Friday, February 2, 2024
Why I Don't Celebrate Candlemas
Thursday, February 1, 2024
It's All About Free Play
That's why there are no lessons.
No main lessons in the nursery or kindergarten.
No instruction.
No this is how it's done.
No predetermined end product to take home and wow the parents.
It's all about developing the child's inner creative capacity through child initiated free play.
This is why Waldorf schools discourage organized sports, yoga, dance lessons and the like, because they all involve an adult directing the action. This takes children out of the dreamy unselfconscious world of early childhood.
The child between birth and the change of teeth lives in the dreamy inner world of the imagination. This is the world of fairy tales, where anything is possible, transformation happens all the time, and good always conquers evil, in the stories children hear.
The Waldorf kindergarten is a magical, dreamy place where the teacher works sideways to create a space that invites play. She is not the central figure, but more of a warm, consistent presence, guiding the rhythm of the day.
It's all about child initiated free play.
If you've ever seen children at play in a Waldorf kindergarten, you've heard the buzz of children at play, seen children engaged in socio-dramatic play, creating scenarios with their imagination and playing them out. Children at play in a Waldorf space transform the objects in the room with their play. This socio-dramatic play is at the heart of the Waldorf kindergarten years.
When we impose adult ideas for creating a specific product, we are imposing the adult world on children. This is not their world. Their world is one of developing the inner imaginative world and playing out what is in their own inner world. It's a time for curiosity, exploration and playing out their own inner world. This is how children learn. When we impose adult projects, we get in the way of their process.
You may wonder, what about the watercolor painting and cooking and baking?
What about the crafts? I have written about crafts here.
With cooking and baking, painting, coloring and modeling, the teacher leads by doing. She does not instruct. She guides the children with her doing, and if needed with "pictorial language." There is no expectation of a particular end product.
There is no instruction. The children join the adult in her work, and contribute to the process in a way that allows them to step back into play. At home our children can join us in our work, yet it can be helpful to remember that their work is child initiated and child drive imaginative free play. So they may step up beside us, join in and then return to their play.
In a culture that is so material and end product oriented, we sometimes lose touch with the importance of process. For children, the process is in the play.
As homeschoolers we can create an environment that supports our children in their own free play, and we can craft a rhythm that flows through the day, I know because I was living miles from nowhere during my first child's early childhood and I was determined to provide a Waldorf early childhood experience for him.
After my second child was born, I became a single parent, I wanted to be home with him, and I wanted a Waldorf experience for him, so I began a Waldorf Morning Garden program in my home, a way to earn a living and create a space for other children to join us for a Waldorf experience of early childhood.
You can do it too!
If you'd like to learn more about how to create the "space" to support child initiated free play, and use pictorial language, and craft a rhythm that flows through the day, keep an eye on my curriculum program. I offer affordable eCourses to support parents and homeschoolers on topics such as these, and I am in the process of reformatting my affordable curriculum program to make it more user friendly.
In the Waldorf early childhood years, the focus is supporting children's free play and child initiated unselfconscious activities.
We live in a very material world. It's easy to get caught up in the Waldorf stuff, especially with all the beautiful things that can be bought.
Yet Rudolf Steiner told us then, "They play in such a way that their activities lie far from the goals and utility that adults connect with certain activities. Children’s play only imitates the form of adult activities, not the material content. Now it is more relevant that ever.
They don't need all the stuff, they need time to play, they need the protection and freedom to live in the dreamy world of wonder, of early childhood.
The children will imitate what we do and how we do it. It is our warmth, our kindness, our finding joy in the everyday, and the quality of stories we tell that spark healthy development of the children.
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
What to do when my child resists homeschool activities?
Notice that the question is "when" my child resists and not "if" my child resists?"
Children will resist our plans even when they are made with the best intentions at heart. Know dear mama, or dear papa, that you are not alone, and that it is normal. So normal. It happens to all of us.
Deep breath out.
This post is focused primarily on the early childhood years, from birth to age 7, on those moments when children don't want to do what we have planned for them.
You may have sketched out a plan and organized materials and put a good deal of energy into how you want your day to unfold as a homeschooler and then, your child resists and flat out refuses to join you.
It's frustrating, I know. Super frustrating even.
We've all been there, many times. Take a deep breath. Shift gears. Go outside. Fall into your what-to-do-when-it-all-goes-sideways backup homeschooling plan.
Take time and reflect on what is leading up to the resistance. Step back and look at the big picture. What does your child need?
Their resistance is an opportunity to look at ourselves and consider how we do what we do.
What is the mood we are bringing to the activities we want them to join us in? Are we feeling hurried and rushed with an attitude of I-need-to-get-this-done-in-order-to-get-to-the-next-task? They feel it.
Children feel everything and absorb it deeply. They are like sponges with our moods, they often feel them before we are aware of what we are expressing.
Children learn through imitation of what we do ~ so what we do and how we do it is of all importance.
Consider resistance an opportunity to reflect on what kind of energy we are putting out around what we want to do, and how we are inviting our children to join us in.
Am I feeling joyful?
Do I create a warm invitation to be at my side, to put on an apron, to participate with me?
Waldorf early childhood education is different from more mainstream ways in that we don't have a checklist of tasks the child must complete to be homeschooled. We have life as the curriculum and as the parent teacher, our job is to find joy in those tasks and make them inviting.
We can observe our skills of observation to try to understand what our child's behavior is telling us. Often it has nothing to do with what's happen in the moment, and more to do with a bigger need, like needing to run around, needing to play, needing to get out of the cart or grocery cart or needing a cup of tea and a story told to them. This is where tweaking our rhythm can make all the difference.
With Waldorf kindergarten at home, the focus is on making activities like cooking, cleaning, coloring, painting inviting and joyful so that the children want to join us and to ground them in an experience of life is good. I focus on this in my monthly program.
Some children don't want to join us, that's okay.
We go on to the next task whether the children participate or not.
It's more about the adult taking the lead and being consistent and predictable in the way our day unfolds and doing it with real joy that comes from within.
The benefit to the child is observing an adult engaged with their hands in meaningful work/activities. Our tasks work on the child's will forces.
Children need us to be charge of the day, the plan for the day and our own work. In a world that can feel so crazy and chaotic, our children need us to be solid and reliable for them, to lean into us. They also need plenty of time and space to play around us while we work, and join in out of their own freedom.
Our task is to make the "work" so delightful they will want to join in. This includes balancing activities like opportunity for free play and being out of doors with more quiet experiences like hearing a story.