Summer at Taproot Farm
It is late spring here at Taproot Farm. We have eaten lots of asparagus and our own fresh lettuce. Peas are blooming with the promise of fresh peas to eat very soon. Our chickens are laying eggs like crazy, and we have hatched some of them into very cute little peeps.
The garden is growing, and I am planting more each day. There will be tomatoes, peppers, leeks, Swiss chard, pumpkins, watermelons, cucumbers, squash, eggplant, okra, onions, garlic, and many flowers and herbs. The wild blackberries are blooming profusely, with a promise of juicy berries in July!
I hope you can be here to enjoy some of this produce at one of our
Training programs and Family Weekends
Kindergarten Training, June 27 – 29
This one is filling up! Register soon!
Teacher Training, Grades 1 – 6+, August 14 – 17
Family Harvest Weekend, October 11 — 13, three day weekend. We plan on doing some pottery, other activities, and of course, a harvest festival. Save the date! Details to be announced on the website and via email.
Spring Consulting Special Price
Curriculum consultation service: get 10% off one year, if you register by July 10! Regular cost $375. Now only $335! And this cost is by the family, not just by the individual child!
I provide individualized homeschool curriculum planning and support for you and your children, resources used by Waldorf teachers, specific suggestions for your child, and answers to your questions as they come up throughout the year. This is accomplished through the Internet, fax, mail, or e-mail.
Free Waldorf Curriculum!
Here are two sites for information and online books in tune with the Waldorf curriculum.
http://www.mainlesson.com This is a part of the Baldwin Project, to bring classical children’s literature to today’s children. Many of these old books are out of copyright and can appear online in their entirety. It is organized according to the Waldorf curriculum, by grade. Some are for sale, but most are free. A great resource!
http://www.amblesideonline.org/ This is an adaptation of the Charlotte Mason Curriculum, which is very close to Waldorf. It is also covered at mainlesson.com.
Learning by Doing
Now that summer is here, it is time for children to have lots of discretionary free play time. Be sure you allow them that time! One or two organized activities per week are plenty for a child to have.
Children (and adults too) learn best while doing what they are motivated to do. If you want to learn to cook, you don’t just read cookbooks; you pick a recipe, get the ingredients and go to it. The same is true of nearly everything we learn.
See http://www.waldorfwithoutwalls.com/newsletter/41/ for more ideas on how to provide an environment for a DOING summer for your children!
Waldorf and Learning to Read
Reading is not required in Waldorf schools until the end of grade 3. The Waldorf curriculum is based on the developmental interests of children, rather than skill levels, and does not require reading in the early grades. Material is presented by the teacher in dramatic, interesting ways and the children make use of the material in their play and hands-on dramatic and artistic activities.
These activities are enjoyable learning experiences that allow the child to learn many other things while she is maturing and naturally developing the capacities that will lead to reading, whenever it occurs.
Steiner believed that the child recapitulates human cultural evolution in his development. At age 6-7 he is living through the period when human beings developed a written, pictorial alphabet, so it makes sense to develop the alphabet using pictures. The child is still interested in fantasy and fairy tale, so we develop a picture alphabet using fairy tale stories.
English is a very difficult language to learn. The phonetic and spelling rules are only correct 50% of the time! That means 50% of the words have to be memorized. So how can one learn to read by phonics alone?!
Children learn to read in the same way they learn to potty train or talk. Children learn these things when they are ready and the age of success varies greatly with the child. To me, a child is not really potty trained until she has the skills necessary to take herself into the bathroom, pull down her pants, do it, and re-fasten her clothes. A child learns to talk by listening to others speak and gradually learns by imitation, attaining a huge vocabulary somewhere between ages 1 ½ and 3. The same process occurs when learning to read.
We are fooling ourselves when we think we are teaching a child to read. The child cracks the code, and does a lot of memory work, just as he did when he was learning to speak. If you watch a child who is at the stage where he is ready and wants to learn to read, you will see him repeating words and sounds to himself, memorizing books that are read to him, and suddenly he goes from memorizing to really reading, seemingly overnight! Then he can read everything, including newspapers, and big chapter books. All this will not happen until the child is ready, and forcing it may make him avoid reading for life. What often happens is that the child learns to read the words aloud to please the adults, but never learns to comprehend what he has read. To me, a child is not really a reader until he can voluntarily pick up any piece of written material and read it.
Reading for Waldorf Homeschoolers This very practical publication explores the theory behind Waldorf reading philosophies and provides the stories and pictures that might be used to develop the alphabet. Also included are enjoyable word and sound games, verses, and tongue twisters. Many color illustrations. To order, http://www.waldorfwithoutwalls.com/books/reading/