This is the second post in a three-part article about what Waldorf school looks like compared to public school. If you’re just coming to this, I encourage you to read Part 1, which can be found here. Please keep in mind that Ian and I are parents, not teachers, so our perspective on Waldorf is a parents’ perspective.

What does Waldorf school look like?

6. Curriculum. Reading, writing, and math are taught systematically, but probably not with the same system that you are familiar with if you come from public education. The Waldorf curriculum is not up to individual teachers, as it is long established, although teachers can mold things to their liking by choosing stories as teaching vehicles. They are not teaching out of an instructor’s manual and the students do not have textbooks of any kind. Rather, the teacher brings the lesson and the students make their own “lesson books.” Thus, they are constantly developing and using their reading, writing, math, and art skills no matter the subject. Students definitely are not doing whatever they want, as some people seem to assume about Waldorf education. Rather, students follow the lessons set before them by their teachers. More about the Waldorf curriculum can be found here.

7. Class Size and Student/Teacher Ratio. My son’s class has 28 students. It is up to the teacher and the administration to determine how many students he/she can take. They try to hover around 28 to 29 children. In first grade, there was a wonderful classroom aide to help the teacher, but probably more to help the young students adjust to being in a classroom for lessons and sitting in desks. Starting in second grade there is no classroom aide, but the students have the other specialty teachers I mentioned above. In third grade, which I discussed in more detail here, students do lots of cooking, and our dear Spanish teacher also helps with cooking to ensure appropriate supervision of the children while they are working in the in-classroom kitchen.

8. Media Use. The children have no access to computers or computer-assisted learning at school until they reach 8th grade or maybe even high school, I’m not sure. Waldorf is sometimes accused of being of technophobic in that way, but Waldorf teachers have very clear reasons why computers have no place in the lower grades. They strongly discourage the use of TV, movies, computers, and video games for young children, and they can be very adamant about it. There is a plethora of research to support the Waldorf ideal of no or minimal screen time. (I urge you to search the internet for research.) The use of media for the young child effectively drugs children. It robs them of their ability to use their imaginations to form the kind of detailed mental pictures that they need to form while reading, learning history, learning about cultures, learning abstract concepts of math and science, empathizing with others, and eventually in high level problem solving. Some might scoff and say imagination isn’t important. But Waldorf and industry leaders agree: If you cannot imagine that something can be done a different way, then you cannot innovate. The whole goal of Waldorf eduction is to teach children to think for themselves.

Now, to address computers and technology specifically I will admit that some children are using computers at home. My children mostly do not, although they are around us when we use our computers. Some people have asked me, “Don’t you worry about your kids not learning computers? However will they compete in a high-tech world if they don’t study computers in school?” Personally, I have no worries about my kids’ ability to pick up technology skills when the time is right; technology is part of our culture and children learn fast. Our kids will not be able to get away from technology in their lives—so I don’t mind at all staving that off for a later date. I want my kids playing when they’re young, using their hands and their bodies to explore and navigate the world, not sitting glued to a monitor. With that said, my 8-year-old has a pretty darn clear understanding of the Internet just through observing us use it over time, and my younger son has a great affinity for technology. In our home, it is not taboo but rather a useful tool that they do not yet need.

9. Clothing and Warmth. We do not have school uniforms, though there is a dress code: no logos, no pictures, no words on clothing, no camouflage, NO TV or movie characters. Ideal play clothes are warm and comfortable, layered to regulate temperature, and designed in such a way that the clothing does not take the wearer or the wearer’s classmates out of the here and now and into some other space. What I mean is, if a child puts on an outfit and wears it like a costume, letting the outfit dictate their attitude, personality, and receptivity, then that clothing is not conducive to learning. For example, a young child might wear army-green camouflage and then run around playing army and guns, which is discouraged at school. On the other hand, a girl dressed up in fancy princess clothes that make her put on airs or decline to run and play and hang upside-down is missing out on the learning opportunities of the school day. Teachers and administrators don’t want the children to be conscious of their clothing. The rules about clothing, jewelry, and hair color change somewhat as the children get older.

10. Student Evaluation. Waldorf students do not get report cards or letter grades. We get a skills evaluation at the midyear parent-teacher conference and we get an evaluation letter at the end of the school year. The letter is specifically about our child: who he is, what his is learning, what his strengths and weaknesses are, what he brings to the class, etc. There is also a long letter about what the class as a whole studied during the year, and it is broken into predictable chunks, such as Language Arts and Arithmetic, and also Music, Form Drawing, Drawing and Painting, Movement, Performances, and Books Read to the Class. I have to admit, I am thrilled to my core when I read my son’s evaluation letter, even the parts that explain where he needs more practice. Here’s an excerpt.

“Lucas has continued to be such a loving and joyful presence in our class this year. Whether he was creating rocket ships, organizing elaborate games full of imagery, or building great cities in the sand, Lucas was where the action was. Never at a loss for ideas, his eyes would twinkle with excitement when he had the opportunity to boldly create something he hadn’t before. Early in the year I introduced ‘free rendering’ to the children, whereby they could create in any form something from the story they had previously heard. While most drew or painted pictures, Lucas quickly asked, ‘Can it be 3D?’ In no time he was constructing a large castle made out of many pieces of paper rolled and taped together. As others joined in with Lucas at the helm, an amazing castle with drawbridges and towers was formed.”

Such a written evaluation allows us to know our child in his school environment, where we cannot and do not observe him directly. This teacher’s perspective is valuable; it is the observations of the adult who spends all those many hours in our son’s presence among his peers. It gives us a much better window into his growth and development (socially, academically, physically, intellectually) than any series of A’s, B’s, C’s, or D’s ever could.

This article will be continued in Part 3. Please join me there for more information on Waldorf schooling. As always, I welcome your comments!

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.

Lucas has been very keen to have his own old-fashioned feather quill. Yesterday was the day. He announced his desire to Daddy, and while Asher and I went to a birthday party, they set out to make this dream come true by means of a trip to the craft store.

They had to figure out how to cut the feather tips to make a good calligraphy nib; apparently this is harder to do than you might think. Any opportunity to use a knife is a worthwhile endeavor in Lucas’s mind, no matter the difficulty.

The result of their efforts, though, is this beautiful rainbow of quills (his arrangement)—all of which work. They are perfect for writing magical spells in spell books or on fancy parchment paper, don’t you know.

I confess I’m somewhat nervous about the pot of india ink in the hands of an 8-year-old who is frequently prone to daydreaming. There’s nothing for it, however. Not only do I remember my own joyful and spotty experimentation with such arts as a girl (thank you, Nana!), but also I’ve come to terms with an important truth: Parenting is a fundamentally hazardous occupation.

I am not usually one to wax on about science. Don’t get me wrong. I love science and I think it’s perfectly marvelous. People who do science (wait, that’s everyone!) are amazing and clever and inspiring. But usually, I don’t consider myself a science geek …

Except sometimes, when science and beauty intersect. There! Right there is where my interest is captured fully and profoundly.

Enter my latest scientific fascination: W.A. (Wilson Alwyn) Bentley. Mr. Bentley was 17 years old in 1885 when he first paired his love of snowflakes with this newfangled gizmo called the photographic camera. He created on his Vermont family farm the very first photo-micrograph of a snow crystal and thus launched his career. In 1931, the year he died, he published Snow Crystals, in which he published 2,500 of his some 5,000 photographs of snow crystals.

I checked out Bentley’s book (Dover, 1962) from my local library.

And it is AWESOME.

That’s it. Page after page after page of white snow crystals on a black background. Perfect and fragile and exquisite. Fascinating and mind-blowing. Two hundred and one such pages, depicting unique crystals, including snowflakes, ice flowers, windowpane frost, rime, glaze, and graupel. There are only eight pages of text in this miracle of a book.

My dear Mr. Bentley, I think I love you.

A month ago we had the great pleasure of visiting Rudolf Steiner College in Fair Oaks to see author Reg Down tell a story from his book The Bee Who Lost His Buzz. Reg is the author of the Tiptoes Lightly books and my kids love them. For the event, Reg had handcrafted story props with needle-felted wool and silk; he made a Tiptoes, Bee, Cactus, Jeremy Mouse, and the Great Oak Tree where Tiptoes lives.

Some kids had dressed up like their favorite characters from the Tiptoes Lightly books. One boy had a fantastic oak-leaf hat! See it on the right?

With simple props such as cloths, story puppets, and a lyre, Reg skillfully created the world of the fairy, Tiptoes, and her forest friends. The children were enraptured (with one exception, a little girl who decided to go for a stroll).

It was neat to have Reg’s permission to take photos. I tried to be unobtrusive while doing so and I have since shared them with him. Reg posted my photos on his Tiptoes Lightly Facebook page.

After the story, which was the first three chapters of Book 1: The Bee Who Lost His Buzz (also be found in The Tales of Tiptoes Lightly collection), the children were allowed to touch the needle-felted puppets. Both Tiptoes, the beautiful fairy in the blue dress, and grumpy Cactus, the spiky fellow who accidentally snagged Bee’s buzz, were popular for touching.

We brought our (much loved and rumpled) books for Reg to sign. I think this is our kids’ first autograph.

What we love about Reg’s stories is that they are gentle and filled with a child’s reverence for the natural world. Chapters are short and perfect for bedtime. While magic and wonder are threaded throughout, nothing is heavy-handed and there is plenty of sweet humor. Events in the stories often pair beautifully with Waldorf festivals, such as Michaelmas, Martinmas, the season of Advent, Christmas and more. If you haven’t seen them before and you have children ages 3 to 9, check them out. You won’t be disappointed. Reg’s newest books are full color and his paintings are amazing. We bought a copy of The Cricket and the Shepherd Boy for next Christmas.

I haven’t been taking as many photos lately. Being indoors because of cold, crummy weather puts a damper on my photography. I’m rarely satisfied with the shots I take indoors. Yet, here are a few highlights of January so far.

Birdseed is a great attractor. This fellow visited the seed I placed on my outdoor table so I could watch the birds through my window. The local squirrels are the wiseguys of the neighborhood; they literally shake down the birdseed and steal from the intended recipients.

Lucas and I enjoy walking together in the late afternoons to get Asher from preschool. On this day, Lucas revealed his intention to write a series of “Scary Tales,” frightening adaptations of fairy tales “not suitable for anyone under 8.”

No snow, just bare branches around here. We get lots of days dominated by grays and greens. There’s something magical about blue winter skies, I think.

My mother knitted this handsome sweater for Asher in the color he requested. He loved it and wore it several times. This morning he rejected it, however. He said it was “too fuzzy.” I think he and I have a very different understanding of what fuzzy is. For him, “fuzzy” might just mean, “I don’t like any sweater that you choose for me, Mama.”

Some new books I’m dabbling in, by which I mean I’m less than a quarter of the way through all of them. Two are beautiful gifts I received and one will hopefully help me better understand my son’s 9-year change.

This is a stuff post. The holidays have a way of flooding our home with new stuff, and that’s quite exciting no matter how old you are. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the wonderful gifts we received this Christmas.

I’ll start with some backstory. Last fall, the boys and I hit on the perfect remedy for Transition Blues, that awkward and cantankerous time between school or preschool and home. Companions change, place changes, even some rules change and all that uncomfortable adjustment must be made. Transitions tend to be hard on Lucas, especially, so when I started making After-School Smoothies of Love immediately on our arrival at home in the afternoon, things improved—for all of us! We had several smooth, sweet weeks’ worth of healthy, yummy afternoon drinks until the unthinkable happened—my blender gave up the ghost.

We were bereft. Until now. Thanks to my mama and daddy and their gift of this gorgeous lady, my magical smoothie tradition is back ON!

My mama also gave me this handmade wool sweater, which is soft and almost too warm to wear inside, but perfect outside. (That quilt in the photo is the wedding quilt she made for Ian and me in 1995.)

I also received this amazing scarf, knitted by some friends’ daughter, Snow, who is 10—almost 11—years old. Frankly, her knitting is amazing. Waldorf kids rock!

And speaking of competent Waldorf kids and handwork, this is the handwork basket that Ian and I gave to Lucas for Christmas. It contains two rainbow yarns handspun by our friends at Syrendell (already balled) and a new wood crochet hook. I also added a couple of store-bought yarns and a bit of yarn from my own stash. Since Christmas, Lucas has added in his knitting needles that he made in first grade at school. Now he can go to this basket whenever he’s feeling creative.

Grandma VoVo gave our boys these customized shelf organizers to hold their notebooks and papers. They were filled with notebooks, folders, pens, pencils, erasers and all that good stuff. Open-ended gifts like this are so nice!

Finally, since I began this stuff post with a sexy red kitchen gadget, I’ll end with another. Ian’s dad and Mimi gave us this awesome Sodastream gizmo that carbonates your tap water and makes soda or flavored water, too. We go through a lot of bubbly water around here, and we are loving this thing!

We are grateful for all these goodies and many, many more!

A new year! Can you believe it? I admit to feeling a little insular lately, an unusual state (for me) of being somewhat introverted. I can sense a lot of questions circulating inside of me and so I’ve not had many words to share. I feel there is some fertile ground ready and waiting, and I’m not sure what seeds to sow there. I’ve been walking in circles restlessly, and yet trying to take advantage of small moments of quiet to hear … I don’t know what. Hopefully something important and moving.

I guess this is all OK. It is the quiet, dark time of the year, the time of hibernation and lying fallow in the cold. Resting is not my strength, frankly. I am in between creative projects. I have impulses to jump in several directions at once, which has me kind of teetering. Whatever. I’m just trying to give myself some time to figure things out. Who knows, maybe I’ll be given the gift of some understanding or revelation on the Epiphany, just a couple of days from now. Wouldn’t that be nice?

And so, since I don’t have much to say, I’ll take a moment to brag about some of the Christmas projects we did last month.

Poplar cutting boards for friends and family. We made a cat, two owls, a tropical fish, an apple, and a leaf. I love them.

I learned to use the scroll saw and cut out these pine wood trees for some friends. I hope they might find a place on their winter nature table. I used the same acrylic wash to paint them, and used a beeswax polish to seal and shine them up. I’m looking forward to making some of these for our home, too.

Ian made some marvelous wood stilts for Lucas for Christmas. They are hard to use at first, but Lucas has already practiced with them enough to have gotten the hang of it.

And now that the rush and business of Christmas is done, it’s time to start thinking about Asher’s upcoming birthday.

I’d just like to pop in and say Happy New Year! It’s been a lovely winter break around here these last several days, even though I’ve been working quite a bit this week—more than in most years, actually. I’m glad to have the work, and yet still yearn for the downtime, especially while everyone is at home.

There has been lovely block play,

some reading of How to Train Your Dragon, and quite a bit of cozy “Avatar: The Last Airbender” viewing.

Ian tackled some home renovation projects, including fixing a gate and finishing the Hearth Project (which was started and abandoned half finished more than eight years ago). Here is the beautiful result:

Lucas has practiced on his new skateboard from uncle Jon.

And Asher has worn his new chaps and vest (a precious family heirloom of our friends, loaned to us while they fit) in a most creative way.

So, that’s pretty normal right, for the last days of a year: continuing on, finishing, fixing, solving, resting, mulling, embracing new challenges, learning new skills, reinventing old stuff to be new again?

Relax. Review. Renovate. Remember. Reinvent.

Well, it’s normal around here.

Wishing you all the best in the New Year!

Asher is really into dragons. He has been playing dragon for quite some time, but we were recently inspired by this book, Tell Me a Dragon, by Jackie Morris. It is simply beautiful and I fully recommend it. It was published in 2009 by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books.

We have been wanting to make some wooden toy figures for a long time, so making him a dragon for Christmas seemed like just the right thing. We used a scroll saw with a blade that turned out to be too lightweight for the job, and yet, it got the job done.

I drew the dragon on paper and cut it out, then I traced it onto a piece of pine. I wish I had paid more attention to the back side of the board, as the back was flawed and we didn’t notice until our dragon was cut out. (Thank you, Ian, for doing the scary work with the saw.) At this point, we were so pleased with our cutout that there was no turning back.

I used regular old acrylic craft paints, slightly watered down, to make a kind of color wash. The wood absorbed the wetness quickly, but there were a few seconds with each application when the colors would blend nicely like watercolors. I painted this dragon in several sessions because I needed to let it dry in between.

The face was last, and I’ll admit I was really scared I’d mess up on the face! I was hoping to achieve a face that looked both friendly and fierce—kind of a tall order! (I am really pleased with how the tail works like a handle. It feels really sturdy.)

Of course, what do you do with just a dragon? Along the way, we created a knight and gave him a horse to ride. The horse had to be to scale to the knight, who was done first, but couldn’t be as big as the dragon. Tricky!

Ian was really clever with the knight’s paint job, I think. They look marvelous together. The figures were sanded lightly after painting to smooth them, then finished with a beeswax and lavender furniture polish. They smell and feel delightful.

Now, let’s hope Asher plays with them!