Welcome to A Little Garden Flower & Waldorf Essentials

Coming to Waldorf Late

The past two radio shows focused on coming to Waldorf during the grade school years.  I want to address some of the key points that we feel are important when you are new to Waldorf homeschooling.  Most people only think of the beeswax crayons, nice pencils and paint - these are great, but what do you do with them?  It all starts with good planning and understanding the curriculum, otherwise the materials are just things - they aren't the heart and soul of Waldorf.  Below are some sets for each of the grades (you can find full descriptions in our store), purchasing these bundled sets directly from our blog will save you some money as they are discounted from the full price.  Be sure to visit our radio station to listen to both shows on the topic.

Our daughter showing some grade 1 work

Grade 1 (age 6-7):  While you want to make sure you have a good grasp of the grade one basics, be sure you also do your background work.  I recommend studying Steiner himself where possible.  I also recommend this bundle below that includes: A Journey... audio series (in download mp3 format), Coloring with Block Crayons DVD set, Form Drawing DVDs, Waldorf Homeschool Planning DVDs, e-book versions of our Grade 1 curriculum and our Grades 1-5 math book.  $125

Our daughter with her grade two Saint Patrick drawing.

Grade 2 (age 7-8):  In many ways, grade two is an extension of grade one.  Some children are reading well and some are still coming along.  When you come to Waldorf at this stage, you will need many of the foundations that we recommend for grade one, the exception being that you will want our grade two curriculum instead. This bundle includes everything above substituting with grade two. $120

Math wheel

Grade 3 (age 8-9):  Consider not working on the regular Waldorf festivals this year but rather celebrate Jewish festivals and ease into your year.  Remember to keep any history to an age-appropriate level.  You can skip the fairy tales and the fables at this point unless you want to use them as extra stories.   This bundle includes: A Journey...downloads, e-book copies of our Grade 3 curriculum and Math book, Block Crayon DVDs, Planning DVDs, and Form Drawing DVDs. $122

Grade four lesson from Norse myth, past, present & future.

Grade 4 (age 9-10):  If you begin with Waldorf this year, you will want to be certain you fully understand the man/animal main lesson as this will give you a foundation of what is to come in the upper elementary grades.  You may also consider some drawing classes or our block crayon DVD.  For this year's bundle we recommend: e-books of our Grade 4 curriculum and our Math book, A Journey downloads, Planning DVDs, and Form Drawing DVDs.  $90

Grade 5 Geometry drawing

Grade 5 (age 10-11):  You should consider doing the 4th grade man/animal lesson block before the botany block.  Be sure not to skip form drawing and geometry.  The fifth grade bundle includes: Grade 5 curriculum and Math both e-books, A Journey downloads, Planning DVDs, Form Drawing DVDs, and Geometry e-book & DVDs. $120

Example of grade 6 map drawing

Grade 6 (age 11-12):  This year will start off great if you have a good understanding of the history covered in grade five through ancient cultures.  Take the time to understand the time periods and the geography.  Spend time covering zoology and botany.  The bundle for this grade includes: Grade 6 curriculum e-book, A Journey downloads, Planning DVDs, Form Drawing DVDs, and Geometry DVDs. $97

**Although I didn't bundle our Block Crayon DVD for the upper elementary grades, it can be a great tool for you as a resource on learning how to make beautiful chalk board drawings - the processes are very similar.  Also, while I did not mention it in each grade, handwork is an important part of Waldorf education.  We have many handwork supplies in our shop.

From grade seven through high school, Waldorf can be a bit trickier to integrate.  My best suggestion is to go through the base history curriculum to be sure your child has a good understanding of the work and how we got to where we are as a society.  Be sure to cover the sciences in depth. 

Remember that Waldorf is about allowing the child to develop through age-appropriate material and activities.  Stand back and watch them blossom - do not be in a hurry.  Be sure to take the time to plan and understand the material for yourself.  You can do it!  Welcome to Waldorf!

Blessings.

Melisa Nielsen

A Journey through Waldorf Geometry

There are few things that really strike fear into the hearts of some moms like the thought of geometry.  Geometry was not like this for many of us in school... I remember *getting it* but hating it!  And I didn't get everything, only bits and pieces and Pythagoras was certainly not my favorite dude. So when I decided I was going to write a geometry resource, I knew I had to overcome my own bias before I could get into it and bring it to others.  I did a lot of reading... a lot of praying... more praying... more reading... then I finally picked up the compass and just got busy.  To my surprise, it was easy!  Ok maybe not easy but enjoyable!  Better than the dentist.  Better even than pasta... not better than pie.

The set comes with: FULLY laid out geometry lessons for grades 5-7.  12 lessons for each year for a total of 36.  These are laid out in in ebook format with full color pictures for nearly every lesson, over 40 pictures total.  There are also two DVDs that walk you through all major constructions. The presale goes through the end of August and is $25.  After that the regular price is $35.

Below you will find a sample lesson from our book (grade 5, lesson 12) and also a segment from our DVD. (be sure to click on the pictures below so you can see a full view!)  Enjoy!  Get excited - hurry up - go get a compass! get some paper... go on.. do the lesson below and see how easy it is.  Just do it.

Lesson 12

This is by far the hardest lesson you will do in grade five geometry – we saved the best for last!  Really though, it looks hard but isn’t once you get going.   Today you will construct a flower within a dodecagon.  What is a dodecagon?  It is a 12-sided shape with 12 angles.  A regular dodecagon has 12 equal sides, this is where our focus will be today.

 

While twelve sides seems overwhelming at first, it can be done easily by using the instruction for constructing the hexagon.  Being certain that your arcs for your hexagon go both through the center and through the original circle, you will create extra points.  Before joining all over your points, count them, there should be 12.  See this lesson on our DVD.  From each of these extra points, create another arc until you have constructed 12 total.  Now it might look like a mess! Refer to our finished picture  and start coloring in the center, erasing the lines that are not needed.  Soon your shape will emerge.

More math...

I am not happy with my camera selection these days, my ancient digital has finally died a horrible death and I am being forced to use the video camera to take stills... no flash, lol... so these are dark... sorry.

This is from our "A New Land" story that we put in our book- it is a simple story that can easily carry on for a few days and can take many twist and turns if you expand it beyond what I wrote.  The above picture is supposed to be wheat, lol... they look  bit like alien dancers but I was aiming for wheat... you can tell I don't sit in many wheat fields (mental note to sit in a wheat field this summer!)

 This picture is from the same story.  We were figuring out how many eggs the family needed each week so that we knew how many could be sold to the grocer.  My hens are a bit better than my wheat - but then I used to have hens, lol.

I am not sure if I wrote about this here on the blog in another math post or if I wrote about it only in our book, but many moms that come to Waldorf are a bit intimidated by the nature of Waldorf math, after all, at least in the beginning, it is very different.  I have many moms that come to the method with a 3rd or 4th grader and want to know if they should go back and do these grade 1 and 2 math stories and I usually counsel them to do so because Waldorf math is  whole different ball game.  Waldorf works with the concept of whole to parts - if you are new to Waldorf then this will be a head scratcher!  Main stream math takes children from the very first day out of what they do naturally.  By nature children analyze everything, they like to look at things from a whole perspective and then break them down.  In main stream schooling (even homeschooling) children are immediately pulled from this line of thinking and required to synthesize instead.  While synthesizing has a place and will be employed in their math, it is only after feeding their need to analyze - for it is out of analyzing that natural synthesizing can occur.  Analyzing has us breaking things down from the whole down to the parts, where synthesizing has us adding and adding without much regard for the end result. Steiner discussed that even in his time teaching synthesizing led to more materialism!  I think personally about our society and their desire as adults to find wholeness within themselves after a life of being taught to synthesize rather than analyzing!  I watch my son that has ASD - where his life can be practically summed up as perpetual analyzing! lol... I watch him and any math problem that requires analyzing he can instantly picture and while sequencing is tough for him, he can see an answer to a multiplication problem and quickly come up with the components - where when we synthesize it is much harder for him.  He loved our lessons on prime numbers and prime factoring! Analyzing keeps math a living organism within us rather than separating us from the whole.

In short, if your child is older and has a good grasp on the four processes then I would take some time to at least learn of whole to parts math for the younger set so that you can employ analyzing where appropriate and if you are starting at the beginning with grade one, then using Waldorf math from the beginning will not only save you money, it will give you and your child a sense of looking at the world from an entirely different perspective.  Our book gives you enough lessons for all of your math blocks from grade one through grade 5.

I hope despite our dark pictures, you have enjoyed our post on math! Blessings.

Autumn showers... aka the last of the pumpkin gnome tales or Gnomes Thanksgiving

Ever wonder what the gnomes do for their Thanksgiving (or late harvest) festival?  Well they like to sneak out and find the last of the big orange pumpkins and drag them back to the mushroom doorway and down the steps to the grand hall and all the gnomes take pieces of it to cook.  Why do they cook it? because they love pumpkin pie.  So while some of the gnomes drag the pumpkin into the hall, others are out tracking down pasture cattle to milk them so they can have cream for whipping cream. (Mom do you see where this is going?)

Stories like these are easy kindergarten tales and also great filler stories during the holidays when perhaps your lessons are thin.  We have been blessed with beautiful autumn weather this year and it has been the palette for some great autumn gnome stories in our home (we usually have wet heavy snow by now.)  Like our giant turnip story we had this story covering many things - we of course did writing and drawing, we also painted pumpkins, made beeswax pumpkins for the nature table and will roast a pumpkin tomorrow to use for pumpkin pie, bread and cookies - unless of course I lose my nerve to break up this giant thing sitting in my living room and use the stuff from a can instead!  Don't forget that you can extend this lesson for anyone working on farming - get some cream, make some of it into whipped cream for your pie and the rest into butter for your pumpkin bread!

A few recipes:

Pumpkin bread (can be halved)~
2 cups pumpkin
3 cups sucanat (or nasty old table sugar will work too!)
1 cup of water
1 cup of oil
3 eggs or egg replacer
3 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix wet, combine dry.  Combine the two together.  Pour into loaf pans and bake 60-70 minutes.  Cool 10-15 min, then remove from pans.  Enjoy!

Pumpkin pie ~
1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree, canned or fresh
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice (or spices that make up pumpkin pie spice!)
1 tsp. flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup whipping cream
2 TBL water
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 pie shell

Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices and flour in a medium mixing bowl. Add eggs, mix well.  Add cream, water, and vanilla, mix well.  Pour into pie shell, bake at 400 for 15 min. Then reduce heat to 350 and bake about 35 min. longer or until center is set.

This story worked out great for the handwork class I teach.  When using it for a painting story, layer the paper in circle yellow, then blue for the ground as it will turn to green, then circle red in a round shape to make the pumpkin, a little blue to make a green stem and voila!  An easy pumpkin for young ones (grade one-2) as it teaches blending.

Our beeswax pumpkins.  For more tips on beeswax, see the giant turnip story.

For writing practice, we adapted and borrowed a verse from Autumn by Wynstones Press -
"Autumn showers, autumn rain, wash the pumpkins clean again."

If you need more pumpkin action... listen to Jodie's great Pumpkin Pie song from Festivals, Family & Food.

Elleanor's lesson book.

 

Advent is coming... are you ready?

Late Autumn Verse...

 

My daughter (grade 2) has been sick this week so we have been taking it easy and doing a lot of verses and pictures as opposed to our regular saints and fables work.  Saint Jerome will be waiting for us on Monday!  I spent an hour or so at the beginning of the week going through my stash of autumn verses to use for the week and this is one of my favorites:

"Seeds and flowers have gone to sleep,
You and I the watch will keep,
Watch over seeds in Winter night,
Till they will rise to see the light." ~ M. Meyerkort, Autumn by Wynstones Press

My daughter loved the idea that the gnomes actually put the seeds in beds! Blessings.

Guardians of Time ~ Verb Tenses for Grade 4

 

Guardians of Time – a verb tense lesson for grade four

 

Teaching verb tense can often be maddening!  You know with a sentence like that, we have experience in this department! The Norse myths give a perfect opportunity to cover verb tense, especially by using the Norns, the guardians of time.  Urd is the guardian of the past, Verdani the present and Skuld guards the future.  The Norns are probably the equivalent to the Greek fates.  In the Norse world, with divine power, the Norns twine the threads of destiny for mankind.  They live in Yggdrasil (the World Tree) at the base.  Sometimes the Norns are seen as good (when life is going well) and sometimes they seem evil (when things aren’t going the way we’d like.)  If you are using the D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myth, then a great story to pair this lesson with would be the one on “Yggdrasil, the World Tree” as this discusses the Norns and also gives a great picture of the tree.

 

Writing to go along with this lesson:

 

“When we write, we need verbs to help us tell time.  Verbs help us to understand if we did something in the PAST, are doing something in the PRESENT or if we plan to do something in the FUTURE.  When we use verbs to keep time, it is called VERB TENSE.” 

 

Another great book for Norse myth is Thorkill of Iceland by Isabel Wyatt – this book has a bonus because it is also paired with a book by the same author The Dream of King Alfdan” under the same cover – both are appropriate for grade four.

 

To reinforce tenses, take a passage in your child’s current reading (which should have something to do with your main lesson) and write it entirely in the present tense.  Have your child re-write the same passage in the past tense one day and then to carry on the lesson the next day have them write it in the future tense.  The same sorts of language arts lessons can be given by writing a passage with no capitals or punctuation and then have your child rewrite the same passage correctly.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

Autumn Verse... Squirrel Nutkin...

 

Squirrel Nutkin has a coat of brown,
The loveliest coat in woodland town.
Two bright eyes look round to see
Where the sweetest nuts may be.

Definitely not my best chalk board!  I got rushed a bit this morning and it shows.  This was our handwriting practice this morning.  It is from "Autumn Story" in the book "Autumn" by Wynstones press.

I am often asked how I decide what sorts of verses to use for stories or for writing practice - I personally like seasonal ones just because our seasons in SE Idaho are very defined and for the most part very beautiful.  I also try to find verses that go with the rest of our lessons and a great resource for that is the wonderful book by Heather Thomas called "A Journey in Time Through Verse and Rhyme" - she has some great sections on history that follow the Waldorf curriculum right through.  This is a resource I purchased when my children were small for the nature poetry and I have used it almost daily as they have grown for inspiration in many areas.  A great extra lesson resource.

Blessings!

The Giant Turnip...

 

Most folks know this story... the story of a farmer who loved turnips, one year he cared for his crop with extra peace and love, he had a bumper crop, a field full of turnips!  He harvested them all but one... one that was so big he couldn't get it out of the ground, he yanked and pulled, yanked and pulled then he called his wife to help, she couldn't get it either so they called the boy who called the dog and the cat and then finally the mouse.  The story ends when the mouse helps and POP the turnip comes out of the ground!

We used this as an autumn story across all of the age of our children and then also to do some modeling with a kindy/grade one class in a Waldorf inspired school where I teach handwork each week. 

Ways we used it:
*My second grade daughter used it for her main lesson work as a seasonal transition between saints and fables. She did the picture and the printed writing in her lesson book and she participated in the story telling in my handwork class.

*My older boys(4th & 6th grade) used it as writing practice, writing both the print and the cursive.

*In my handwork class (4-6.5 yr olds) this was their first introduction to beeswax modeling so I took in a piece of honeycomb so they could see the bee's work, we smelled the beeswax and talked about how to make it warm in our hands.  Each child then was given a piece of wax to hold during the story.  Some children held white beeswax, some green and some red.  Before I started the story I showed them each what a turnip looked like so they had an idea (they didn't have my chalk board as a visual.)  I told the story and after we modeled little turnips for the nature table.

 

It was a good exercise for them to work with the beeswax and then also to blend the red and white together. 

Beeswax tips:
*People either love working with beeswax or they hate it!  Those who hate it generally don't like working with it because they have a difficult time getting it to be pliable.  I have found that this can be true of people who get cold easily and children who often have cold hands and feet.  There are many things you can do to work with warmth in the child but that's a different post!  For the purposes of beeswax, help the children warm it by putting it in a plastic bag and then in a bowl of hot water or lay it in the sun to warm... some use arm pits and I've even used my bra on the suggestion of another mom - it works wonders!
*Once you have it pliable, give it to them before the story, this will keep their hands busy and their mouths quiet.
*After your story then begin to model - it helps to have it planned out before hand as this builds confidence rather than having them just try to create something.  In our case we had a picture of a turnip so the children could have a visual.
*Once a season I collect all the creations and recycle them by pulling them apart (after discussing it with the children of course!)

Chalk board tips:
*don't worry too much about being really detailed, soft and flowing tends to be easier on the eyes.
*don't worry about your art skills, your children will love it and you will get better the more you work with the chalk.
*DO take the time to make a drawing regularly.  I try to have a new one each day for at least one of the children. I have gone through stages when I wasn't using it as much and our days seemed so flat, they really look forward to their school day when they think I've done something new.
*DO try to combine lessons when possible, for instance doing what I have done here where it is a main lesson for one child and writing practice for others.
*DO use good quality chalk.  We use (and sell) the chalk that comes from Mercurius.  It is creamy and flows nicely onto the board.  It seems to be a mix that is somewhere between regular chalk board chalk and pastels. 
*It is messy so be sure to have a rug or towel under your board if you have a carpeted floor.

Remember to have fun!  Homeschooling is about enjoying your children and having a good time.