Our Waldorf Homeschool Journey

We woke up on Saturday morning, all excited and looking forward to our festival only to discover when StJohn woke up that he had …mumps! Oh no! What to do? We couldn’t delay the festival, they’d been looking forward to it for weeks…So we went ahead with it…I had to cancel our friends coming round, and feed Sin pain killers, but he had a good time despite all of this. Strangely enough it was the best festival we’d had…here are the pics!

First thing that morning we made Dragon Bread together…

 It came out looking like a fat cat with a spikey back, but the kids were thrilled with it! I made flames out of the dough (for it’s mouth) as well but it fell off LOL! Anyway as I said the kids loved it and it tasted great. We used Almonds for the claws, teeth and ridges on his back.

Then we made flapjack batter for dessert. Then we had to wait. We threaded fairy lights through the stairs and set the table. Finally it was time to start…

We always start with the lighting of candles for everything we do…I told the story again about StGeorge and the Archangel Michael, then John presented StJohn with his sword and shield that he and StJohn had worked at all week and read the inscription on the back.

On the back was written,

“When strength and freedom are joined with love and healing all evil can be overcome.”

Then I presented each child with a cloak which I’d made quickly the night before. I found the verse for “cloak giving” here!StJohns was a golden yellow satin, and as I placed it around his shoulders I said,

“I give to you a cloak of golden light, to give you courage, strength and might.”

Then Juliette was presented with a shimmering silver cloak and was told,

“I give to you a cloak of silver light to give you courage,  kindness and might.”

 You’ll notice the Ben 10 t-shirt. We don’t own a TV, StJohn saw Ben 10 twice at his Grandmothers house. Just twice! And he became crazy about this character, also he’s constantly bombarded by merchandise at the various stores. I cannot bear Ben 10! So what to do? Obviously Sin needed a hero so we made a huge fuss about Michaelmas, and StGeorge, and as I put StJohn to bed that night, all my hard work was rewarded, he said,”Mom, I don’t like Ben 10 anymore, he’s just a drawing. StGeorge was a real man. He was awesome, I can be just like him.” Ahem..end of rant,sorry!

Then we sat down together, said our dinner verse and had a feast. I wrapped baked potatoes in foil for the kids, as a surprise on their plates. Here they are…dragon potatoes…

StJohn then took off his foil wrapping and shaped into a heart for his sister…And that was it…Michaelmas was at an end. What an incredible week we had. I’d like to leave you with a link to an Article written by Ita Wegman about the work of the Archangel Michael. It changes the way you view the festival of Michaelmas, and also is a wonderfully concise history of the human race, from the perspective of Spiritual Science. Read it HERE.

Filed under: Anthroposophy, Festivals, Verses, Waldorf Homeschooling, Rudolf Steiner on October 7th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

Filed under: Festivals, Waldorf Homeschooling, Vegan Stuff, Homesteading Recipes, Homeschool on October 7th, 2009 | No Comments »

On Tuesday, we did a version of the story of St George, how he received his name, supposedly from a King. Today I told them a story of how StGeorge was as a child and how he met the Archangel Michael. How Michael taught him about using strength for the good of all. The story was written by Christine Natale and is positively beautiful.Read it by clicking HERE!

I changed it slightly for my two, to include being kind to small animals, as StJohn can sometimes be a bit rude to our cats and dog.I was also guided to add a line on the end. “And this strong boy, who had grown into such a fine courageous mans’ name was George.”

As I said this StJohn just about jumped out of his chair. He started babbling really fast…”You see St George was just like me, I can grow into a strong kind man.” And I said to him, “Sweetheart you are already a strong kind boy.” I just had to share that with you. The more we work with our angels and our childrens’ angels the more we get out of our lessons, and our life, in fact. I firmly believe that story was needed for StJohn at this time on his journey.

As I was telling the story to the kids, I got to the part where Michael lifts the strong boy onto his horse and the horse sprouts wings as does Michael, and I was looking at StJohn at this point. His eyes opened wider and his mouth formed a perfect “O”.

Before we did the story we needed a few additions to the chalkboard, so we popped the Archangel Michael in, so here it is…you see, the drawing is the same, but has a few new goodies in. My kids love discovering the new additions…

It was a sculpting day so the children used their clay to make well…I encourage them to create what they feel about the stories. StJohn made St George, a horse, a dove and a sword. Jules made a horse, a horse brush and food bowl and a sword. We used grey clay this day instead of the terracotta we usually use, because we want to paint them when they dry tomorrow. Tomorrow we paint our sculptures, make dragon bread for the feast that evening, and decorate our “dragon egg” cupcakes.

I can’t wait… I looove festivals! Now I’m off to make lunch and make a start of the cupcakes and capes…Have a blessed day!

 I left the children with a small verse/thought from our story today, which they have written in their festival book…

When strength and freedom are joined with love and healing, all evil can be overcome and great things can happen!

Filed under: Festivals, Waldorf Homeschooling on October 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

On Tuesday, we did a version of the story of St George, how he received his name. But first I just want to share a little something I do to make my life easier and hold the kids attention…Those chalkboard drawings…I get a lot of emails asking how to do them or if they’re really necessary?

I feel that they are important. Steiner speaks about children (and adults) thinking in pictures, hence the introduction of letters in first grade as things - an example would be the letter B, we used a small butterfly, called Bertie. The B was his body, and wings were attached to it. (You can find out more about this in Steiners lectures-Discussions with Teachers)I feel that this extends all the way through a childs’ education. Drawing it on paper just doesn’t have the same feel for me, but that’s a personal choice of course. Anyway back to Michaelmas…

I have 1 chalkboard drawing for the week in a festival week. I make sure when I draw it that first - I ask my angel to guide me, second - I have a good overview of all aspects of the stories to be told for the entire week. I then include drawings of all these things in the drawing, like St George, sunflowers, a dragon etc. And I make sure I am able to rub out certain items and replace them with others. For example, on Monday we did the story of the little boy in Africa who conquered the dragon.

In that chalkboard drawing I had mud huts for the village. Now in Tuesdays’, story I needed a castle. So I rub out the mud huts and replace it with a castle. And a very important part of that story was the work of a white dove, who flew across forests to fetch St George, the brave knight, so I make a little space for her, and pop her in. All in all we change the chalkboard drawing in under 5 minutes, and the kids are thrilled. It makes my life it little easier…

Wednesday was a handwork day…still knitting, Jules is busy with socks, and miracle of miracles, she’s even knitting in bed at night! This is awesome for her she usually has a moan everytime the knitting is mentioned! StJohn is busy with his bright orange hand warmers, happy and industrious as usual.

Yesterday the story of St George was also about a princess, this time set in Libya, so the chalkboard drawing remained the same.I must admit I had an internal giggle, as I’d forgotten to show them where Libya was on the worldmap.

So I started the story, and StJohn interrupts, saying,”Libya?”And Jules steps in and says, “Yes Sin (his nickname),it’s at the top of Africa next to Egypt.”He then says, okay, quite satisfied, and we continue the story.  I found the exchange interesting for 2 reasons, firstly Juliette has an understanding of  world Geography (I wasn’t aware of how much she knew!). And secondly, the interruption which I don’t encourage was handled so peacefully, that it never changed the tone of the story. I told the story which can be found in this book…

And it was a painting day so here are their paintings. We used “normal” paints not the wet on wet style we usually do with the Goethean watercolours. Here they are, there is an abundance of water and sky as in the story the dragon rises out of a lake…

First StJohns’…

And Juliettes’ …

And that was the end of yesterday, John is busy making a sword and shield for StJohn, to be presented at the Michaelmas celebration on Saturday night, and I need to make 2 Capes of Golden Light…at this point I still haven’t unpacked the material for the capes, never mind any design ideas!

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Grade 2, Festivals, Handwork & Crafting, Waldorf Homeschooling on October 2nd, 2009 | No Comments »

So it is that awesome time of year again, the Festival of Michaelmas. I want to share this week with you so that you can maybe get some ideas, or some resources that may make your Michaelmas a bit easier and richer. It’s often the planning which can be exhausting and it takes a lot away from your enjoyment so here goes….

First as always the chalkboard drawing for the week…

Firstly we did an hour of form drawing and then had a break and spent about half an hour singing our Michaelmas Song, which this year is Battle Hymn of the Republic. You can download it here!

We also ran around the garden, with StJohn being St George and trying to fight 2 dragons at the same time (Juliette and I) as we licked him with our dragon fire. Okay, our dragon fire was the ribbon at the end of our ribbon wands, but still he sure fought it! It was so much fun. I never thought I’d be running around the garden roaring, singing, marching and just having an awesome time…

We started off the week with an African myth, set in the Drakensberg, which when translated into English means, Dragon Mountain.It is a story about a little boy who has to fight a dragon that torments his village throughout the rainy season, with the lightening flashing from his eyes and the huge roar he makes. Needless to say this little boy dug down deep and defeats the dragon using his courage, strength and might.Of course he also used a large stone and a drum. The dragon is then transformed back into a beautiful lady who had been bewitched and gives the small boy her teeth as a gift. He then plants them in the ground as instructed and beautiful sunflowers grow. Each year at this time (Spring) these flowers blossom again. Our flowers for this week in our home are sunflowers. The theme of sunflowers (the warmth of the sun), courage, strength and might permeate everything we do this week. You can get this amazing tale here!

Though Juliette definitely gets a deeper meaning from this week, most of what we do is aimed at StJohn, as he studies the Saints this year. He is captivated by StGeorge and we’ve only been busy with him for 2 days! He is using an old blanket as a cloak, a wooden sword (a bit the worse for wear) to fight dragons, which are all over the house and garden. This is his drawing of yesterdays lesson…

And Juliettes’ drawing of this lesson…

 We then ended the day with more singing. The poem that I gave both of them to write out is an old celtic poem about conquering the dragon. For us this means not only the dragons all about us, but the more difficult dragon to conquer, the dragon within us all…

Forge me with fire
A sword for my smiting
Fright to my foes
And flames for my fighting

Shape me a shield
Both Forceful and Fierce
Stalwart and Shapely
To fend against fears

 Many blessings to you all this week as we all celebrate Michaelmas throughout the world.

May Courage, Strength and Might be your gift this year.

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Grade 2, Festivals, Verses, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 29th, 2009 | 4 Comments »

I’ve been asked this about 10 times this week! Maybe it’s the weather??Anyway, so I thought I’d just put it out there and anyone who is curious can get some answers…

I’ve been a vegetarian for 20 years on and off. At least 10 years before I’d even heard of Dr Steiner. I choose not to eat meat for ethical reasons. I don’t believe in killing animals and torturing them for food, being their meat or their milk. I’ve tried to bring the kids up with as little meat as possible, but if the entire family isn’t behind you, you’re just fighting a losing battle. Finally for health reasons Dad has had to ditch all animal products…and all animal by-products. This is brilliant, fantastic, amazing!

Finally we get to do what I’ve been wanting for years. We’re, all 4 of us, completely free of all meat and all animal products.

We’re at this point eating a purely plant based diet, other than honey - that’s flower and bee based :o) And I’m a pain in the bum when it comes to who put it in the bottle. Apparently some producers filter the honey through charred animal bones??I mean honestly - what the hell are they thinking!!!Oh, sorry, I guess it’s more profitable…YUCK!

I know, from experience, that most people are pretty against this lifestyle choice. So I don’t usually discuss it. Why? I don’t know, it is a personal choice and I never force my beliefs on anyone else. But this post is for you guys who want to know what we eat…

I’ve been told that we cannot live on salads - you know!!Well honestly we don’t eat much salad at all - here’s an example of what we’ve eaten over the past few days…

Yesterday

Breakfast - fruit, non-gm soya yoghurt and porridge (oats)

Lunch - Sandwiches with various spreads, cut up carrots, cucumber and apple

Dinner - Spaghetti with a tomato, green pepper, mushroom and red wine sauce and a side salad

Snacks included - popcorn,dried fruit, nuts, carob rice cakes, crackers,ice lollies (made with pure fruit juice and water)

Today

Breakfast - Waffles (no egg and non-gm soyamilk instead of cow), served with organic raw honey and strawberries and bananas

Lunch - Hotdogs (really cool vegan hot dog sausages) * nice to have a “junk” food treat

Dinner - Shepherds pie (made with lentils,carrots, peas,potatoes etc.)The usual recipe but without meat and milk…And decadent carob chunks for dessert.

Snacks for today - popcorn again (kids choice),dried fruit, nuts,matzos (Jules fave food), carob and coconut bars

We’ve also had fruit muffins for breakfast this past week, sandwiches with hummus for lunch, chinese stir fry and stuffed pita pockets for dinner. That’s just off the top of my head. Tomorrow we’re experimenting with wraps ;o)

Honestly I find cooking this way far more relaxing and stress free.It feels right for me. I enjoy every meal, and I feel like I can breathe…  I feel lighter…and when we say our blessing before a meal it means so much more…

Earth who gave to us this food

 Sun who made it ripe and good

Dear Sun, Dear Earth by you we Live

Our loving thanks to you we give.

Filed under: Waldorf Homeschooling, Vegan Stuff on September 26th, 2009 | 1 Comment »

I just wanted to add a quick post before I put the babies to bed. The book we use the most for our Waldorf Handwork projects, in fact I’ve based my kids entire handwork curriculum on it is, Rudolf Steiners’ Indications on Handwork. It has everything you’ll ever need in it. It explains, why we do the handwork we do, at the appropriate age that we do.

And you know what it is free of charge! The complete guide to Waldorf Handwork and you can download it right now…

Filed under: Anthroposophy, Handwork & Crafting, Waldorf Homeschooling, Rudolf Steiner on September 24th, 2009 | No Comments »

One thing I don’t often blog about, is our handwork…Now I love sewing and knitting and crafting in general so I don’t find this hard going at all. Before I started homeschooling the kids, I used to help out with the Grade 1 and Grade 2 Handwork classes at their Waldorf school. Which looking back on it…I seem to have spent hours finding dropped/vanished stitches, and threading needles and undoing knots! I loved it and would do it again in a heartbeat.

Anyway…sanguine temperament constantly distracted, bear with me!Waldorf Grade 5 Knitting… This year Juliette needs to knit a pair of socks using 4 needles (not a round). It’s a standard part of the curriculum but my daughter doesn’t enjoy knitting at the best of times. She’ll cross stitch until the middle of the night,but wool and needles are not her fave activity. So she has scheduled handwork times and we work on things together.

At the moment, she is on the first sock (which she might finish when she turns like 30!), it’s a soft pale blue. I always want to laugh, but keep it tucked up inside, as she hauls out her needles in a  typical melancholic - poor, long suffering me - attitude, and then knits so beautifully and then is so proud of her finished item.

Well for this knitting project I had to do a bit more preparation then usual! You see I’d never knitted a sock before!Why? I have no clue. I’ve knitted jerseys, shawls, an endless number of animals, but no socks. Quite frankly I was a touch nervous - it looks tricky with all those needles flying…Well, a did 1 sample sock, to work out the heel part and then adjusted the pattern and knitted a pair for StJohn, in surprise, surprise - Orange!

They came out so cute. He loves them and wears them every second day. I’ve taken to handwashing them in between.   So now I’m knitting a pair for myself and then another pair for StJohn (he’s asked for white this time-go figure) and John has requested a pair for his hiking boots. This I was thrilled at because when he first saw them he was a bit, ummhh, no thanks. I think he had visions of wearing rainbow socks with his fancy work suit.  But I will make him a conservative green, possibly olive…but boy do I itch to make a royal purple pair with orange ribbing!

Thank heavens for this easy knitting pattern! If anyone needs a simple knitting pattern for Grade 5  Waldorf Socks then please just email me, susan@ourhomeschooljourney.co.za and I’ll send it to you. I must have gone through 8 patterns until I found 1 that worked with a bit of adjustment. It’s easy and Juliette is even managing it with ease and a lot of “poor me” sighs.

Now St John has been working on a rabbit for ages now. It looked easy but turned out to be quite a bit of knitting. Easy to do but time consuming. He finished it last night. All the knitting was done by him including the casting off, the purl for the ears and the increasing and decreasing. He sewed it up last night and then stuffed the little bunnys’ tail with dried lavender. Then he took it to bed with him.

I think he did really well, he’s only 7 years old. He was so happy with his bunny, he took it to show his Grandmother today, and told her,”I even finger-knitted his bow!” Next on his list of handwork is a knitted pair of fingerless mittens, in orange to match his socks, he tells me!

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 5, Waldorf Grade 2, Waldorf Toys, Handwork & Crafting, Waldorf Homeschooling on September 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »

Mmmmhh…you may be thinking, what on earth is this crazy woman doing now? But bear with me there is method in my perceived madness. For Grade 5 we finished Atlantis studies with the destruction of Atlantis taking place in 9600BCE. I didn’t want to then hop forward to 3300BCE and launch myself into India, so I started searching for the link between Atlantis and the next mentioned civilization in the Asia type area. Some history that could fill the gap, that I kept feeling,… That’s when I found the Harappa Civilization. It is fascinating beyond measure and I wrote a 2 week long lesson block on it…

The first archeological evidence dates back to 7000BCE, it is found in the city of Mehrgarh. This is what I based the lesson block on. The city of Mehrgarh is situated up and to the left of the Indus Valley, in Pakistan. The civilization flourished until about 2600BCE when the city was finally deserted. It is thought that severe climate changed (no longer able to grow food) and possibly an enemy attack was responsible for this. But that said there is ample proof that the citizens of Mehrghar had been moving over the previous few hundred years to join the Indus Valley Civilization further down in India.

So we started at the beginning…for us that means a chalkboard drawing. I decided that this time I’d do one drawing and add as much detail as possible. It doesn’t show up well on the blog, but included in it are relevant foods, animals,plants, activities,architecture, etc.

 We started with a bit of background looking at where Mehrgarh is on our world map, and then spoke about what it looked like, the climate and other general things.Do you know it is the earliest civilization to use a grid pattern for it’s city? And that the bodies dug up had proof of dentistry, and I mean drilling, possibly the earliest to date? Anyway, after this Juliette wrote a bit about the Harappa Civilization….

And drew it as she imagined it…

We have since done form drawing. Now for Grade 5 I’ve changed the forms we do quite a bit, because there are so many awesome ancient types of writing, seals and signs we’ve used them as our form drawings. These are the few seals from the Harappa Civilization that have been translated so far. There are over 400 of them uncovered todate!

If you look carefully at her written work, you see that we use the much debated, loved and hated Vimala alphabet. I love it and use it daily myself. Juliette learnt it in Grade 4 and has used it ever since, which was her own personal choice. But what I wanted to share with you is…do you see the repetitive forms above the writing? Jules drew them and cut them out using a craft knife type thing, and made paper chains which she then coloured.

I’ve spoken about this before, and just colouring, painting, modelling etc, can become boring. I truly feel we need to keep coming up with fresh ideas. And seals of the Harappa Civilization made into paper chains seemed like a fresh idea! It also is a repetition of form drawing which I feel is necessary for the form to become part of the child.

And tomorrow I’ll add a post about the crafts of Harappa (awesome beads amongst other things!), and we’ll also be looking at an animal study of an ancient bird of Pakistan and then a  wild flower found in Pakistan and strangely enough in our back garden as well!!

I’m hoping to be finished the Harppa Civilization by the end of the week, so that we can then spend next week on St Michael and St George. Keep your fingers crossed for us please…often things don’t go as planned in this home!

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 5, Ancient Civilisations, Vimala Alphabet, Waldorf Homeschooling, Homeschool on September 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

It was the final day of Atlantis studies. Again there was a chalkboard drawing waiting for Jules when she woke up…

We spoke about how the Atlanteans changed, how they started to use their powers not for the good of all but for the gain of a few and how this lead to their destruction. We spoke about how there were Atlanteans that remained true to the spirit. They saw where the fate of Atlantis was heading. They made plans to set up civilizations across our planet.

As I told Juliette,” These Atlanteans set sail in the wooden ships with beautiful painted sails. In each ship they had an extremely wise person, a poet, a healer, a teacher, a farmer, a scientist and a magician. Their leaders name was Manu.” (This sets us up as the intro to Ancient India!)

We then spoke about how the climate changed in Atlantis, how the storms became worse. We spoke about how in one terrifying day and night Atlantis was destroyed. How the storms tore it apart, how a volcano erupted from the very center of the earth, and how Atlantis broke apart and dissappeared, and how still to this day we are searching to try and find the lost continent of Atlantis…

Juliette then writes  bit about what I’ve taught her, and sometimes it can be quite interesting…when she wrote about the “good” Atlanteans getting into their ships to sail away, she wrote,

“Their leaders name was Manu!Yay!!Go Alanteans!!!!!”

As you can see she has a passion for exclamation marks, and she really got excited about Atlantis. We then took a 3 day weekend and started on the Ancient History of Pakistan…I know, not India, but I’ll explain why in the next post… it all started with the Harappa Civilization you see…

Filed under: Waldorf Grade 5, Ancient Civilisations, Anthroposophy, Waldorf Homeschooling, Rudolf Steiner on September 21st, 2009 | 2 Comments »