the year.

Typically, Michael would be studying Ancient Cultures in the fifth grade, but since we already covered a lot of that with Story of the Word and because we're focusing on Ancient Cultures with our Olympian Camp this summer, I don't feel the need to plan main lesson blocks this school year.

Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

Be sure that your children each day have

*Something or someone to love
*Something to do
*Something to think about

~ Charlotte Mason

Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

We take for granted the rhythm of breathing: filling our lungs with air and emptying them again, drawing something from outside into us and then releasing something of ourselves (for we make the CO2!) back out into the world. But how aware are we of the way the soul breathes also-- taking in the content of the world though eyes, ears, etc., transforming it and releasing it again, maybe as a poem, a piece of knitting, a nice clean kitchen? This "soul breathing" goes on all the time and one can see the different rhythmic patterns in it.

--All Year Round, Christine Fynes-Clinton

Planning Retreat: Words of Wisdom

The life of hearth and home is contradictory to the busyness of modern materialistic society. It is less, slower, simpler. It is sitting and reading. It is the fireplace. Meals together. Board games. Going to the movies. Taking walks. Watering the garden. Doing nothing. Brunch. Watching the sunset. Lying in the hammock. These things are not frivolous; they are essential. They are the foundation. They are the roots. They are sacred time. All expansion into the world requires times of contraction, of doing nothing.
- Peggy O' Mara, A Quiet Place, "Hearth and Home"

A Homeschool Planning Retreat

'Tis the season-- wrapping up one year, ready to start another. Even though I don't yet have Michael's portfolio completed or his evaluation set up (note to self: must get on that), I'm already planning ahead for next year. For us, next year begins on the very first day we can start counting towards the 2009-2010 school year, July 1.

I've already warned my husband that I want a planning day. I'm kicking him and 4 kids out for the day--maybe even overnight if Daniel can stand it--and planning out the next school. With Nicholas starting kindergarten next year, Katie Grace in third (and my first year of having to report her to the state!), and Michael in fifth/sixth, and two sets of standardised tests to get through, I think planning ahead can only help.

I already have some general ideas. We're hitting ancient history and mythology over the summer with Olympian Camp, and we may try some Latin again as well. I'm starting to make a list of main lesson blocks I want to hit next year for Michael and Katie Grace, and I'm planning on using a modified workbox system to keep Nicholas busy while I'm working with them. Nicholas will go through a pretty typical Waldorf kindergarten experience, and I'm combing through the Charlotte Mason and Classical reading lists for Michael and Katie Grace. We'll all do Story of the World, Volume 3 together, and I still am looking for a good science program.

I'm hoping to post some inspiration here on my blog as well as over at MDC's Learning at Home forum. I hope you'll join me!