*Please Do Not "Home School" Your Kindergarten Child!

By Marsha Johnson

Recently I have read quite a few letters from parents who are 'home school'
their children, ages four to six, and who have questions and concerns about
what to 'teach', what to do, how to be, what rhythm to use, and what
materials or resources to buy for this task! Often parents are asking if
they can move their young child 'ahead' to a grades program as the child
seems to be 'ready' to move on! Each time I receive or read one of these
letters, written by very well meaning adults, I cringe!

This is why: being at HOME with your children is the HOME SCHOOL of the
Waldorf world! Just being at home, following your daily routines, including
the children, is the HOME SCHOOL of the child who has not yet experienced
seven springs (or Easters).

However, it is not being at HOME in the way we do in this modern century or
modern times with all of our entertainment gadgets and inventions. The task
of the parent with children under seven springs is to create and sustain a
home rhythm that would have been very strongly present before the 1960s. I
say the 1960s because that is when almost every household had acquired a TV,
a dishwasher, and dryers�.not to mention all the other boxes and machines
that have come along since. In addition, at that time, almost all
households had only 1 car, not two, and Daddy usually took it to work, or on
the farm, shared a car with all the relatives living around the farm.

Imagine, if you could, that you go around your home and unplug all those
cords! Imagine that you have unplugged those cords, and disabled the
outlets, except for the refrigerator and the freezer, and you have no access
to a vehicle for most of the day. Now you are back in the 1950s�..ok, you
can keep the washing machine (they came with wringers by the way I can still
recall turning my grandma's for her�.). Now you have the ideal setting for
a Waldorf Home Kindergarten Experience.

Waldorf education in the schools for the younger children is an attempt to
re-create the HOME in the school��you ARE at home, so make it a HOME�.not a
storage place for all the grown up toys that have been collected��create a
home where breakfast is cooked and served, dishes are set on a table with a
cloth and some flowers or beautiful arrangement in the middle of the table,
where please and thank you are heard, where food is passed around in pretty
dishes���..where butter has its own tiny knife, where the smells of the soup
pot fill the house, where the garden is tended each day, where the floors
are swept, and the closets are tidy, and the children have 'work' to do each
day, with you or with Daddy, and the rhythms are in place!

Home rhythm is what is missing in our culture: it went away with the
electric light, and now has nearly vanished with instant gratification and
instant entertainment and 24 hour stores and literally the loss of a strong
connection with nature! Hardly anyone observes sunset or sunrises any
more��our homes are curtained and shut off from the seasons, and our eyes
are glued to the SCREEN in front of us. Home rhythm is the critical piece
for home schooling the young child, and we must revive this knowledge and
provide a platform for parents to use as an anchor, which literally does not
cost anything, not even one dime!

Using a curriculum for a young child at home takes the activity out of the
daily rhythm that should be in the home already, makes it artificial, sets
it aside, makes it too conscious-raising! Now we will learn! That bringing
of 'now' awakens the child, hardens the nerve sense system, forces them out
of the dream-time that surrounds them with beauty and grace, and clips off
part of their childhood���.Now we will color, Now we will do a poem, Now we
will sing this song and so on���the singing and the poems should arise
naturally, out of the rhythm of the day!

When you make the bread on a particular day, you knead and knead, and out of
the rhythm of that motion, your voice emerges and you sing��.Blow wind blow
and Go mill go, so the miller can crack the corn, and the baker can take it
and into bread bake it, and bring us a loaf in the morn! You sing about
bread and grain and bakers and millers because you ARE making bread or
muffins or biscuits����it makes sense to you and to the child! You sing
about washing, you sing about cleaning, you sing about angels at bedtime,
you bring integrity and rhythm to the day in your home, with your children!
You say a poem about chickens when you feed them! You bring the table
blessings when you eat. You have a song about the wind when are outside,
taking a walk, working in the garden, and so on��what you bring in your home
is rich and repeated and steady and the children know that when the leaves
begin to fall, mama sings that song! Every year! They count on it and they
count on you, and this beautiful stability enters their thinking and their
bodies and gives them strength and wisdom and prepares them to enter the
world as free human beings.

In a daily rhythm, you can examine your life and think of how to order the
tasks and chores: mostly they fall into several distinct categories: taking
care of our clothing, our homes, our gardens, our food, someone else, and
creating what is needed��.in those general areas, we can begin to build a
daily rhythm for the children and ourselves���we clean our clothes on this
day: including bed clothes and human clothes and dolls' clothes, and so on.
We wash and fold and hang out to dry and iron�..another day we take care of
our home: we sweep and polish and dust and shine, we wash the porch, the
surfaces, and we beautify the nature table��.on another day, we prepare our
weekly foods, we garden, we harvest, we grind, we bake, we can, we dry, we
glean, and organize our cupboards or bake a pie or cookies for the
jar�����..on another day, we go visiting! We share what we prepared, we
bring a small gift, we perform a small chore, we help our neighbor or
parents or friends to construct or fix something, we trim and rake, we
prepare lunch together, and enjoy the company of others���.these daily
rhythms are so strongly needed for the whole family and the art of
economizing and using our resources wisely is needed by everyone on this
planet.

For the daily feeling, for me at least, the mornings are busy, lots of
physical activities, lots of movement, lots of energy, and a mid morning
break with snack and tea, is good, followed by an out breathing time with a
walk outside for fresh air or play��..then perhaps a quieter period after
lunch with reading aloud, looking at picture books, telling stories, working
on the handwork by the cozy hearth, singing some quiet songs as fingers work
the yarn or needles, then a resting time, followed by a slower pace towards
the evening meal preparation, then the familiar comfort of warm bath, cozy
bed time, story, candle, singing, and so on��drifting into sleep with a
feeling of a day well spent, well balanced, well brought.

Provide for the young child a box of art items, that can be brought out
when requested, with beeswax stick crayons, in red, yellow, blue, green,
gold, brown, and violet. Have at hand, nice thick paper with rounded
corners, in various sizes, for using when requested. Do not allow the
children to just scribble a bit on many pages, keep a reverence for the
clean white paper and the box of crayons, care for them, store them
carefully away, and write on the paper the date and name of the child and
honor the work that has been brought. Often the parent must sit right at
the table, perhaps handwork at hand, being there, while the child
colors�..also the same for painting, once a week or so, bring out one color
of Stockmar Watercolor paint, premixed, in a small jar, and have ready a
sheet of thick water color paper, rounded at the corners, lay it on a board,
bring the rag, and the brush and the water jar, and allow this young child
to paint carefully, while you sit nearby, with your handwork or mending, and
just be there�..children 3 and 4, can paint with 1 color, age 5 and 6 can
learn to use 2 colors��.keep it simple, and save the paints and they will
last for years! Have at hand, Lemon Yellow, Prussian Blue, and Karminrot.
You can order these directing from Mercurious.com as a homeschooler. Later,
add Golden Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, and Rotviolet�..

Children and adults need more sleep than we allow in our time. Early
bedtimes and rising with the sun are good habits for everyone and leave us
feeling healthy and well. I have a natural feeling that if we leave our
windows uncovered, the child will rise with the sun and be refreshed and
ready for the day��bedtime for children up to seven springs should be at 7
pm. This is quite unusual to see families aware of this need: I see
chronically fatigued and sleep deprived children and adults
everywhere! Children
up to seven springs need 12-14 hours of sleep per day�..if they cannot rest
easily, examine the amount of brain stimulation they are receiving in the
form of screens! For some children, screens can produce a brain activity
like that of a person who just took several shots of espresso! Remove the
screens in your home, from your child's access, and you will find, over
several months, a gradual and welcome return to natural sleep rhythms.

A home kindergarten is a beautiful adventure based on real life with real
people and a house or apartment, and a dedication to rhythm, beauty, warmth,
and health! Too often I hear young parents say, well, I have to do
something with the kids to keep them busy while I get stuff done! So we
train our children, then, to immerse themselves in an electronic virtual
world of 'mind numbing entertainment' while we rush about to load the
dishwasher, reheat an already cooked product in the microwave, download the
latest computer program��.talk on the telephone��try to shovel in the
mountain of plastic toys and parts into a closet or toy box�.wish for a
dryer that also folded the clothes��and so on���.and so on���this in itself
divorces the child from her own world, his own work, her ability to feel
confident about being competent, capable, and proud of what has been
accomplished in this day. The child needs the full period of time of seven
springs to play, to imagine with a few objects, to be quiet and to be busy,
to rest and to run, to help others and to wonder. After the seventh spring,
the life forces are freed up for memory work, for learning the letters, for
directed academic projects and activities. Forcing or even enabling a young
child into more directed educational activities is like forcing a tulip to
bloom in winter: you can do it, but that bulb will never be as healthy
again, it has spent its forces, it has weakened its natural state of
development, for a temporary benefit. Be patient and rest in the knowledge
that you are on the right path.

Please do not buy expensive K teaching manuals or curriculums. Buy a few
books on how to knit, how to grow a bio dynamic garden, how to cook simple
whole foods (Nourishing Traditions is a great one), a song book if you don't
know any songs, learn to play an instrument (I highly recommend a Choroi
Pentatonic Flute and books at prometheanpress.com), a wonderful broom and
dustpan, some lovely bowls for baking and mixing���.and sit down to examine
your lives and see how you can bring daily rhythm into your home. The
parents must work together on this effort, and support one another, and it
is very good to gather once a week with likeminded families for play and
social activities and outings, and sharing. If you can commit to spending
2 hours in the morning on the day's activity, 1 hour outside each day in
play and exercise, 1 hour each day in resting, story telling, and
handwork��you will have a home rhythm that is satisfying and better than any
kindergarten anywhere! This is the ideal for the school life, later, those
first six years at home, with mama or papa, spent in a useful healthy rhythm
and time for the inner forces of imagination to develop and flower. In
time, the academic portion of the learning begins either in a more formal
home school in the Autumn after seven springs, or in a school setting.**