Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

Hi Everyone,

This week has been a bit of a strange one, we just couldn’t get focused….Everyone seems on edge, it’s the end of winter, spring arrives in 2 weeks time here in SA. Even our cats Ruby and Poppy are behaving in a strange manner, fighting, bickering over silly things. We’re all feeling a bit out of it because the final arrangements for our move back home to Cape Town are taking place. So we just work around these things.

This is one of the positives of Homeschooling for me, if we’re not in the zone then we leave it. Only to try again in a few hours. We’re very seldom behind in our work, I guess with all the one on one we get ahead a whole lot quicker. An example would be Juliettes English, it’s done for the year, just a last few lessons.

Normally we do school in the morning. Not this week, it just felt better in the afternoon most days! Juliettes been tackling subtraction sums again this week, we’ve done 3 numbers less, 1 and the 2 numbers, ie: 325 – 14.

For a child who hated maths when I took her out of school 20 months ago to a child that laughs and says, “Oh Mom! That’s so easy!” I love it! She’s doing so well.

I was accused a while back by a staunchly conservative man of “muddling along in a parrallel universe of education!!??” I’ve been thinking… you know this is the coolest universe I’ve been in and I wish more people would join me! Muddling along with my 2 babies, who are doing sooooo well. So what was I saying? Muddling.. mmmhh. Ooh I forget!

No seriously, I’m just joking! What a baboon, even the most sceptical of people, after spending time with our family or getting to know us slightly go away telling people that Homeschooling is fantastic. Even our 83 year old neighbour, who initially thought I was daft when she met me 4 months ago! Told her daughter-in-law a few weeks back, “I’ll take you next door and show you how children should be brought up!” (I love my next door neighbour but am joyfilled that she’s not my mother-in-law!)

StJohns been carrying on with the introduction of his Waldorf letters and numbers. It’s so beautiful to watch. He did 3 the other day and he was discussing what he had 3 of. 3 members of his family, 3 pets and he kept coming to me during the course of the day with another thing he’d found that had 3 in it.

For me that’s why homeschooling works. He doesn’t have to stop thinking about a new concept and leave it at school. It is just a part of his daily life.

We’ve also been blessed these past 10 days by the fact that a weaver bird chose a tree in our garden to build his nest. We’ve spent hours watching him. Something that is rare and definitley worth stopping the worksheets to witness. It took him 5 days to build a nest, I explained to the kids the whole time what was happening, and the possible consequence of his mate trashing his nest.

John got really involved as well. One morning I’d told John this birds nest was just about done, he looks out the bedroom window and tells me no way. It’s not nearly finished. This friend of yours is a procrastinator! Which brought howls of laughter from the kids!

Needless to say he finished a rather dodgy looking nest, the weaver not my husband (we”ll see how he fairs building our nest later this year!), even I didn’t hold out much hope for it’s acceptance when his “wife” saw it. Well, she came along on Friday morning, and spent half a day destroying what took him 5 days to build, shouting at him as she went. The kids were goggle eyed. She then ripped leaves off a branch near by and it appears instructed the poor man to build there! Well he’s at it again, building from scratch. I’m just hoping they’ll agree on this nest so we can watch the eggs hatch etc. etc. Juliette was talking about the consequences for Dad if I didn’t like the house he’ll be building later this year, would I take an axe and smash it down. Seemed a bit extreme why not just change the wrong parts of the nest….

I’m preparing next weeks lessons tomorrow, Sunday, StJohn will be doing C, this week, crystal caves and candles come to mind. I need to concentrate and write a good story for him. He is a sanguine child and gets bored quickly, he also learns really quickly and with such ease! There is a light that comes out of him, he is so positive althe time. Amazing. Juliette is a melancholic child and often prefers things to be repeated until she finally is happy with the information. She feels thing deeply and hurts so easily, she feels the pain of all around her. A huge burden for such a young child. An example would be she felt just awful about the lady weaver breaking the nest. Her heart ached for the poor male.

Wow, that was a long post…sorry about that, I need to post more often. Once evry few days is too little for me it seems!

Blessings this week as you homeschool. Feel the excitement in the air as the seasons start to change!

Susan.

PS. Found a really nice blog, another homeschool families journey. I love being able to share in other peoples lives. Maybe I’m just nosey, but I’m happy so why change right? Go and visit if you can …. 3KiwiHomeschoolers. When you visit you get the feeling that you’re popping in for a short while for a vist, like going to tea with a friend.

Filed under: Homeschool on August 18th, 2007