I've been planning. Planning what we're going to be doing next year in homeschool. It's hard to believe this is really going to happen! It still seems so weird.
I'm really, really excited about many elements of the Waldorf grade school curriculum. Grade levels are done a bit differently than for traditional school. By Waldorf standards, Dallin should be going into second grade; he should be eight for the bulk of his second grade year. Obviously, he just finished public school second grade. So we're going to go by the idea that in homeschool, you don't really have grades. My plan is to keep moving forward academically. I'll fill up the holes and spend time reviewing things he's missed or only glossed over (mainly in math), but generally, we'll keep progressing with academics. What's important for the eight-year-old "second-grader", according to Waldorf pedagogy, is the humanities content of the curriculum.
This is what I love! Think, for those of us who are LDS, in terms of an 8-year-old child who has just been baptized. What might that child need morally, spiritually? Well, the second grade curriculum is based around two main themes: learning about great people who mastered themselves and overcame odds to make really good choices and grow closer to God and 2) seeing the ways in which humans can make not-so-great choices and reap the consequences. This sounds very dry and church-y, but in this curriculum, these underlying lessons are presented in some fun and interesting ways.
One important component of our curriculum this year will be Saint stories, stories about really, really good people. Traditionally in Waldorf schools, this has mainly meant Catholic saints... but it can include sages from many different cultures and traditions. We'll cover people like Joan of Arc and St. Francis of Assissi. But we'll also probably talk about Joseph Smith, maybe some great pioneers, etc. And I'll be looking for stories from Africa and Asia as well.
The stories of the not-so-great choices typically are taken from fables, so in addition to having morals, they are also animal stories. This also brings in the science for the year, as we'll go a bit more in depth describing the characteristics of the animals in the fables. We'll be studying Aesops' fables, the Anansi-the-spider stories from West Africa, and Native American trickster tales, like Coyote.
Right now I've gone through and mapped out our year in terms of which blocks I'd like to teach. Each month will be a different theme. Four monthly "blocks" will be devoted to language arts, three to math, and two to science/nature. (Of course math will be practiced daily, as will reading and writing, even when we're not in a math or language arts block.) Now my task is to select the specific stories we'll be using. One nice thing about the fables is that I can specifically choose fables that bring out things I think Dallin needs to learn about, things he needs help to overcome.
So here's the tentative plan for the year:
September: Aesop's fables--language arts
October: math
November: still open, I have a couple of ideas, language arts
December (two weeks): St. Francis of Assisi, some science
January: math
February: saints--language arts
March: Jataka tales from India, language arts
April: math, Anansi stories (even math blocks have stories as a basis)
May: science, probably gardening, wrap up the year
I got this general outline from the Waldorf Home Educators yahoo group files and altered it somewhat for what I thought we'd need.
All subjects use stories, even math. Our October math block will probably involve autumn and animals somehow, animals collecting nuts and things. I don't know exactly yet. I don't know how I'm going to relate the Anansi stories to math, but I'll find a way!
I'm really, really excited about many elements of the Waldorf grade school curriculum. Grade levels are done a bit differently than for traditional school. By Waldorf standards, Dallin should be going into second grade; he should be eight for the bulk of his second grade year. Obviously, he just finished public school second grade. So we're going to go by the idea that in homeschool, you don't really have grades. My plan is to keep moving forward academically. I'll fill up the holes and spend time reviewing things he's missed or only glossed over (mainly in math), but generally, we'll keep progressing with academics. What's important for the eight-year-old "second-grader", according to Waldorf pedagogy, is the humanities content of the curriculum.
This is what I love! Think, for those of us who are LDS, in terms of an 8-year-old child who has just been baptized. What might that child need morally, spiritually? Well, the second grade curriculum is based around two main themes: learning about great people who mastered themselves and overcame odds to make really good choices and grow closer to God and 2) seeing the ways in which humans can make not-so-great choices and reap the consequences. This sounds very dry and church-y, but in this curriculum, these underlying lessons are presented in some fun and interesting ways.
One important component of our curriculum this year will be Saint stories, stories about really, really good people. Traditionally in Waldorf schools, this has mainly meant Catholic saints... but it can include sages from many different cultures and traditions. We'll cover people like Joan of Arc and St. Francis of Assissi. But we'll also probably talk about Joseph Smith, maybe some great pioneers, etc. And I'll be looking for stories from Africa and Asia as well.
The stories of the not-so-great choices typically are taken from fables, so in addition to having morals, they are also animal stories. This also brings in the science for the year, as we'll go a bit more in depth describing the characteristics of the animals in the fables. We'll be studying Aesops' fables, the Anansi-the-spider stories from West Africa, and Native American trickster tales, like Coyote.
Right now I've gone through and mapped out our year in terms of which blocks I'd like to teach. Each month will be a different theme. Four monthly "blocks" will be devoted to language arts, three to math, and two to science/nature. (Of course math will be practiced daily, as will reading and writing, even when we're not in a math or language arts block.) Now my task is to select the specific stories we'll be using. One nice thing about the fables is that I can specifically choose fables that bring out things I think Dallin needs to learn about, things he needs help to overcome.
So here's the tentative plan for the year:
September: Aesop's fables--language arts
October: math
November: still open, I have a couple of ideas, language arts
December (two weeks): St. Francis of Assisi, some science
January: math
February: saints--language arts
March: Jataka tales from India, language arts
April: math, Anansi stories (even math blocks have stories as a basis)
May: science, probably gardening, wrap up the year
I got this general outline from the Waldorf Home Educators yahoo group files and altered it somewhat for what I thought we'd need.
All subjects use stories, even math. Our October math block will probably involve autumn and animals somehow, animals collecting nuts and things. I don't know exactly yet. I don't know how I'm going to relate the Anansi stories to math, but I'll find a way!
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