I have been looking through here and I don't see a thread for it.
Are there any waldorf homeschoolers around here? I am sure there is. I was unsure of putting this in here, or the Waldorf forum. But I figured that this was the better forum.
So my daughter will be homeschooled by me and we are going to start in a few weeks ( I am thinking Sept 1st. I need time to plan out some things and figure out what I am going to do).
One thing I worry about is that she has no siblings, we have no friends (lots of family though with her favorite little cousins) and I am worried about her not being social enough.
So, what are you waldorf homeschoolers doing?
Are there any waldorf homeschoolers around here? I am sure there is. I was unsure of putting this in here, or the Waldorf forum. But I figured that this was the better forum.
So my daughter will be homeschooled by me and we are going to start in a few weeks ( I am thinking Sept 1st. I need time to plan out some things and figure out what I am going to do).
One thing I worry about is that she has no siblings, we have no friends (lots of family though with her favorite little cousins) and I am worried about her not being social enough.
So, what are you waldorf homeschoolers doing?
Seasons of Joy is $15 per season which may be affordable. You probably already know that in Waldorf pedagogy you don't even start mild academics until grade 1 at the earliest (and it is recommended that the child be 7 for grade 1). We've used Seasons of Joy sporadically, but we don't do "circle time" so I've never found a great way to implement it (it's basically a collection of rhymes, songs, crafts, stories, and foods for each season). What has worked better for us is trying to establish a strong daily/weekly rhythm for housework and really delve into the seasons, like making jams in summer and berry-picking, making soups and breads in winter, etc. We read lots of seasonal books from the library, sing seasonal songs, take lots of nature walks, etc. For kindy, I think all of this is fine and it's all free. We make lots of things with cheap acrylic felt from Michael's (it's amazing what all you can do with it!) and use watered down tempera paint for wet-on-wet painting, which we do every Thursday except in summertime. I have no issues with Crayola crayons or markers and we leave up easel paper on our wall all the time so dd can just draw whenever she feels like it. She also draws on the mirror of our bathroom when I take a shower and there is steam, she makes concoctions with shaving cream (heck, I even put shaving cream in the bathtub for her to ice skate on), we make playdough, and we do lots of cornstarch and water play. I get book ideas from Ambleside Online (Winnie the Pooh and Beatrix Potter are hits around here and have been for a year now) and also check out lots of seasonal books from the library. The Waldorf board here usually lists seasonal book selections too so I try and get those. The Parenting Passageway blog also sometimes lists stories/books/ideas that I've found helpful. Frontier Dreams is another good Waldorf blog. For under age 7, the emphasis is really upon daily/weekly/yearly rhythm and gross motor skills, so we do lots of housework, cook/bake, make things, and play play play. We also read, make up stories, and act out stories. This year we might start making our own puppets and doing puppet shows. I'm thinking of printing out some pictures from online and then hotgluing some felt clothes on them to make them more interesting and using popsicle sticks for handles. We have a felt seasonal tree that I make out of cheap felt that we change out leaves on. I also have printed out animal pictures on the internet and laminated them with packing tape, and so we put up new animals for each season. Really, I think any type of education works best when you draw on various resources and your own talents and then find a mixture that works with your child. The internet is great for info--not only blogs but for pictures, crafts, seasonal fingerplays and songs, etc. Packing tape works great for laminating and hotglue and acrylic felt have done wondrous things at our house. A lot of things are free or cheap, like seeds to grow a small container garden. For kindy, especially, I think you can do everything for free or very cheaply. Just read, play, and do fun things. You can look at the Enki website to see the table of contents for the kindy fairy tales and then get them through your library or at a used bookstore. Anyway, long story short, I think I would not even worry one iota about a curriculum at this age--and not really until age 7 or 8 at the earliest. I've heard great things about A Little Garden Flower, and her books are really affordable, especially her e-books, which are about $20 for a full year.
