Waldorf in the Home

"Protecting and Developing the Twelve Senses"
Keynote Address by Daena Ross
Daena gives a clear and practical presentation of what these senses are, how they interrelate, and how they metamorphose over time. Many practical suggestions are included to help you best support your child's healthy development, starting in early childhood and continuing through the grades. The video presentation, where you can see on the blackboard how the senses are grouped, is the clearest presentation you'll ever find on this topic and an excellent introduction for further study.

Video in DVD format (45 minutes).

"Working with the Temperaments"
Workshop with Daena Ross (Audio in 2-CD format)
Gain a basic understanding of each temperament, including body type, soul mood, colors, and relationship of center to periphery and gravity-levity. Then learn ways to apply this in your parenting or home schooling through stories, math, artistic work and verses.

Audio recording in 2-CD format.

"Children and Nature"
Workshop by Cook Rodgers (Audio in CD format)
Practical and playful ideas for working with the nature spirits and helping your child tune into the natural world. Help develop a relationship with nature that will provide a source of comfort, joy and healing throughout your child's life and nurture his or her role as a future caretaker of our Mother Earth.

Audio in CD format.

"Honoring and Encouraging Discretionary Play"
Workshop by Barbara Dewey (audio CD)
Most children today get very little of this kind of play time. Learn why it is so important and how facilitating your child's play also helps you develop your own capacities as a human being on the earth. Practical suggestions for early childhood through the grades.

Audio recording in CD format.

"Helping Our Children Get into their Bodies and Live More Comfortably"
(Through age 9)
by Nancy Blanning
This workshop will help you understand what the process of "inhabiting" the body is, along with practical tools for helping young boys and fidgety girls get the type and quantity of movement they crave.

Audio recording in CD format.

"Supporting Your Child's Growing Mind"
Workshop by Dee Joy Coulter, Ed.D.

The developmental time line from age 3 to 12 contains some surprising times when special needs and opportunities arise. Dee addresses the most important neurological shifts that children make during these years and ways parents can recognize and support them. Contains a wealth of practical suggestions.

"Neurology and Nurture: Supporting Our Children in Challenging Times"
Keynote by Dee Joy Coulter, Ed.D.

Because today's children will need to cope with more stress and cultivate more resiliency than ever before, it is vital to offer the guidance they need for living into their souls' destinies. This will call for new understandings and new strategies. Dr. Coulter discusses some of the important neurological findings that can point the way toward these new strategies and then explores a wide range of practices and activities that can make parenting fun and successful for the children, while nourishing parents as well.

The Nine-Year Change: Leaving the Garden
Workshop by Daena Ross

What's going on with your suddenly-moody nine year old to make the eviction from the Garden of Eden such a fitting metaphor? Learn how to meet these inner changes with equanimity and practical life activities.

Re-Creating Play
Workshop by Joan Almon

Once upon a time parents said to children, "Go out and play and don't come home 'til suppertime." While we may not be able to do that freely today, what can we do to re-create time and opportunities for play at home and in our communities?

The Rebirth of Play
Keynote Address by Joan Almon

Creative play--which is so critical to the well-being of children and culture--has been disappearing from children's lives. Just when caring parents and professionals began to give up hope of its return, signs of change have begun to emerge during the past year. Joan explains why play became an endangered activity and how it is coming back, including the Alliance for Childhood's work to restore play to all children.

The Four Temperaments through Movement and Poetry
Workshop by David-Michael Monasch

An understanding of your own and our child's temperaments is an invaluable aid for parenting, teaching and all relationships. We will explore the choleric, sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic aspects of ourselves through poetry, movement, lecture and play. We will look at the four temperaments historically from the Greeks through Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf education and explore both the gifts and challenges of each type.

Developing Resiliency: Supporting Our Children in Challenging Times
Keynote Address by Dee Joy Coulter, Ed.D.

Because today's children will need to cope with more stress and cultivate more resiliency than ever before, it is vital to offer the guidance they need for living into their souls' destinies. This will call for new understandings and new strategies. Dr. Coulter discusses some of the important neurological findings that can point the way toward these new strategies and then explores a wide range of practices and activities that can enable us to cultivate resiliency in our children.

Supporting the Four "Foundational Senses" in the First Seven Years
Workshop by Ingun Schneider

This practical session includes activities for supporting the healthy development of the four "foundational senses" described in Ingun's keynote*: touch, life, movement, and balance. Learn engaging ways you can help your child develop spatial orientation, body geography, bilateral integration, and more. Help your child form a strong foundation for the skills of learning through the activities demonstrated in this video!

*See Keynote: "Understanding the Twelve Senses as the Basis for Learning" by Ingun Schneider

Understanding the Twelve Senses as the Basis for Learning
Keynote Address by Ingun Schneider

Rudolf Steiner described not five or six, but twelve senses that develop and change from infancy through old age. Steiner gave unexpected links between the senses, clarifying how children learn while they adjust to their daily lives as citizens of the world. Understanding the twelve senses can help inform our parenting, make teaching more effective and promote healthy development.

Brain in Motion: How Movement Organizes and Improves Brain Function
Workshop by Tim Burns

This practical workshop combines brain research and fun activities to do with your children to promote healthy growth and development and increase learning. Video format!
You'll also want to listen to Tim's keynote address, "Integrating Brain, Body and Heart: Revelations from Recent Brain Research."

Integrating Brain, Body and Heart: Revelations from Recent Brain Research
Keynote Address by Tim Burns

In the past ten years more has been learned about the brain than in all previous years combined, rapidly altering the landscape of what science knows about human learning and development. Tim shares how this new research, combined with scientific discoveries about the human heart as an organ of intelligence and the vast intelligence of the body, with a "brain" of its own, support the wisdom of Waldorf in educating head, heart and hands.

Supplement this CD with the video presentation of Tim's workshop, "Brain in Motion: How Movement Organizes and Improves Brain Function."

Coloring with Block Crayons
Workshop by Sieglinde De Francesca

Learn to draw luminous images to delight your child by exploring basic drawing techniques and techniques with beeswax block crayones. Ample demonstrations and overview to take you through the early grades. Sigi is an amazing artist and teacher--and she does it all with only the three primary colors. This video will inspire you to dig out your child's crayons and give it a try!

Becoming Peers: Mentoring Girls into Womanhood
Book by DeAnna L'am

This book provides practical guidelines for mentoring a girl into womanhood. It offers creative ceremonies and activities designed to honor a girl's transition and call her to new levels of maturity. At the same time, it presents the adult woman/mentor with powerful tools for enhancing her inner and outer life. The book is motivated by the belief that for a girl to enter womanhood in a meaningful way, it is essential that her mother and other special women in her life cultivate a new way of relating that will gradually help her to become their peer.

DeAnna will be a keynote speaker at our conference on "Educating Your Children--Changing the Future" April 25-26, 2009 in Fair Oaks, CA. She has been a frequent and popular workshop presenter at many conferences in the past. DeAnna has been teaching in the United States and internationally since 1980 in the fields of team building, conflict resolution, peacemaking, and women's spirituality. Since founding Red Moon Rites of Passage in 1994, she has been leading groups for girls and women throughout California and around the world.

"Developing Healthy Sensory Integration
through Outdoor Play"
Workshop by Nancy Blanning

Outdoor play in the natural world has supported sensory development for ages, and we need to reclaim this connection. Nancy takes participants on a playful walk and then explores the senses of touch, self-movement and balance, and ways to use the natural world as our playground for children's healthy development.

"How Would Our World be Different If...."
Keynote address on Mentoring Youth into Adulthood
by DeAnna L'am

How would our world be different if adolescent children were witnessed, cherished, and celebrated as they transition into adulthood? Since most of us have not been welcomed into adulthood as teens, our best intentions draw from a blank space within us. We must nourish the parts of ourselves that were left wanting in order to navigate and chart the unknown waters of mentoring our youth. This talk is intended to inspire you to embark on this demanding yet exciting journey.

Life as the Curriculum for Young Children
Workshop by Cynthia Aldinger

What young children really need can be provided through the Living Arts--domestic activity, nurturing care, creative exploration and social ability. Learn how the LifeWays approach takes home as the model and life as the curriculum to transform your experience with young children.

Cynthia is the founder of LifeWays North America, supporting parents and childcare providers in their work with young children (see www.lifewaysnorthamerica.org).

I wrote this article to describes the developmental changes of the nine-year-old child and how parents and Waldorf education meet this psychological stage. It first appeared in Motheringmagazine.
For further information we also offer a CD of a workshop by Daena Ross on "The Nine-Year Change: Leaving the Garden." Click here to see more information.

Parenting the Nine Year Old
by Rahima Baldwin Dancy

Parents of nine year olds often wonder, "What is happening to my child?" Children at this age can become very critical and argumentative, or very moody and withdrawn. Nightmares, irrational fears, headaches and stomachaches often arise. Some children feel as if no one at school likes them, or others become suddenly self-conscious about being rich, poor, or otherwise "different." Parents may be accused of being unfair or of not understanding, as the child rushes off and slams his or her door.

Searching for an explanation for the changes in behavior, parents sometimes blame a new teacher, a recent move, changes in the family such as separation or the birth of a sibling, or simply "growing pains". An understanding of what is actually taking place can help us avoid needless worry and provide the support and guidance that children need during this time.