Montessori/Waldof homeschooling without breaking the bank.

[Astraia]

I am obviously NOWHERE near homeschooling (with a 1 and 2 year old!) but I like to get my ducks in a row long before I need to and am pre-planning.

I've been reading a lot of Waldorf/ Montessori blogs (homeschooling and otherwise) and am completely overwhelmed by the possible cost. I love the ideas in both schooling methods and the emphasis on natural materials but I am at a loss. We live in the city so our access to nature requires either a very long walk or a car trip. All of our toys were purchased by family and are plastic. I'm ooohing and aaahhing at a lot of these little shops or on etsy at things I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to buy but I can't even fathom the cost. (ie, wooden dollhouse that I keep seeing in people's blogs- $250!?!? For the HOUSE? No furniture or people... if I save birthday/christmas money for next 2 years, I can afford it). I would be willing to place them in a montessori/waldorf school, but that's also way too expensive.

Is there any way to do this without my husband taking on a second job? Are there places/sites to buy materials or toys used for a price cut? Do any parents on a limited budget try to follow m/w guidelines or ideas?

I'm feeling pretty discouraged :( Even though I won't be starting anything academic for several more years, I already feel like giving up!

[pampered_mom]

Originally Posted by Astraia 

I am obviously NOWHERE near homeschooling (with a 1 and 2 year old!) but I like to get my ducks in a row long before I need to and am pre-planning.

I've been reading a lot of Waldorf/ Montessori blogs (homeschooling and otherwise) and am completely overwhelmed by the possible cost. I love the ideas in both schooling methods and the emphasis on natural materials but I am at a loss. We live in the city so our access to nature requires either a very long walk or a car trip. All of our toys were purchased by family and are plastic. I'm ooohing and aaahhing at a lot of these little shops or on etsy at things I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to buy but I can't even fathom the cost. (ie, wooden dollhouse that I keep seeing in people's blogs- $250!?!? For the HOUSE? No furniture or people... if I save birthday/christmas money for next 2 years, I can afford it). I would be willing to place them in a montessori/waldorf school, but that's also way too expensive.

Is there any way to do this without my husband taking on a second job? Are there places/sites to buy materials or toys used for a price cut? Do any parents on a limited budget try to follow m/w guidelines or ideas?

I'm feeling pretty discouraged :( Even though I won't be starting anything academic for several more years, I already feel like giving up!

First, there's no need to be discouraged.  There's also no need to run out and buy a $250 dollhouse (believe me, your kids might not even play with it...mine didn't play with the gorgeous wooden barn we bought them).  There's a lot that you can do with a limited funds.  Some of it you can make yourself and some of it you might find on a periodic nature hike (once a month, once a quarter, once a year?).  Oh, and don't forget places like CraigsList.  You'd be amazed at the things people sell there.

You might trying searching MDC a bit for budget Waldorf type threads.  I know that LuxPerpetua likely has a number of posts around here with some of the things that she's done (all *very* budget friendly).

Lastly, be gentle with yourself.  I've always loved the Waldorf blogs, books, and methods.  I had plans on doing so with my son...until I realized that it was more something I liked and was interested in than he did.  I always hated it when people said something like that to me, but have found that I needed to adjust my expectations quite a bit once we got closer to homeschooling age.  :0)

[coharmony]

Are you crafty or handy at all? If you are or are willing to learn then there are lots of things you can do. I've made a lot of my little ones toys.  I also did a lot of Montessori activities homemade.  There are a lot of blogs out there with great suggestions. I recommend Chasing Cheerios to start. Actually, one thing I did was go down the blog list on Crafty Crow and found a ton of great resources.  There is a ton of thing you could be doing already actually as far as motor skills.  I'm really glad I did a few of these activities with mine because he is pretty handy now that he is 4 and he enjoyed doing it.  There are also a couple books specifically written for making Montessori materials at home. Can't remember their specific names but maybe if you searched on Amazon you could find them.

[Astraia]

Originally Posted by pampered_mom 

Lastly, be gentle with yourself.  I've always loved the Waldorf blogs, books, and methods.  I had plans on doing so with my son...until I realized that it was more something I liked and was interested in than he did.  I always hated it when people said something like that to me, but have found that I needed to adjust my expectations quite a bit once we got closer to homeschooling age.  :0)

Alright, you're definitely right about that. I see these blogs of peoples homes and I am overcome by jealousy and desire. They have such wonderful things, everyone looks so happy, they must be doing something better than I am- if I buy that, we can all be happy too (or whatever, I'm sure you know what I mean). I think I'm romanticizing the whole thing probably just a little bit. I did do a search on budget waldorf/montessori but I never seem to have much luck with the search function; I'll try again.

Originally Posted by coharmony 

Are you crafty or handy at all? If you are or are willing to learn then there are lots of things you can do. I've made a lot of my little ones toys.  I also did a lot of Montessori activities homemade.  There are a lot of blogs out there with great suggestions. I recommend Chasing Cheerios to start. Actually, one thing I did was go down the blog list on Crafty Crow and found a ton of great resources.

Not really crafty or handy. Powertools freak me out which leaves most of the woodworking inaccessible unless I can rope my brother into doing it for me. I'm trying though- homemade Christmas presents FTW! I have been a long-time subscriber to chasing cheerios and got some good ideas from there but sometimes I think blogs mostly serve to make me feel inadequate :P I've never heard of Crafty Crow, I'll check that out. I'll also hunt around on Amazon for books and see if there's anything that fits.
 

[Astraia]

Okay, I did some better thread searches and just spent the last hour or so reading (from MDC and other sites) about waldorf/montessori/balancing/ pros and cons and I feel... well, balanced! I don't feel like I need to go all one direction or the other (honestly, I don't think I could adhere to anything completely. I'm contrary by nature and feel rules are there for the breaking!) and despite how beautiful some places are and how asthetically pleasing some aspects of traditional schooling are, I know it'd never last. There are some components that I'm going to pull from various sources to make something that I feel comfortable with and that doesn't mean I need to run out and get a job to finance it! Of course, the number of hours I may accidentally spend reading/researching/compiling curriculum.... eh, we'll get there when we get there, I guess! I wish there was a name for whatever schooling system I want to do that had the cirriculum pre-packaged for me :) Oh well!

Now I feel bad making another "waldorf & money" thread.... there were plenty!

[pampered_mom]

Nah...don't feel bad.  I think that's the nature of message boards!

[onyxravnos]

so i am a waldorfy person who like montessori manipulative's :)

besides what others have said i have slowly acquired some really awesome stuff from thrift stores and garages sales. you just have to know what your looking for and keep in mind

is it creative?

does it let imagination do the work?

can it be used multiple ways?

multiple ages? is it 'waldorfy-y'?

once you start you'll find lots of thing you just never noticed before :)

[LuxPerpetua]

I don't have much time to post, but I wanted to mention that we are a very budget-oriented Waldorf-inspired family.  One of the greatest lessons I have learned is that homemade is ALWAYS better than anything you can buy as far as experience value goes, even if the final product looks less than stellar.  Crafting doesn't have to be difficult or expensive.  We don't do much woodworking (we live in an apartment at the moment) but we make tons of crafts.  Cheap acrylic felt and hotglue are marvelous.  I have playmats, a seasonal tree, ornaments, puppets, a halloween candy bag, and a TON of other projects just with hotglue and felt.  We've recently discovered salt clay, which is fabulous for using to make ornaments and figurines.  I have images in my head of making an entire Nativity out of salt clay once dd is older.  We mold the clay--you make it kind of like playdough--bake in the oven at a low temp for several hours, and then paint with tempera paint.  If you can do playdough, you can do this.  Another thing, puppetry.  We live near a Waldorf school and attend their bi-annual fairs, and at each fair they act out a simple story using marionettes.  We've made our own marionettes through needle-felting, a very easy technique, but most of the time we use figurines that we already have (like stuffed animals, pinecones for trees, etc.).  We lay out playsilks and fabrics (check Joanne's for fabric scraps or order undyed playsilks from Dharma and dye your own--easy!) and I either read and act out a story or tell it and act it out with the figurines.  Sometimes we use musical instruments to enhance it, sometimes not.  As far as toys go, really the more open-ended the more Waldorf, so a lot of toys on Waldorf blogs you see are actually violating Waldorf principles.  We make a lot of our own toys (this book is fab and you can substitute hotglue for almost all sewing: http://www.amazon.com/Creative-Play-Your-Toddler-Expertise/dp/1856752860/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292652777&sr=8-1-spell ) but we also have plastic (Playmobil-type), wood, metal, cloth, etc., as well as nature baskets of pinecones, sticks, rocks, shells, etc.  You can get baskets at Goodwill for around $2 each, and nature items are free outside.  There are also some Waldorf yahoo groups that sell things like used wooden toys along with Waldorf curricula, but even used most toys are out of our budget range.  Parenting Passageway is a fabulous blog, if you haven't checked it out already, that lets you see what Waldorf really is outside of the whole gorgeous toy hang-up.  And pipe cleaners are amazing--cheap and you can use them for everything from hay/grass in puppet shows, to needle-felting bases, to making your own pipe-cleaner dolls for play.  I'm actually trying to start up a blog at the moment that focuses on Waldorf on a budget.  Once we get past Christmas that is ...  Waldorf is actually quite easy to do on very little money.  (And honestly, wet-on-wet painting works as well with watered-down Crayola tempera paints as it does with Stockmar watercolors--that's what we do and we love it, plus tempera paint can be used for so much more!)  Best wishes!

[pigpokey]

You might have gotten this out of your googling but just in case:

Montessori and Waldorf have nothing to do with one another. 

Montessori as usually practiced is an effective method of group educating young children by providing them access to work stations that are self-correcting.  In this way, children can advance through academic skills at their own rate.  The materials are very cool and very expensive.  I personally do not use Montessori materials because my teacher - student ratio is 1:2 not 1:20 and it's not necessary for us.

Waldorf as usually practiced is a group classroom environment meeting the requirements of Anthroposophy regarding proper incarnation of the soul.  The academic approach is vary far off Montessori.  Academics are delayed to frowned upon until what is it ... 2nd grade?  And at my local Waldorf school the cutoff for the grade is in the spring, I believe, so May-August birthday 2nd graders at Waldorf would be third graders in the public schools.  In contrast, Montessori students entering the public school system often have a noted "Montessori effect" -- they are usually working further ahead than age peers.  It's just called an effect, because the public schools are confident that they can squash that progress right back down to age peers in just a few grades.

I *get that* the main thing the two have in common is the group of parents that are drawn to them because when my children were small and I was researching schools, I was drawn to them both also as possible alternatives to traditional group education and as meeting a certain nostagic image I had of happy elementary education, free of all that standardized testing and excessive homework in the early grades.  I also love expensive natural materials and dislike cartoon screenprints on clothing. 

The important thing to remember here is that when you are homeschooling, you do not face the challenge of group education.  I run a very effective academic home school for my 7 and almost 6 year olds as a tutorial (apart from their outside classes in art, sports, dance, music...).  We did not need learning toys or preschool curriculum to prepare for kindergarten work; they played with their regular toys and when they were old enough for lessons, lessons commenced and have not been very expensive to date.*  If I suddenly had to educate ten of their friends in my home with them, the cost of managing all that per student would skyrocket, as would the number of hours needed in the school day, and of course I would likely change my approach. 

I think you should research unschooling, or consider how you could fit your academic goals into patterns of weekly activities that would meet your Waldorfy side; baking on Mondays for mathematics, nature hikes every Tuesday and Thursday for PE and science, knitting for mathematics and art.  None of that is expensive.  Also consider ways that your home school, like Montessori, will be differentiated for the abilities and interests of each child.  That, because you are their mother, is not expensive either.

I also encourage you to limit the plastic toys if they don't meet your aesthetics.  Not many toys are that important and if you're like me, you're the adult most in the house and at your kids' age you are doing quite a bit of the picking up.  So if you don't like a toy, get rid of it.  Sell it on Craigslist or freecycle it and find simple basic toys you do like on Craigslist and freecycle.

*There are things that are investments.  Rosetta Stone, for example, is a language learning system that is easy to implement and many homeschools use.  You might spend $600 or so for levels 1-5, but for two children, that works out to $5 per month per child for five academic years of foreign language, 30 minutes a day, five days a week, which is IME very inexpensive.

[Astraia]

onyxravnos- that's very simple. I need to write that down and give it to my MIL and bring it with me whenever I go into any store that might have kid stuff.

luxperpetua- you're right on the hotglue! I bought myself a glue gun a couple of months ago and I'm amazed with the amount of stuff I can actually make now. And you're right- fabric stores, homemade, thrifted and natural stuff is easy to find if I'm creative about it. I think I had looked briefly at Parenting Passageways, but I looked at it again and it seems brand new so I must've just skimmed it before.

Pigpokey- you're right, now that I've done more research they aren't even remotely related to each other. I was having a LOT of trouble finding out what Waldorf actually was. I'd read their "Waldorf strives to educate the whole child, here's our big sell where we make ourselves sound awesome" blurbs from different schools, but I was having trouble finding a breakdown into what Waldorf actually TAUGHT, and now that I've found out what it is I've decided it's not for us. I love the rhythm of the home and the emphasis on nature so we'll likely incorporate some of that but the rest of it... eh, nah, not my style.

I've looked a bit at unschooling and part of me says, "yes! This is EXACTLY what we need to do!" then the other part of me freaks out about not having things written down and planned or a curriculum ordered or whatever. I expect we'll likely end up semi-unschooled but approaching it from that perspective scares me a bit.

Your idea of baking on Monday, nature hikes Tuesday, knitting for math etc seems incredibly approachable and manageable. I like it. I also actually have Rosetta Stone for French already. I bought it about 3-4 years ago, but I've never actually used it... Bad, bad.

As far as asthetic appeal goes....I can't stand basically everything in my house- toys, furniture, everything. We never quite made it out of the whole student housing look and I'd love to toss everything and start over again but it's just not realistic! I boxed up tons of toys that I don't like or that don't get played with but I need to get over the guilt of having them out of my house since they all came from family.