I’ve been so busy that I’ve not had a lot of time to write lately. But while I’ve been working, spring has sprung! I did sneak away with Asher last week to visit the Sacramento Waldorf School farm in the late afternoon.

We wanted to see the black butterflies on the yellow flowers …

the seedlings in the pyramid greenhouse …

Princess the pony, grazing by the American River …

rows and rows of glowing lettuces …

Honalea, the school cow …

calla lilies growing in the shade …

But most of all, we went to see the baby lambs, Milkshake and Licorice. Asher says, “They are a-DOH-able.”

Happy spring!

Lucas has been very busy for the last week and a half working on his major project for third grade. In the Waldorf schools, third graders study lots of practical things like cooking, measuring, building, and making clothing. They also study shelters—the various types of homes people made or make for themselves in different parts of the world throughout history. The students have to choose a people with a particular type of shelter, build a diorama of their shelter, and write a report about it.

This the first big homework project, and it synthesizes what the students are learning in school with all kinds of other awesome qualities of third graders: their practicality, their extensive experience of modeling, their creative thinking, and their love of measuring, using tools, and building. It also calls into use their developing writing skills, their recent study of grammar and parts of speech, their artistic ability, their awakening to the real world around them and awareness of others, and their blossoming love of realism.

Lucas wondered if he could make a house boat for his shelter project—after all, some people live on house boats. After some research, he and Ian hit upon a people indigenous to the Andaman Sea called the Moken, and we checked in with Lucas’s teacher to get her okay to proceed.

The Moken live on their handcrafted boats, called kabang, most of the year, and travel around the islands off the coast of Thailand. During the monsoon season, they live on land, but that’s only about three months of the year. They fish and trade fish for rice. Their kabang keels are dug-out logs that are passed down from father to son. “It can take a family four months to build a kabang. The traditional boats have sails and oars, but the new boats run on diesel engines” (from Lucas’s report).

Lucas used clay to make his kabang keel. Bamboo skewers were used as struts on which to weave the boat’s gunwales, which are traditionally made from zalacca wood. Lucas made his from garden twigs. He built the shelter on the deck of the kabang and thatched it with more twigs.

Lucas modeled two Moken people out of beeswax. (Whole families live on these kabang, and the boats travel in groups of six or more.)

Then Lucas wove a sail from raffia. The Moken use pandanus leaves to fashion their sails.

Here is the finished kabang shelter. Mr. Moken is standing in the sea, fishing with a spear. The kabang flies the Thai flag. The Moken people spend much of their time in the sea diving for shellfish, and studies show they’ve developed better underwater eyesight. “The sad thing is that there’s only about 1,000 Moken living on the sea today because the Burmese and Thai governments are trying to get them on land.”

“I want to go there and help them out. I also want to build a kabang with a Moken,” Lucas concluded.

This was a tough project, but one that was very rewarding, I think. Making something with his hands helped Lucas engage with the material, much more so than simply writing a report would have done.  It was also great to see Lucas work so hard over so many days, with his dad’s careful support and supervision.

Lucas and his classmates will also present their shelters to their class and talk about them. They will answer questions from the teacher and classmates as well. I’m proud of all of these kids for accomplishing something that took two weeks or so to make; perseverance is an important trait to develop.

About a year ago, a friend with a young child asked me about Waldorf education and why we choose Waldorf school for our older son, and Waldorf-inspired preschool for our younger son. My friend is a former coworker and a public school teacher, so my response to her was meant to highlight the differences of Waldorf education compared with the California public school (as I remember it from my own schooling).

It occurred to me that I could post my lengthy email to my friend here, in case others are curious. I have made small edits to make this content make sense to a broader audience. Please keep in mind that Ian and I are parents, not teachers, so our perspective on Waldorf is a parents’ perspective. (This is Part 1 of a three part article. Why Waldorf? will continue in Parts 2 and 3. Part 2 can be found here. Part three can be found here.)

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What does Waldorf school look like?

1. The Class Journey. My son’s class may have the same teacher for 8 years, from grades 1 through 8. This is the ideal “class journey,” as they call it. Sometimes, this ideal is not possible. Some Waldorf schools strive very hard to provide this 1–8 continuity. Others find it’s not so practical. The point is for the teacher to come to know each child so well over the years that there is no chance of someone falling through the cracks, with needs going unmet. Also, the child’s strengths and weaknesses are known and nurtured along year by year. The teacher becomes a kind of third parent, if you will, and can have extremely valuable insight into your child as she grows.

2. Specialty Subjects. In addition to the main teacher, there are specialist teachers who concentrate on specific subjects, starting in first grade. These include Spanish, German, eurhythmy (a kind of storytelling through dance that is specially designed to appeal to a child’s imagination and nurture gross-motor skills development and physical organization, which is thought to have a direct and significant impact on a child’s ability to learn academically and socially; it also serves to help the class work together with flow), movement (which is a bit more like PE/games and starts in second grade), handwork (skills such as knitting, crochet, sewing, weaving, and then, as the child gets older, woodworking, sculpture, etc.), music, and gardening/farming (starting in second grade).

3. Arts in the Waldorf Curriculum. Within all the sit-down subjects, art is a major component to learning. The idea is that appealing to the child’s highest self and emotional life through art is what makes learning joyful and beautiful. The humanity of each child is respected and human beings make art. Art has a way of capturing the imagination and engaging all the senses and the intellect. Even math is taught with artwork incorporated in every lesson. If you learn with joy, you will retain the information. In Waldorf schools, students do painting, modeling with beeswax, drawing, paper crafts, sewing, clay, etc. Art techniques are taught along with the main lesson. The children also perform plays and sing songs that accompany their lessons. From the first grade, they play a pentatonic flute. In third grade, the begin with a C flute. In fourth grade they choose a string instrument for orchestra; in fifth they have an option to switch to a band instrument. This musical instruction is part of their schooling.

4. Reading and Literacy. Here is a big difference between Waldorf and public schools: Children in preschool, Kindergarten, and first grade are not tasked with learning to read. No phonics programs are used. In fact, Kindergartners are expected to focus on growing their bodies, learning to play with others, learning responsibility and community through clean-up chores, learning music and circle time, climbing, digging, skipping, etc. No pressure is brought to bear on a child who isn’t reading in first grade. However, with that said, all kinds of prereading skills are being exercised during this time, through extensive use of storytelling, puppetry, poetry, rhymes, games, songs, and fairy tales. In first grade, students start learning the alphabet. It is our observation that most children already know the alphabet by this time, but the teacher still takes plenty of time with each letter. The children hear a story that teaches them the character of the letter, then they make art with the letter. (This is a gradual type of phonics, but there are no flash cards or early/late reading groups or that sort of thing.) Most children begin reading on their own sometime in second grade. Most Waldorf third graders are reading well, despite their not having experienced early-reading pressure. On standardized tests such as those administered by the state of CA, as I understand it, the typical Waldorf student performs in second grade “below grade level” in reading, “at grade level” in fourth grade, and then “above grade level” in later grades. Anecdotally, I can say with confidence that Waldorf kids have an amazing capacity for memorization and I credit the amount of oral storytelling they are exposed to.

5. Mathematics. Here is another big difference: All four basic math operations are introduced at once in the first grade. They are taught through storytelling and imaginative imagery. Waldorf is often criticized for being “behind” in teaching reading, and yet, by the same yardstick it is “ahead” of public schools in teaching math. (In third grade, my son is currently working on mulitplication of two-digit numbers.)

This article, Why Waldorf? will continue in Parts 2 and 3. Part 2 can be found here. Part three can be found here. I hope you enjoy reading them.

I stand here, quietly gaping. Not too close, but neither am I uninvolved in what my son is doing in school these days. I watch with eagerness, hoping for glimpses into his life away from home, where he is encountering challenges both familiar to me and also completely alien. I listen with keen interest to every morsel he brings home and chooses to share. I am talking about my son’s experience of third grade at his Waldorf school.

In past years I have describe his school and its curriculum as “magical” or “enchanting.” It still is that, but this year it has taken on a new quality—a feet-on-earth quality that is serving to ground him and build him up in confidence and competence.

I will try to illustrate what I mean.

In third grade, the children study gardening. They will do so throughout their Waldorf lower school grades, but gardening is emphasized this year in particular. They are also studying ancient Hebrew culture and also cooking. To tie all of these together, they have harvested fruits and vegetables on the school farm, made soup from the harvest, built a sukkah (hut), and celebrated the Hebrew festival of Sukkot by eating in the sukkah. They are also learning songs in Hebrew. It used to be rare for Lucas to sing for us at home songs he learned at school. Now he swells with pride to sing in Hebrew a song about beating swords into ploughshares so that nations will go to war no more and that people can grow their vines and fig trees instead, which is taken from this Bible passage:

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation shall not take up sword against nation, they shall never again know war.
But they shall sit every one under their vines and fig trees,
and none shall make them afraid.” (Micah 4.3-4)

Recently, they made bread in cooking class. But like the Little Red Hen, they really MADE THE BREAD. They cut down the stalks of wheat that they themselves sowed last year in second grade. Then they threshed the grain. Then they winnowed to separate the grain from the chaff. Then they ground the wheat to make flour. And only then, did they make and eat their bread.

Do you see why this boggles me?

Right now they are in the midst of a building block. This is a key element to the third-grade curriculum. Their class is going to rebuild and expand the school’s Oak Stage, an outdoor stage set in the woods on the school grounds near the American River that was getting a little too rickety. The children demolished the stage last week and together moved 8 tons of river rock! (Many hands make light work.) They poor cement tomorrow, barring rain. They will place their handprints into the foundation of the stage they are building for the school. Next week they will be measuring, sawing, hammering, building both the stage and their own skills.

In the classroom and in the kitchen (which are the same this year), they are learning about measurement, too. Tying in with their language arts study of the Old Testament and the Hebrews, they have learned how big a cubit is (debatable, but roughly the length of the forearm from elbow to tip of middle finger—about 18 inches), and that Noah’s Ark was 300 cubits long. Today they went out to the school’s field, rulers in hand, and measured out the size of the Ark, to see for themselves how big it might have been. “That’s 450 feet long, mom!” They are also learning about spans, fathoms, yards, and feet, experiencing these concepts in their own limbs.

“Firmly on the earth I stand.”

Near the end of the day of the Harvest Faire, Ian was working in the candle dipping room and Lucas was making a candle. Asher and I got to wander a bit through the school farm.

We visited the sheep, llama, chickens, cow, and pony. We watched the American River tumble by where the sheep were grazing.

It was pretty rainy at this point, but the farm didn’t mind so neither did we. We looked at the beautiful crops and flowers growing, and the artwork that graces the fields.

We also wandered back through the school, where the Faire was winding up. Here is the fruit of the paper marbling booth, hanging out to dry. Lucas and Daddy got to do this as their last activity of the day. Aren’t they beautiful? We have to pick Lucas’s paper up at the school office since it was too wet to take home that day.

Here is a pot that the potter threw during a demonstration earlier in the day. There was a huge crowd of children and parents watching him work.

Some more scenes  from our day: the xylophone and candle used during the puppet show; morning glories growing on the farm; and one shot from the horse vaulting demonstration.

This is the mermaid candle decoration I mentioned in my last post. This little girl was very patient to make such a tiny, intricate design.

This boy is making walnut-shell sailboats.

Lucas’s teacher, Ms. D, made this Welcome chalk drawing.

I wish I had photos of Lucas and X shooting bows, but alas I was elsewhere while they were doing that. All in all, it was a perfect day, lacking only blue skies. When we got home we were all exhausted and fulfilled.

(My first wet-on-wet watercolor painting in … many years!)

It’s Friday and our son’s school is celebrating Michaelmas today with a festival and dragon play. Lucas’s third-grade class will be the village children and will do a country dance. Tonight our family will have a modest celebratory meal with dragon bread.

This festival is speaking to me more each year. We all face our own demons every day. We strive to subdue or conquer them so we may shine our inner light into our own lives and the lives of those we love. And the world is a brighter place for it.

Saint Michael’s Harvest Song

In autumn Saint Michael with sword and with shield
Passes over meadow and orchard and field.
He’s on the path to battle ‘gainst darkness and strife.
He is the heavenly warrior, protector of life.

The harvest let us gather with Michael’s aid;
The light he sheddeth fails not, nor does it fade.
And when the corn is cut and meadows are bare
We’ll don Saint Michael’s armor and onward will fare.

We are Saint Michael’s warriors with strong heart and mind,
We forge our way through darkness Saint Michael to find.
And there he stands in glory; Saint Michael we pray,
Lead us into battle and show us thy way.

—Anonymous

Our expected high today is 103 degrees F. So, frankly, it doesn’t much feel like autumn at the moment. The trees are taking their sweet time turning colors. I’ve been having to broaden my perspective to catch the colors of the season.

This is most of our Farm Fresh to You CSA delivery on the first day of fall, September 23. We had already eaten up all the red chard.

The only color other than green on my liquidambar tree.

Bits and bobs collected from the garden for our equinox wreath project. I’m in love with the orange rose hips.

The class dragon bread the third graders at Sacramento Waldorf School created in cooking class last Friday—see its ferocious teeth? Each child also made his own individual dragon bread. A few parents were asked to come and help with the baking. It took almost no time at all (because third graders are very competent) and my job was to take pictures.

Decorations for the Harvest Moon Cafe at the Golden Valley Charter School Harvest Faire. Our friend Parnassus worked very hard on this community event! We went last Saturday to support our dear friends who have recently changed schools, and to have some lovely harvest festival fun.

This isn’t a terrific photo of children in the petting zoo, but I’m drawn to it. Sweet little bunnies; sweet little hands.

Asher thought the duck and goose (Simon—a gander?) were especially interesting. They kept quacking and honking at him.

This is pink-cheeked, proud Asher after he braved the lair of the sleeping Angry Giant and stole a jewel from his treasure box. It was hot the day of the Harvest Faire, too.

Red hanging lanterns helped suggest the fiery colors of autumn, even though our landscape doesn’t much show them yet.

We hope you are finding and enjoying the colors of autumn!

It has been a kind of surreal week, trying to get back into our normal lives and starting school after Burning Man. We’re kind of discombobulated. We’re not used to the alarm clock or waking in the dark. We don’t know where important stuff is. The mountains of both clean and dirty laundry are huge and taking over our living room, despite the washing, folding, and putting away I’ve been doing. We need groceries. The kids need haircuts and we forgot to take the fingernail polish off them. I guess that’s what the weekend is for.

I’ve been feeling lots of various feelings this week, too: happy to be home, lazy and sleepy, creative and happy, grateful for my work but not wanting to do it. During the day I’m missing my loves and yet glad to be alone. I’ve not quite settled back into real life again; my consciousness is kind of floating on the dusty breezes still, drifting through vast azure skies.

Lucas is very happy to be back at school. I find this quite remarkable, as he didn’t exactly have a sit-around-and-do-nothing summer vacation. He was basically booked solid with fun camps, activities, and play dates almost the entire time. I guess that final week and a half without his friends was tough. So he’s been joyfully bouncing out of the house in the morning (and getting dressed without prodding or argument). When I picked him up from school yesterday afternoon, he looked bushed. “Four classes now, Mom.” That’s because he’s hit the big time: In third grade he now has full days and doesn’t get out until 3:30.

This week hasn’t been quite so easy for Asher, however. He’s adjusting to a new school, new teacher, and new schedule. After something like ten days with all of his family around him, he’s missing us at school. He’s been asking each morning if it’s a family day today. (“Tomorrow, dear one. Two family days in a row.”) We had a few difficult morning drop-offs, during which he was brave but oh so sad to see me go. In another week it will be different, I think. He’ll settle in soon. We are very pleased that his three buddies from his last school all landed at this one. So although there are new children to adjust to, there are old friends as well.

Asher’s school has a waterfall and small raised pond (fenced per state law), a rabbit hutch with two bunnies, chickens, a playhouse, a stage, a sandbox, an outdoor snack area, garden beds and fruit trees, swings, and stepping stones through the lawn. Indoors is a lovely, sunny playroom full of pretty Waldorf toys. There are two big cats (Matches and Barley) and one tiny dog named Poppers. This morning’s good-bye went better. I think it’s going to work out fine.

Round the May Pole Now We Dance
Nancy Byrd Turner

Round the May Pole now we dance
(Over with blue, under with white),
Wind’s in the ribbons, oh see them lift!
Light’s on the ribbons, oh feel them shift!
While we braid overhead
Colors fair and bright!

Round the May Pole gay we move
(You with your ribbon, I with mine).
The colors cross and the pattern grows
(Over with red and under with rose)
On and on, till we’re done.
See the tall pole shine!

Who doesn’t love rainbow ribbons against a blue sky?

Lucas skipping with his classmates. The second graders blessed the circle with their May song and bouquets of flowers.

The girls gather their ribbons.

Eat your heart out, Degas!

Aren’t they lovely?

So precious, so rare. Every year, it is such a gathering of joy and celebration of spring, of life, of beauty, and of youthful promise. I’m grateful to be a part of this community, and the festival makes my heart sing.