Waldorf in the Home

Re-inventing Spindlewood:
A Waldorf School Off-site Kindergarten Embraces LifeWays
by Susan Silverio

No one was more surprised than I to find myself waking up early one morning and saying Yes! to LifeWays. I had cultivated the Waldorf Kindergarten here on the grounds of our home where Ashwood Waldorf School first took root in 1986. As the school grew up and expanded onto a more central campus, this kindergarten continued as on off-site mixed-age kindergarten, now a “branch” of Ashwood. With the help of many parents the tiny cabin was enlarged three times over the years and when it was complete we named it Spindlewood. I held onto the ideal of the Kindergarten, reclaiming the traditional “children’s garden” from the conventional modern academic model of pre-first grade. Friends who taught in the local public school kindergarten and first grade encouraged me to keep the children here as long as possible. The Waldorf Kindergarten morning program seemed to me to be all that was needed for young children.

The Creativity Spiral
by Terra Raphael

[I'm including this article as the first in a new category that doesn't even exist yet: Self-Care. It's written by Terra Raphael, a poet, wordsmith, healer, former midwife and old friend of mine--we wrote Pregnant Feeilngs together. I feel renaming the menstrual cycle the "Creativity Spiral," as she suggests, is especially vital now because the FDA has recently approved more drugs specifically to give women the choice to delay or eliminate menstrual bleeding altogether. Think of how different our society would be if young women were brought up in active relationship to their creativity and fertility cyles instead! To connect with more of Terra's work, see her website at www.wisewomanhood.com or subscribe to her newsletter by contacting Terra at resourcing@earthlink,net. --Rahima]

Selecting Stories from Grimm’s Fairy Tales
By David Darcy

[David Darcy is a keynote speaker at the Waldorf in the Home Conference in Fair Oaks in September, 2006 (Click on "Learn More" on the right). He has been a Waldorf class teacher, admissions director, high school teacher and sconsultant to home schoolers. He andh is family live in Austin, Texas.]

During the summer before I taught first grade at Austin Waldorf School, I read each of the stories in the Pantheon edition of The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I kept track of which I liked and which I disliked, and took notes on the plots since some of the stories are very similar to others. The simpler stories I used early in the year, saving more complex stories until the end of first grade.