~ a monthly + year round membership program based on parenting as a path of inner development
From the moment you announce to the world that you're awaiting the arrival of a baby - a new human being, you're given suggestions of things to buy and plenty of unsolicited advice on how to do things. Of course you want to be physically prepared for what the baby will need. You may be wondering how you will best care for this child. It's all very important. Yet the most important gift you can give your child is one that isn't spoken of so much. It's something we all need, from birth onward and we continue to need as adults.
It's quite simple, maybe so simple that we take it for granted. Yet it needs regular care, company and cultivation. What is it? It's a healthy relationship - with our self, with the people in our lives and with the world. It's to be present.
It's quite simple, maybe so simple that we take it for granted. Yet it needs regular care, company and cultivation. What is it? It's a healthy relationship - with our self, with the people in our lives and with the world. It's to be present.
To slow down and be present is great gift to a child. Does this mean you'll have it all together and know exactly what to do in every situation? Not at all. Does it mean that everything will go well all the time? Not at all. We are imperfect by our nature as human beings. We wouldn't grow and develop if we were perfect.
It means each day you'll wake up anew to do your best and remind yourself that the path of parenting is a journey, it's a journey into your own inner development. Out of your own inner work, your child will develop on his or her own path. Separate and connected. It's a lifelong journey.
Celebrate the Rhythm of Life in Caring for Children through the Year ~ I call it a living curriculum program because it is active and live each month. Around the year we go, with warm, enthusiastic guidance, support and nourishment to help you feel grounded and confident. It is based on the view of parenting as a path of inner development, and provides warm and generous support for nurturing your relationship with yourself, your family and the world, through being present with daily life and nourishing your own inner world.It means each day you'll wake up anew to do your best and remind yourself that the path of parenting is a journey, it's a journey into your own inner development. Out of your own inner work, your child will develop on his or her own path. Separate and connected. It's a lifelong journey.
May wisdom shine through me.
May love glow within me.
May strength penetrate me.
That in me might arise
A helper for humanity,
A servant of sacred things,
Selfless and true.
~ Rudolf Steiner
Celebrate provides community and connection, nourishes your own creativity, provides practical skills and encourages you to take up artistic endeavors, find joy in the humdrum, and embrace beauty in the natural world that surrounds you, wherever you live.
Get the Support You Deserve!
Focus on a simple, slower paced, natural, creative and soulful life with children, by taking stock and implementing daily, weekly and seasonal rhythms that reflect what matters most to you, through the year. Over time, simplify and implement simple and satisfying routines, rituals and activities that deeply nourish family life for children and adults alike.
With this program devoted to hearth tending and the gentle art of mothering... and of fathering, you will find your distinct rhythm of the home through the year, and receive support for conscious, creative and connected parenting, homemaking and homeschooling.
Essentially, there is no education other than self- education, whatever the level may be. This is recognized in its full depth within Anthroposophy, which has conscious knowledge through spiritual investigation of repeated Earth lives. Every education is self-education, and as teachers we can only provide the environment for children’s self-education. We have to provide the most favorable conditions where, through our agency, children can educate themselves according to their own destinies. This is the attitude that teachers should have toward children, and such an attitude can be developed only through an ever- growing awareness of this fact. ~ Rudolf Steiner
Together, we focus on the simple rhythms of pleasant meals, peaceful sleep, free play, fresh air, the natural world, the child-parent relationship and then slowly and over time, we build up story and song, puppetry and movement games grounded in the seasons, as they manifest where you live. We begin where we are and little by little build up a repertoire of song and story, verse and rhyme, fingerplay and movement games with elements of nature to reflect the changes in the natural world where you live each month. We nurture the artist within as we weave beauty, wonder and joy into daily life.
"It is absolutely essential that before we think, before we so much as begin to set our thinking in motion, we experience the condition of wonder.” ~ Rudolf Steiner
"It is absolutely essential that before we think, before we so much as begin to set our thinking in motion, we experience the condition of wonder.” ~ Rudolf Steiner
“In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.” ~ Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn
This program is geared to take you on a journey through the rhythm of the year, exploring your own connection to nature, rhythm, storytelling, movement games, your own work with your hands with food and natural materials, singing, painting, puppetry, coloring, the role and importance of color in childhood, the temperaments, the senses, the importance of movement and fresh air and the importance of each other, all within the context of our observations of our child, the developmental picture of the child and knowing ourselves. This work and way of life fosters connection through the lens of wonder, awe and reverence.
Celebrate the Rhythm of Life helps you move beyond power struggles with your child. With the Celebrate eCourses and consults, you get to know yourself and find clarity in your values. You learn how to put them in practice lovingly. Solid daily, weekly and seasonal rhythms support you and your family to live harmoniously together. The Celebrate program embraces parenting as a creative practice, grounded in relationship and supported by harmonious meals, peaceful sleep, creative play, and plenty of love ~ in the fresh air!
Eat :: Sleep :: Play :: Love ~ in the Fresh Air!
If you are just starting out, I can help you establish household rhythms, foster imaginative play, bring stories, rhymes, verse and fingerplay to your child and develop a relationship to the festival year based on your values. With slow and simple steps.
If you are experienced with Waldorf education, this program offers you a deeper understanding of yourself as a parent and of the developing picture of the child as well as a deeper understanding of the pedagogy of Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf education.
“To put the world in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate our personal life; and to cultivate our personal life, we must first set our hearts right.” ~ Confucius
Each month we bring our attention to a focus topic with simple, meditative daily work, shared in a private community of warm, wise, wonderful women and every once in a while, a man joins too.
I bring thirty-four years of experience working with parents and children, from planning and preparing for homebirth, to planning a homeschool year, with work in the kindergarten classroom, caring for children in the nursery and leading parent child groups in between. My mothering experience spans nineteen years and life in different cultures and climates.
I bring you generous support and encouragement for tending the hearth, for finding your daily, weekly and seasonal household rhythms, for household tasks. for artistic work, and for support and encouragement with meal planning and cooking. Through this work, we find spaciousness of time, kindle our own inner fires, in both our hearts and in our hearths.
Keep it Simple, Slow and Spacious
The Monthly Program consists of Monthly Curriculum Guides with stories, activities, songs, verses, circle, movement games, fingerplay, recipes and more, grounded in the season with tutorials, audio clips, videos, notes from me, inner reflection work for you and an eCourse to help you slow down, live more simply, parent with confidence and establish daily, weekly and seasonal rhythms that work for your family.
The support material also includes a fairy tale curriculum for the kindergarten child and a nature story curriculum for the nursery child. Puppetry ideas to go along with the stories are included each month through the year along with handwork, parenting support and a rich curriculum for early childhood and strong foundation for homeschooling in the grades.
The Year Round Program includes all twelve months of the daily notes, Monthly eGuides, Inner reflection, Celebration ideas and eCourses. This program builds over the months and year on the monthly topics, revisiting them in a new light to deepen understanding of the early years in Waldorf education at home.
~ living curriculum program means that it is an interactive program with questions for your reflection, discussion and conversation, recordings made to meet the need of each month and opportunities to work with the material in a dynamic way.
Celebrate the Rhythm of Life ~ living curriculum program provides a rich and interwoven experience of the essential elements of early childhood, with time to slowly and gradually bring them into your life, and revisit them from different angles through the year, thus deepening your experience as we spiral around to familiar topics over the course of the year. In returning the following year, the experience of revisiting the month and the topics is for an ever deepening relationship to it. If something does not make sense at first, looking at with another lens the following month, or the following year often reveals new insights.
The support material also includes a fairy tale curriculum for the kindergarten child and a nature story curriculum for the nursery child. Puppetry ideas to go along with the stories are included each month through the year along with handwork, parenting support and a rich curriculum for early childhood and strong foundation for homeschooling in the grades.
The Year Round Program includes all twelve months of the daily notes, Monthly eGuides, Inner reflection, Celebration ideas and eCourses. This program builds over the months and year on the monthly topics, revisiting them in a new light to deepen understanding of the early years in Waldorf education at home.
~ living curriculum program means that it is an interactive program with questions for your reflection, discussion and conversation, recordings made to meet the need of each month and opportunities to work with the material in a dynamic way.
Celebrate the Rhythm of Life ~ living curriculum program provides a rich and interwoven experience of the essential elements of early childhood, with time to slowly and gradually bring them into your life, and revisit them from different angles through the year, thus deepening your experience as we spiral around to familiar topics over the course of the year. In returning the following year, the experience of revisiting the month and the topics is for an ever deepening relationship to it. If something does not make sense at first, looking at with another lens the following month, or the following year often reveals new insights.
Year round members will have a special planning session to sketch out each coming year. Year Round Membership includes the eCourses on Rhythm, The Speech We Bring, Parenting as a Path of Inner Development , Storytelling, Discipline Play, Gratitude, Sacred Space, Warmth and much more.
~ The support material, consists of Seasonal Monthly eBooks in pdf form, online tutorials, essays, articles, audio clips, videos, notes and inspiration and daily notes from me. All the material is available online at a private site, along with a discussion group.
Participants may sign up by the season or for the full year. You may join as a year round member at any time of the year. Year round participants are lifetime participants and may return the following years at no charge.
Each month the material for Celebrate the Rhythm of Life Homeschool Curriculum includes:
- Start Up Guide: How to get going
- Daily Rhythm ~ a guide to help you find your family's natural rhythms, have smooth transitions and more harmony
- Daily, Weekly and Monthly Rhythm Plan (if you want it sketched out ~ it's here)
- Guide for putting it all together
- Guide for each month, with Circle, Song, Stories, Fingerplay and Movement games for the Nursery child (3-4) and the Kindergarten child (5-6)
- Seasonal Nature Crafts and Activities
- Fairy tale ideas for the month
- Nature Story Curriculum for the Nursery Child
- Puppetry ideas to go along with the stories for each month
- In the Kitchen ~ Recipes for the season
- The traditional grains of the Waldorf kindergarten ( menu ideas for breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea)
- Meal Planning Support
- Housework Rhythms
- In the Handwork Basket ~ a handwork project for mom or dad
- Celebration and Festival background and ideas
- Seasonal foods to plant, harvest, prepare and eat with children
- In the Morning Garden ~ a tip each month for home based childcare programs
- Afterschool Care of the child ~ Rhythm and Rest, Activities, Festival Life, Movement Games and Stories for the grade school child
- eCourse with topics that include Establishing Healthy Home Rhythms, Discipline, Play, Storytelling and Fairytales, Speech, Reverence, Spiritual Elements of early childhood, Child Development from Birth to Age Nine, Easing Transitions, Color, Drawing, Painting, Modeling, Summer Vacation Fun, Sacred Space, Creating a Family Home
- Explanation of the underlying developmental needs of the child in Waldorf early childhood, the whys
- Pedagogy behind the topic
- Practical activity to accompany monthly topic
- Exercise to do with the topic ~ practice
- Reflection ~ questions for nurturing the inner life
- Community ~ a warm, wise and wonderful community where we discuss parenting concerns, balancing it all, how to best use the curriculum material, balancing housework, bringing in artistic activities, self care and most of all finding the rhythm that best supports our own families and tending to that rhythm with care, creativity and consciousness.
- Posts through the month on the focus topic
- Ideas for creating community where you live
- Resources for finding high quality and affordable materials
- Ongoing discussion through the month
- Consultation and Coaching through the month or year depending on the type of membership
Deepen your connection with your child
Our work with rhythm is grounded in our relationship with our child. We'll look at specific things we can do to forge a strong connection with our child and create the space for all to unfold within the rhythm of the home. Discipline problems tend to diminish with strong rhythms and connection.
Is this a Homeschool Curriculum?
Yes and no. This is a question I wrestle with all the time. It is a curriculum as much as early childhood might have a curriculum with Waldorf education although honestly it is more of a way of life that comes out of your personal approach to homemaking and self development.
On the one hand we know that the adult and a rich rhythmic home life is the curriculum in early childhood. This program supports you to find your stride and create spaciousness in your family life to create and sustain healthy rhythms for your family and to take up some of the most delightful aspects of childhood: creativity, wonder, enchantment, beauty and goodness along with self care and healthy boundaries.
On the one hand we know that the adult and a rich rhythmic home life is the curriculum in early childhood. This program supports you to find your stride and create spaciousness in your family life to create and sustain healthy rhythms for your family and to take up some of the most delightful aspects of childhood: creativity, wonder, enchantment, beauty and goodness along with self care and healthy boundaries.
On the other hand, the support material contains songs, verse, stories, puppetry, recipes, inner work, handwork and more to nourish a beautiful, strong rhythmic connection with the natural world and celebrate the rhythm of life through the year with your child. So yes, it is a curriculum in that sense.
The materials and support come out of my nearly twenty years experience of teaching and mothering children in the nursery and kindergarten years and are of the caliber one would find in a lovely Waldorf kindergarten program. I also bring the experience of my work with parents experiencing pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood that spans nearly twenty five years. I am so pleased to be able to share these practical skills and experience in ways that are ongoing and truly supportive.
Come join in, create community, find support, receive encouragement!
This program/curriculum guides and supports parents, child care providers, homemakers, early childhood educators and those who work with young children to find a deeper understanding of the needs of children, Waldorf/Steiner education, self knowledge, rhythm, play, strength, nourishment and community, in the task of caring for children.
Members are saying:
"This program changed my life. I was struggling to find rhythm and understand why it matters and what it really looks like in my messy house with active children, you know reality. Lisa's program is so simple and straightforward yet delves into the philosophy of Waldorf education and makes it easy to put into practice. We have rhythm and more time for fun”
"Thank you so much for this very thorough discussion of circle time, really the most helpful discussion in one spot I've seen -- even in books about Circle Time. Some great ideas for me to think about.
My daughter (just turned 4) *loves* circle, she loved it at 3, too, with just the two of us - she loves dancing and singing. I have the best luck with Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures by Nancy Blanning and Laurie Clark, as they present complete circles as a long story and give plenty of large and fine motor suggestions with the songs and verses, with things to climb on, etc. And they are just lovely. We often do them outside, which is so much fun. I will say they are a lot to learn, but that lends itself very well to building the circle over a 3- or 4-week cycle! An area of work for me is that I am no good with creating gestures and movements for verse, and so many books of circle times (like Let Us Form A Ring) leave them out!"
Thank you again for this wonderful post.
Peace and Good Health,
Kelly - January 19, 2011
"Thank you so much for this very thorough discussion of circle time, really the most helpful discussion in one spot I've seen -- even in books about Circle Time. Some great ideas for me to think about.
My daughter (just turned 4) *loves* circle, she loved it at 3, too, with just the two of us - she loves dancing and singing. I have the best luck with Movement Journeys and Circle Adventures by Nancy Blanning and Laurie Clark, as they present complete circles as a long story and give plenty of large and fine motor suggestions with the songs and verses, with things to climb on, etc. And they are just lovely. We often do them outside, which is so much fun. I will say they are a lot to learn, but that lends itself very well to building the circle over a 3- or 4-week cycle! An area of work for me is that I am no good with creating gestures and movements for verse, and so many books of circle times (like Let Us Form A Ring) leave them out!"
Thank you again for this wonderful post.
Peace and Good Health,
Kelly - January 19, 2011
"Lisa, your program is such a gift. It is so full of rich sparks of imagination. It helped me bring it all together with my family. It now comes out of me, not a curriculum or guide. Thank you."
"With the help of Lisa's program, I began implementing rhythm in our home. The changes have been enormous. It has completely changed our lives. My sanity has been recovered, I feel more grounded and our relationships with each other have improved. I feel more connected with my family. Thank you!"
“This wonderful course is so helpful for parents and caregivers of young children who seek to keep alive the awe and wonder of childhood in everyday life. I cannot tell you how much it has helped me in my parenting and in my childcare business. This program is enormously helpful in reminding us in simple ways of the joy to be found in everyday life and in the natural world. Who would think simple rhythms could make such a difference? So much comfort and support here that parents and caregivers can tap into and bring out into the world."
"Lisa's program and the support within it gave me the confidence to homeschool my children, and we are loving it, thank you so much!"
"With the help of Lisa's program, I began implementing rhythm in our home. The changes have been enormous. It has completely changed our lives. My sanity has been recovered, I feel more grounded and our relationships with each other have improved. I feel more connected with my family. Thank you!"
“This wonderful course is so helpful for parents and caregivers of young children who seek to keep alive the awe and wonder of childhood in everyday life. I cannot tell you how much it has helped me in my parenting and in my childcare business. This program is enormously helpful in reminding us in simple ways of the joy to be found in everyday life and in the natural world. Who would think simple rhythms could make such a difference? So much comfort and support here that parents and caregivers can tap into and bring out into the world."
"Lisa's program and the support within it gave me the confidence to homeschool my children, and we are loving it, thank you so much!"
" I was like totally skeptical at first, I have done other monthly programs without really making any changes. This one is the best by far. I became a lifetime member after two months. The materials are so good and Lisa goes the extra mile in sharing her amazing wisdom."
" I guess I didn't believe that mealtimes could be harmonious with young children. They are now. Thanks to Lisa's program Celebrate the Rhythm of Life through the Year. "
"I'm a lifetime member and so grateful for this program. It is so much fun to discover the beautiful new materials each month. The focus work is so helpful. The circles are lovely and I now feel confident doing circle and telling stories with my children It has brought such depth to my understanding of Waldorf education, mothering and life."
"...full of wisdom and magic."
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Questions? Visit the FAQ page
"...full of wisdom and magic."
BBBBBBB
Questions? Visit the FAQ page
:: Year Round Lifetime Membership
~ includes 12 months of membership + materials packets + 12 eCourses + private Facebook Group, lifetime year round membership $525 Join here
:: Enroll by the Season
~ includes 12 weeks of materials, choose Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter Join here
:: May eCourse
~ registration opening soon
Questions? E-mail me at: lisaboisvert@yahoo.com
Because this is a digital product, purchases are final and non-refundable.
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