This past week has been wonderful, really.

I’ve been surprised by how INSTANTLY things have turned around after taking the time to re-focus and make changes to better support our goals of creating a Waldorf-inspired homelife. Last week’s post was my Top Ten List to Beat Waldorf Burn Out, and within it there were some major improvements I set out for myself to clarify and enliven my time together at home with my children. Things had become stagnant because, I realise now, I was still working toward goals I had set in January, but it was time to lay out new goals for today.

A New Day
This week, for the first time in my life, I have been waking up voluntarily before the sun rises and, together with my husband, we have started our day with a half hour of gentle yoga, followed by a short meditation which includes (in my case) focus on the intention I am setting for my day. Let it be said: I am not a morning person. At all.

It is very, very hard for me to pry my protesting body out of bed and coerce her into physical activity when the sun hasn’t even woken up yet. And yet, this single change has been probably the biggest contributor to the rest of our day’s success. After yoga, in the slience of a house not yet awake, I have the luxury of time to slowly set the table, have breakfast laid out, the candle lit and an atmosphere of quiet magic is waiting when Master C comes toddling out of his room rubbing his still-sleepy eyes, and looks around at the scene with a smile. I greet him with a big hug and we enjoy a cuddle and some time together, just he and I, before his brother wakes usually around a half hour later.

This is in stark contrast to how morning used to be. At daybreak, with Big Daddy already gone for work, Master C would wake, travel down to our room and pound unceremoniously on the bedroom door where Baby J and I sleep, jarring us awake and instantly setting a mood for us both of stress and irritation. Not being a morning person, starting the day like this without time to transition into wakefulness and instantly being propelled into a reality where both children are loudly stating their competing needs sets thing off on the wrong foot.

Baby J: “Waaaaaahhhhh!!” I want to nurse! My nappy needs changing!

Master C: “Mummy can I have breakfast? I’m cold. May I please have an apple? I want a glass of milk. Where’s Daddy? Is it the weekend? Mummy come look! There’s cat spew on the carpet!!”

Ugh, good morning indeed. 😐

Needless to say, this week has been very different to what we had all grown used to.

Earthschooling

The other enormous contributor to things running smoothly with our Waldorf efforts has been the decision to begin using actual curriculum, instead of flying by the seat of my pants. This week marks our first under the wings of the Earthschooling Preschool curriculum, and I have to say I am SO very happy I made the choice to go this route. Previously, I knew the elements that I was aiming to include in a typical “Waldorf” day – storytelling, verses, reverence, crafts, baking, involving children in the tasks of maintaining the household.  But I was struggling each week to come up with specifics. What to bake this week on baking day? What story should I tell this week? What craft could tie in with it? On top of that, how to ensure that the stories and crafts I had chosen each week were reflective of our current season and any festival we were celebrating? It took a lot of work and time. The Earthschooling curriculum has been fabulous in providing all of this for me in one spot. I have a concise plan for each week that provides a theme for each week, verses for circle time, a story that is repeated and built upon each day which is in alignment with the weekly theme, a craft that supports this, as well as a nature walk theme and a watercolour painting story to bring more connection to the act of creating art on painting day. Amazing, right?? Also, there are suggestions for parental personal development in offering up an inner reflection for each day in a fortnightly rotation. Today I am holding the idea of “Enjoy life – detach in some ways and feel balanced about the good and bad“.

This week we introduced circle time for the first time at home and I think it was a perfect time to do this.  Baby J is old enough now to participate to a certain extent (I might need to look at changing his moniker here from “Baby J” to “Little Man J”!!), making our circle more feasible.  The Earthschooling curriculum has been brilliant in giving me the material to make circle time a meaningful part of our day.  Unfortunately I never learned to read music, so learning verses and songs for circle time seemed a bit intimidating.  But, guess what?  Earthschooling have provided MP3s and YouTube videos of the verses suggested for circletime each week, which is fabulous! We close our circletime with some simple yoga postures that the kids can connect to (downward dog – “Can you bark like a dog?”, cat’s pose “Meow!”, etc). It’s already apparent that they both love this time we all take together to sing, recite little rhymes and do some silliness together (nothing like seeing mum with her bum in the air meowing like a cat to get your 3 year old in a fit of giggles!). The connection we establish early morning when we come together in this way sets a tone of playfulness, joy and mutual affinity. I have noticed less resistence and a more cooperative attitude from Master C this week too. I don’t think its a coincidence.

Though we were pretty good previously about getting out in “nature” for walks (if one can describe the modern, man-made landscaping of my suburban neighbourhood as “nature”) , the focus given through the Earthschooling curriculum has made me realise that we weren’t connecting to nature as much as we could be. With Earthschooling, there is a theme for each week to consider or be aware of as “teacher” and to draw the children’s attention to. During nature walk this coming week we will be foraging for berries, leaves, seeds etc to bring home to cook up a batch of “Fairy Stew”! Master C is actually rather obsessed with the various berries, seeds and seed pods we find on the bushes in our neighbourhood when we venture out for our walks. Probably because, despite looking similar to fruits he loves, he is of course not allowed to eat these since they are very likely poisonous.  Providing him the opportunity to pick these mysterious fruits and bring them home and turn them into an offering for the fairies (for whom, of course, these ingredients pose no threat) gives him the chance to engage with nature in a meaningful way which reinforces the lesson that not all things in nature are safe for us, but yet they still hold a purpose for other creatures. I love it. It’s this kind of specificity and focus on learning through nature that makes me love Waldorf education.

I am grateful that I have the support of a good curriculum now to help me start really digging deeper in offering my kids the kind of childhood that I wish to provide them. There are many Waldorf curricula available online, and this is the first one I have purchased so I cannot comment with a review of others on offer. But I can say that I feel so supported to achieve my goals through the very thorough materials provided by Earthschooling.  Earthschooling offer Steiner-based curriculm compiled using the collective expertise and resources of several certified Waldorf educators, and their curriculum are available from Preschool all the way up to and including high school.  Each year of curriculum is available for purchase for (at time of writing this post) $85, or you may opt to purchase their entire body of work (Preschool through High School curriculum) as a lifetime member for $750.  Payment plans are available.

I hope this week has found you all well. I have much to share in the coming weeks including our Spring Nature Table, my Filana Beeswax Crayon review, and some crafts we have been up to. Hope to see you back here again soon.

With love,

Robyn