::Right Now & Homeschool Planning::

Linking up this week with Frontier Dreams, Magic Onions, Natural Suburbia, and Crafty Moms Share and a few others! Please check out my 'where I party' page! 

Right now I am...

...wishing we were still phone and internet free on vacation in Hatteras. While I love this place and our home, it was divine to be so untethered for a week. Also on our first day home, I broke my right pinky toe in 2 places and now have to wear a boot for 8 weeks. OUCH!
...planning our home school year. I am almost done and there is still more to be done along the way but I feel good about where I am right now. I finished our home school year calender- pictured above. It's a nice visual reminder of our overall yearly rhythm using watercolor paper and folding it into the 12 months.
...digging up my summer garden and getting a late start on my Autumn garden. I hope I still do have time to get it right! Bring on the broccoli, spinach, and potatoes!
...pondering our school room this year. I just finished reading "Playful Learning" by Mariah Bruehl and am loving her Reggio Emilia 'atelier' station.
...trying to not buy more school supplies than I really need. It's hard. The good thing is that most of the supplies I need are art ones and the ones I bought last year- Stockmar crayons, paints, and Lyra colored pencils- have all held up super well and I don't need to get new ones!
...learning to finger knit. I can knit fine but I've never finger knitted. And I need to teach Deirdre this year, so here I go!
...drinking lots of coffee. I feel as if I have lots to do. I know I don't. But it feels like a mountain. Coffee for me is like giving me a rope to help me climb that mountain!
...thanking the Lord for our lovely family time together. Sometimes I get all tangled up in the 'stuff' I need to do instead of looking back on our vacation and just praising him for our sweet moments together.

Thank You. 

Until next time,

Our Little Waldorf Crafts Through the Year

I am in the thick of this upcoming year's home schooling planning. Last year we used Oak Meadow, but we won't be doing it again. I have learned so much from that process and about myself as a mother and teacher. While I think Oak Meadow is great for some, it was not the right fit for us. 

Primarily because as I was going through it I realized, I had already been doing what they were planning for us. None of it was new or innovative for me. I did not gain anything from it. Maybe that's because I am a trained teacher or that I have worked in pre-schools. However it wasn't worth the price, if I could just as easily do it myself. (As a side note, I do recommend Wee Folk Art's free curriculum guides for older preschoolers if you're new to doing school on your own at home. I also have used Little Acorn in the past- you do have to pay- and have liked it. Just don't try to do ALL of it. She packs a lot in there and you can get overwhelmed.)

My other issues was that it wasn't really Waldorf. Honestly I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to just re-read 'You Are Your Child's First Teacher' and saved my money! Now I can see myself when Deirdre is in the upper grades, and not a true Kindergartner, getting some help in the form of curriculum. But it won't be Oak Meadow. (Again this is not an attack on OM, I think they are a lovely company and school and great for some- just not us).

This year, armed with helpful guides, I will not be using a formal curriculum rather I will be making and using my own Waldorf one. I am very excited about it. It is very simple honestly because truly it will be just Jonas and Deirdre. Both of them would be in a Waldorf kindergarten class together (which has ages 3 1/2 to older 5s in them). Daily life is really all the learning they need at this age. We will be having fun, learning stories, rhymes, songs, and doing crafts. We'll be baking more and doing lessons less. For Deirdre as she shows interest we'll be working on reading and some math (Deirdre learned to read this year) but I won't be pushing either since in a true Waldorf school she would not be formally learning either for another year. 

It is more work in a way to make my own, but better in many many ways. Cost is one, confidence is another, as well as being able to really tailor it to what I think works well for us and trying to incorporate more rhythm into our days. We, myself included, could be more well rounded in our lives. In that way I end up wasting less time by re-tailoring it our needs like I was doing with OM. 

So I wanted to share with you some of what we ended up doing last year from January to May (when we gave up on Oak Meadow). These are mainly just kid crafts that I snapped a photo of in the middle of making them. They're not great photos but I was on the run! They also aren't overly Waldorf. We watercolor paint, model beeswax, finger knit weekly and do one big project once a month. The rest of the days we do little bitty fun crafts. Ones that I mostly find from pinterest. Here are a few:

January: Winter, Animals in the Winter (Epiphany)

February: Winter, Clouds (Candlemas/ St. Valentines)

March: Spring, Mushrooms (St. Patrick/ Lent)

April: Spring, Frogs (Lent/Easter)

May: Spring, Butterflies and Flowers (May Day)

What sorts of crafts do you do through the year? If you home school, what do you use and how do you plan it? I'd love to know!

Until next time-

Blessings,

Nicole


Linking up this week with Frontier Dreams, Magic Onions, Natural Suburbia, and Crafty Moms Share and a few others! Please check out my 'where I party' page!