Waldorf in the Home

Welcome to my blog, for parents who want to bring more Waldorf principles into your homes, either to enrich family life or for home schooling.

Right now I'm excited to have finished the 3rd revised edition of You Are Child's First Teacher, which will be out this coming summer (2012); in the meantime the 2nd edition is still available from our online store as a resource for parents of children from birth through age six. Please comment or send questions with the Contact Tab--I'd love to hear from you!

Cynthia Aldinger has contributed many articles to this blog. She is the founder and Director of LifeWays North America and worked for many years as a Waldorf early childhood and parenting educator. She writes:

When I was pregnant with my firstborn son about three decades ago, I developed a passion for learning all I could about Waldorf education and child development. When he and his brother were 9 and 7 years old, his father and I had the privilege of moving to Sussex, England where I completed my Waldorf teacher training at Emerson College.

Esther Leisher shares:
Four children shared their lives with my husband and me in this rambling old house and this lovely mountain setting in New Mexico. They are grown up now, but when they were young so much living, so much family life, went on that I would hardly know how to begin to speak of it if people did not ask me specific questions.

Those questions come up in chats around a kitchen table, in Waldorf study groups, or during the questions and answers after a craft workshop. When the chats are by e-mail, some things get written down. I encourage people to add comments or suggestions, then pass it around. A file results that is a collection of ideas--women talking together about their lives.

Susan Johnson, M.D.
I was born in Seattle, Washington and grew up in Claremont, California. I graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota with a major in Biology. I attended medical school at Northwestern University and completed a three-year pediatric residency at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. I then moved to San Francisco in 1987 to complete a three-year fellowship training in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. I worked for seven years as the Physician consultant at the School Health Center in San Francisco evaluating hundreds of children from the public elementary and middle schools with learning and behavioral difficulties.

The birth of my son and his challenges with sensory-motor integration and learning led me to Waldorf education and I became a certified Waldorf teacher through the San Francisco Waldorf Teacher Training Program in 1999. I then traveled to Arlesheim, Switzerland to begin my studies in Anthroposophical Medicine at the Lukas Klinik. I now work as a behavioral and developmental pediatrician for Waldorf schools, write parent newsletters about preventative health, and give community lectures. I have a private practice in Behavioral and Developmental pediatrics at Raphael House where I see children two through 18 years of age with their parents for developmental, behavioral and learning concerns. I strive to bring the best of both traditional and complementary forms of medical therapies.

[Learn more about Susan's work by visiting her website, www.youandyourchildshealth.org.]

Nancy Foster has been a Waldorf kindergarten teacher since 1973 at Acorn Hill Waldorf Kindergarten and Nursery in Silver Spring, Maryland, where she now works with parents and children in parent/ child groups. She also lectures, offers workshops for teachers at Waldorf kindergarten conferences, serves as a mentor for new teachers, and is on the visiting faculty of Sunbridge Institute in Spring Valley, New York.

Susan Silverio - A Short Biography

Susan's homestead kindergarten, "Spindlewood," which she began in 1986, continues as a branch of Ashwood Waldorf School and a model of a LifeWays center. Already a seasoned Waldorf early childhood teacher, Susan completed the LifeWays Early Childhood and Human Development Training, and has gone on to offer workshops at Waldorf Early Childhood Association conferences at Sunbridge College. She also taught "World Citizen: The Child from Birth to Three" at Rudolf Steiner Institute with Cynthia Aldinger in 2005. She is the East Coast Director of LifeWays Training and will be offering a one-year intensive training for those who care for young children, beginning in July 2006 at Merriconeag Waldorf School in Freeport, Maine.