Rudolf Steiner, a contemporary of Maria Montessori, designed the original Waldorf curriculum, although many of the concepts originated with another educator named Freidrich Fröbel.
Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, the sixth and youngest child of Pastor Johann Jakob Fröbel, founded the first kindergarten in Blakenburg, Germany in 1836. The school offered games, play, songs, stories, and crafts, which helped a child’s imagination grow, along with his or her physical and motor skills. A living book that goes into the detail of a teacher learning the Fröbel method is The Silver Pencil, by Alice Dalgliesh.
Several years after Fröbel, Steiner was asked to open a school for the children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919. The owner of the factory invited Steiner to lecture the factory workers. After his lecture, the factory requested that Steiner set up the first Waldorf school in Germany. The first Waldorf school in the United States, opening in 1928, was in New York City.
Keeping a Rhythm
One of the biggest challenges for a homeschool is to keep a daily rhythm, or schedule. The Waldorf day usually starts with circle time, in which children recite a verse, using arms and hand motions, and sing a song or two to start the day. I have found in my own homeschool, we start the day with a prayer, have a short circle time with a poem, and light a candle. When lessons are finished, we end the school day with a short circle time, and blow out the candle to wait for another day.
Remember that Waldorf education is teacher-centered and was designed by Steiner to work in a classroom. Parents need to remember that Waldorf education at home is not the same thing as Waldorf education in a school. So please don’t become concerned with the dogma of a Waldorf school – it isn’t necessary in order to use Waldorf methods.
Staying Relaxed
The Waldorf method is relaxed compared to the more traditional methods of homeschooling, and is beneficial to homeschoolers, who can initiate their own Waldorf-inspired homeschooling at home or with a cooperative group.
Waldorf educator David Darcy helps homeschoolers teach their children using Waldorf-inspired methods. He recently explained, “When children are taught in a loving and nurturing environment that respects their humanity, they grow into loving, caring responsible human beings with an abiding sense of goodness, beauty and truth.
“The aim of Waldorf Education is to create that loving and nurturing environment and guide students to their fullest potential as self-confident, creative and caring individuals who embrace learning and positively influence the world around them.”
In her book The Christopherus Waldorf Curriculum Overview for Homeschoolers, Donna Simmons reiterates this thought. “Waldorf education is not anti-intellectual. It is, however, anti-early intellectual. At heart, Waldorf education aims to be therapeutic and its goal is to foster the development of healthy well-balanced individuals.”
Hence, children are not taught to read until after they learn to write, usually around second grade, or eight years of age.
Learning Holistically
The Waldorf approach uses a Main Lesson study - also known in traditional circles as a unit study - to holistically teach a child science, math, spelling, reading, writing, and other lessons, integrating all the concepts into one topic.
Lessons can be taught in three chunks of main, middle, and block lessons, and usually focus on two or three topics over a longer period of time, instead of the usual six to seven topics a day like regular schooling. Main Lesson books result from these Main Lessons, and continue through a student's progression through high school.
Remember, however, there are daily lessons, such as math drills, etc., to keep a child on track with what they've learned, but the main lessons themselves do not consist of rote education.
Using Multisensory Techniques
Steiner was very interested in the nature of children, and believed everyone is comprised of body, spirit, and soul. Waldorf methods address the three-fold aspect of the human person: the head, the heart and the hands, similar to Charlotte Mason’s philosophy of the Knowledge of God, Man and the Universe. Steiner’s philosophy maintains that children have three seven-year stages through which they pass, and each stage has a level of education that should be addressed.
The main enticement of Waldorf-inspired homeschooling is how it draws from beauty and creativity in the learning environment. Hence, every learning activity includes music, art, or some playful activity. There is a focus on handwork, with knitting and woodworking, as children grow older.
Children learn to paint with wet-on-wet watercolors and learn to mold with warm beeswax, learning from tactile experience. They learn to play in a natural, unstructured environment, and learn their math by throwing beanbags or jumping rope while reciting verses.
Whole to Parts
Math, like all subjects, is taught from whole to parts. That is, the sum is taught first, then the myriad of ways to get to that sum.
Waldorf also uses manipulatives. Instead of using plastic manipulatives, however, the Waldorf method uses natural materials, and arranges the manipulatives to go with math stories, where a man has a stack of wood, for example, or where a beaver is building a dam. After telling the story, students draw the pictures in their Main Lesson Books.
Writing and reading are the same way - whole to parts. So, children learn to write letters first, then write their own stories (similar to the Charlotte Mason method of narration), and then read their own books, either aloud or silently. Although he struggles with reading, my own nine-year-old son is able to recite a poem given to him by his Waldorf teacher, for his half birthday. There are many poems that can be used to teach children recitation.
Main Lesson Books
The Waldorf method uses main lesson books, which children create in a journal-like fashion, drawing letters or poems while using beeswax crayons or colored pencils. These books are journals of their own handwriting, and from these, they learn to read what they write. This style is similar to notebooking, but much more artistic in quality.
For those who haven't pushed, and still notice challenges in their children, Simmons states unequivocally that the Waldorf method is so therapeutic the hands-on creative learning, using the Main Lesson Book approach, will assist children to develop at their own pace. "There are times these learning challenges are gifts in disguise - but there is always the potential to become unbalanced if things are pushed."
Join the CM-Waldorf group to discuss how you integrate
Waldorf with Charlotte Mason methods.
