Where do I start?

[LuxPerpetua]

Maybe you ladies can help me here since I'm not sure what I'm looking for. I'd like some sort of book/resource that could help direct me in understanding HOW to evaluate the way my dd learns. I feel like I need a guide or something to know how to match up the way dd likes to learn with the hs-ing curricula resources out there--like, will Waldorf be a good fit for us or should I be looking at something more rigorous for academics and add Waldorf filler (like still act out stories, celebrate festivals, do handwork, etc.). Does this make any sense? I have no idea if she's an auditory learner or visual learner, left-brained/right-brained, etc., and I don't know how to find out. Help!

[pigpokey]

Waldorf preschool was more or less supposed to be a substitute for what they were missing out on by not being at home -- since Mom had to work at the factory or what-not.

IMO you are jumping the gun, but other more learned moms may disagree. She's not four yet. She doesn't need to be any kind of learner to tackle academic work, and is in Piaget's preoperational cognitive stage. You'll get to know her better over the next few years. If you want to start a reading or math curriculum you can give it a try and see how she takes to it. At this age with my kids, if they didn't understand something I did not say "oh, I need to teach with a different approach" I said, "oh, this needs to wait and we'll come back when she's older."

[zjande]

I found these books very helpful. Perhaps your library has them:

http://www.amazon.com/100-Top-Picks-...1854494&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/100-Picks-Home...1854494&sr=8-2

[Shianne]

I like Thomas Armstrong's 7 Kinds of Smart and The Way They Learn by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias.
There are also numerous websites you can browse. Just google children's learning styles and a number of them will come up.

You know your child best and it should be quite easy to figure out what type of learner you have on your hands. After you determine what type of learner she is, then you can pick your curriculum or make your own. But since she is so young, imaginative play, nature walks, art, songs and just reading to her would be a good start.
My youngest is 4 and we spend our time playing games, going for walks and talking about things we find, gardening, reading, doing art projects, helping me cook and such. He learned his colours by eating popsicles, learned how to spell by reading and playing with magnetic letters on the fridge and he learned fractions and adding by helping me cook. We haven't sat down and started anything formal as he balks at doing bookwork. I think he would be perfect for Waldorf style as he loves rhythm, stories, songs and nature.
My 12 year old ds is a visual kinesthetic learner and has to see and touch things to learn. He loves to take things apart and put things together again. He too does not like book work so most of the things we do is hands on so he retains it easier. My oldest is an auditory/kinesthetic/rhythm learner and is musically talented. He has already graduated and doing his own thing now.

[LuxPerpetua]

Thank you for the replies thus far. You ladies are always so helpful!

I'm afraid I was unclear in my OP--I'm not looking to buy a curriculum or anything at the moment. I'm just preparing for the future. Right now we have a more Waldorf approach, so lots of nature walks, baking, festivals, stories, play, etc. It's really that I hear lots of words batted about here like "visual-spacial learner," "kinesthetic learner," etc., and I would like to know kind of in what directions my dd is leaning. She appears to be very gifted which has made me re-evaluate a fully Waldorf approach for first grade and later. From early on, I just sort of assumed we'd be fully Waldorf and now I'm thinking that's not going to work for us--or at least not completely. We'll probably do Waldorf blended with other resources, but I just have no idea how to find out what's out there or if they would be a good fit for dd (not necessarily a good fit now but so that when she's school-aged I'll have a way of evaluating then). I'm really just trying to build a good homeschooling resource library for me to peruse now and re-peruse later, since I now have a bit of Christmas $ to put toward that end.