Happy Holidays to All!
For more Seasonal activities, try these pages on our web site:
http://www.waldorfwithoutwalls.com/articles/advent
http://www.waldorfwithoutwalls.com/newsletter/40
Family Weekends at Taproot Farm
We have now had three successful family weekends at Taproot Farm, my home. We have scheduled a fourth for the weekend of February 1-3. For details click here
Holiday Gift Idea — An Apron?!!
I don't think our kids know what an apron is. The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.
It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.
From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.
When company came, those
aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.
And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms.
Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.
Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron.
From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas
Had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.
In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.
When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.
When dinner was ready,
Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron,
and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.
It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that "old-time apron" that served so many purposes.
Send this to those who would know and love the story about Grandma's aprons.
REMEMBER:
Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.
Some homeschooling Moms are getting back to baking pies like Grandma. How about making a nice apron for someone for the Holidays!
From the mouths of babes…
One day a little girl was sitting and watching her mother do the dishes at the kitchen sink. She suddenly noticed that her mother had several strands of white hair sticking out in contrast on her brunette head.
She looked at her mother and inquisitively asked, "Why are some of your hairs white, Mom?"
Her mother replied, "Well, every time that you do something wrong and make me cry or unhappy, one of my hairs turns white." The little girl thought about this revelation for a while and then said, "Momma, how come ALL of grandma's hairs are white?"
Math with Musical Notation by David Darcy, ddarcy.com
The following activity is an unorthodox way of using musical notation, but it might be a fun challenge for students who are familiar with note values (e.g. whole note = four beats, half note = two beats, etc.) and who like to solve puzzles. It requires that students decipher a code as they solve a math problem. If you are homeschooling, I suggest that after introducing the idea, you let your student create more of these puzzles and exchange them with friends.
The game is to write out math problems using notes as "code" for ones, twos, threes, fours and halves, or to solve such a problem. (Answers should just be written as numbers.) Since this typing program doesn't allow me to write out notes, I will write w for whole notes, h for half notes, q for quarter notes and 1/8 for eighth notes. I also need to use / for division.
Please note: Since eighth notes get half a beat, 1/8 is code for _. The code for writing 3 is a dotted half note, which I will write h(d). Problems must be solved from left to right regardless of the "priority of operations" which is used in mathematics.
Below are examples of math problems written in numbers and in "musical notation code."
4 / 2 + 3 = 5 w / h + h(d) = 5 h(d) Ð q x w Ðq = 7 3 Ð 1 x 4 Ð 1 = 7 q + h + w x h + h / w = 4 1 + 2 + 4 x 2 + 2 / 4 = 4 And this one is a bit of a doozy: 2 x 3 x 4 / 2 x 4 + 2 / 2 Ð 3 Ð 2 / 4 = 5 h x h(d) x w / h x w + h / h Ð h(d) Ð h / w = 5
Read The Label !!!
Food additive "MSG" is a Slow Poison. Slow Poisoning MSG hides behind 25 or more names, such as "Natural Flavouring".
Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, and other resulting maladies: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, it is an addictive substance! Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the pre-packaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday. The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food.
No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates; causing rats (and humans) to become obese. They even have a title for the fat rodents they create: "MSG-Treated Rats".
Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, and other resulting maladies: diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, it is an addictive substance! Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the pre-packaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday. The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. Go to the National Library of Medicine, at http://www.pubmed.com/. Type in the words "MSG Obese" and read a few of the 115 medical studies that appear there.
The Value of Play
Waldorf parents value the importance of play. Mainstream researchers and psychologists are beginning to emphasize it. The following is from an organization called National Institute for Play or NIFP.
We all know that play is fun, even joyful. It refreshes and energizes us. For centuries, thoughtful observers have recognized play as a central element of life, throughout life. Not only for children, but for working and retired adults. In play our burdens feel lighter and we are opened to new possibilities. But play goes even deeper Ð it shapes our brains to make us smarter and more able to adapt in novel situations; and this happens for all players, old and young.
To read more about their work visit their website http://www.nifplay.org/
My article about play may be found here: http://www.waldorfwithoutwalls.com/articles/playwithchild
Junk Culture
It is gratifying to note that professionals not connected with Waldorf Education are recognizing what Waldorf teachers have been saying and doing for years! Here is another example I received recently from Eric Fairman, now living in England:
On 12 September 2006 the British Daily Telegraph newspaper published an open letter titled ÔModern life leads to more depression among children', signed by over 100 prominent public and professional figures from the fields of education, child care, psychology and children's literature, and including over 20 university professors. The letter expresses grave concerns about the loss of childhood in contemporary life Ð and the urgent need for an informed public debate about what we might do about it. An accompanying front-page Telegraph lead was headlined ÔJunk culture "is poisoning our children"'. The story met with an extraordinary response, and within just a few hours, TV and radio studios across the land were swamped with emails and phone-calls about the story - and then, for days afterwards, the story reverberated around the world's media channels.
Text of press letter:
As professionals and academics from a range of backgrounds, we are deeply concerned at the escalating incidence of childhood depression and children's behavioural and developmental conditions. We believe this is largely due to a lack of understanding, on the part of both politicians and the general public, of the realities and subtleties of child development.
Since children's brains are still developing, they cannot adjust - as full-grown adults can - to the effects of ever more rapid technological and cultural change. They still need what developing human beings have always needed, including real food (as opposed to processed "junk"), real play (as opposed to sedentary, screen-based entertainment), first-hand experience of the world they live in and regular interaction with the real-life significant adults in their lives.
They also need time. In a fast-moving hyper-competitive culture, today's children are expected to cope with an ever-earlier start to formal schoolwork and an overly academic test-driven primary curriculum. They are pushed by market forces to act and dress like mini-adults and exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.
Our society rightly takes great pains to protect children from physical harm, but seems to have lost sight of their emotional and social needs. However, it's now clear that the mental health of an unacceptable number of children is being unnecessarily compromised, and that this is almost certainly a key factor in the rise of substance abuse, violence and self-harm amongst our young people.
This is a complex socio-cultural problem to which there is no simple solution, but a sensible 'first step' would be to encourage parents and policy-makers to start talking about ways of improving children's well-being. We therefore propose as a matter of urgency that
- public debate be initiated on child-rearing in the 21st century
- this issue should be central to public policy-making in coming decades.