Home Schooling

 

I started my home schooling program with my youngest today. He is just 3 1/2 and we are following a varied waldorf preschool curriculum. There have been many reasons for my want to home school him, but it really comes down to the beauty of getting to be engaged with him on such a wonderful level. For these little ones are only little once.

Why did we choose Waldorf as our guide?

My older son attends a Waldorf school and is in the first grade. Our family adopted a "waldorf-based" lifestyle about 6 years ago. This summer I spent a lot of time scouring through books and Pinterest to figure out the best way to bring a valuable form of education and "Schooling" to my son. A big part of our day is through following a rhythm. I like to keep things calm, organic, peaceful.

We start our day with a two person circle ;-) We sing a morning song to greet the day. We thank dear mother Earth for the beauty that she bestows upon us. Then I will do a verse or two with hand gestures to engage our bodies.

After our singing and verses we do yoga. We stretch to our toes, and to our nose. We find ways to exert energy in a positive way. Today after our stretching we acted like animals. At times we were cats, then bears, then fish... my son thought it was hilarious to watch me act like all these animals. It was so light and free at that moment.

The next part of our day was story. Today we read three books (all waldorf in nature). We laid a blanket on to the floor and that's where we sat for story time. It was nice to take our time. He asked many questions and felt nice to know that we weren't rushed to finish. After the stories we worked together on folding the blanket. These are the things that develop my son's brain so much but may seem so little on a larger scale. The ability to learn life lessons, along with things such as ABCs and math, are equally important.

My son's favorite thing is our washing basin. We added 3 drops of lavender to our jar and sang our hand washing song. He loved loved loved this.

 

After hand washing then it was time for snack. We had two tea cups and a carafe that were his size. He poured our water and then I served our strawberry muffins from yesterday. We sang a blessing and lit a candle to start our snack.

The second part of our schooling was at our neighborhood pond where we ate our lunch. We also had a sewing craft. The night before I cut us both two pieces of felt and we worked on our sewing. I was teaching him blanket stitch, but it was more about learning not to poke himself with the needle, and paying attention to the task at hand. He was so proud of what he made and we wanted to make certain that the heart I was making was going to be for his big brother.

Being that we were at the pond, we even had a visitor. Nolan said to me "I wish I were a frog so I could swim in this icky water and find all the treasures that are buried underneath."

 

We used our heart pouches to then walk around the pond and collect treasures.. leaves, sticks, pinecones and the like.

Our day ended with a couple of songs and a good-bye songs.

My son was so happy about his day. I could tell because he had so much to tell my husband at dinner. He really enjoyed our one on one time and my undivided attention. It felt so good to be in that space and place with him. As much as I was trying to teach him, he was equally teaching me. I was learning about the calm of the day, the beauty of our surroundings and just how wonderful of a person this little being is. I am so honored to be his mama and get the opportunity to help teach him things! What a gift.