Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

Well we’re nearly at the end of our holiday between grades, and I’ve been sleeping, playing with my cat, playing boardgames with the kids, having breakfast at strange places and having numerous pajama days!

And I’ve been reading….in preparation for planning the lessons. Now when you get Melisas’ curriculum you are given the daily lesson plan for the entire school year, including reminders about festivals and so many other extra activities and ideas. Obviously you do still have to gather the information to present to your child. Melisa provides you with all the resources etc. but if you’re teaching a Waldorf curriculum, you need to understand the subject in the light of anthroposophy. This part is so important for me, as I truly believe that if you don’t understand the subject you can’t teach it to your child.  Steiner says as much in many of his lectures. The child has to see your interest and excitement, in order to become interested and want to absorb the lesson.

There are days when I am not at my best and I can see the kids attention slipping, as I haven’t inspired them. Thankfully those days are few! I often just do a painting lesson or games of some sort or long walks, but no planned lesson, as I wouldn’t be doing them any good.

Anyway, everyone plans differently, so this is what I do. I read the entire curriculum for the year,order any additional books I want(usually I don’t need, but I sure do want) then pull out Steiners lectures on the various subjects (and there are many). After I’ve read these lectures I then start gathering information, books, lots of “google-ing” and then I start laying out each days work and writing up each lesson, it’s objectives and any activity on a day by day basis. I scribble in the actual curriculum book and make endless notes on my laptop at this point. I love being comfortable so this part is usually done here…

 I literally got up from the couch one evening last week, found the camera and took a quick pic. So this is exactly how I do it. (The cat is essential!And so is the tea!In my favourite mug!)

Now the day to day stuff…I first plan the Grade 5 lessons, 1 block at a time. We’ll be starting off with Atlantis. I then plan the Grade 2 block. We’ll be doing Fables.I print and bind our curriculum in an A5 size and having it ringbound, means it opens easily and lies flat! This is the one for Grade 5…

 And the one for Grade 2…

Now I do this in 5 days blocks. Making sure that we have joint activities, meaning handwork, clay, beeswax,painting,form drawing,baking etc.. It makes life easier for me. An example would be that on day 4,  grade 5 looks at architecture in Atlantis. We’re looking specifically at the main temple which was covered in silver on the outside. We’ll be using tinfoil in our mixed media artwork for that day.  So what can grade 2 do for the day which will make use of tinfoil in a mixed media artwork? I found one of Aesops’ fables about a bold and quite boastful lamp, which StJohn will do on that day. We’ll also have some gold paper so he should be able to make a remarkably interesting lamp. See so that’s how I plan… Once all of that is done, I then transfer it to the big day planner I have, again from Melisa. This is the stage I’m at now and have only copied joint activities into the day planner, and the shopping list for items needed, in other words, one day we’re making cheese so the day before I need to buy the ingredients. Also for the first week we’ll have delphiniums on our table as we’ll be looking at those in Atlantis studies. All of this goes into the day planner!

If you want to look at planning in detail there are a few videos that Melisa put together that are quite useful. To have a look at them click HERE.

Now I’m supposed to be in the garden clearing a new bed, as spring is around the corner, but it is chilly and I’m off to make more tea. I want to do a post on Atlantis a bit later today, as this is the only lesson block I had trouble finding info for. I mean in depth information, not just a clip on National Geopgraphic. It turned out awesomely! And turned into a 6 day lesson plan, which if it goes smoothly may be the best block we’ve done!It’s exciting beyond measure.

Filed under: Anthroposophy, Waldorf Homeschooling, Rudolf Steiner on August 23rd, 2009