Becoming Waldorf Inspired

Since my oldest daughter start walking and talking almost 4 years ago, thoughts of how she will be educated have always been in the forefront of my mind. I never planned on being a stay at home mom, but we just knew that we felt more comfortable taking charge of her education. I explored a montessori learning style during her early years but it didn't seem to fit. Eventually we found unschooling, which seemed to fit with our lifestyle. We were young and adventurous with no set routines or obligations. We believed that children will learn information much quicker when they are ready to receive it and we really liked the idea of following her lead when it came to her education. With more research we found radical unschooling, where the child makes all of their own decisions with their lives from bedtime to what they eat for every meal to the amount of screen time that they have. It seemed to work for a while, but it was too easy to allow her to spend hours each day watching tv because thats what she wanted to do or to stay up until 11 or 12 am with us because there were no bedtime routines and something just didn't feel right.

We moved from Miami, FL to Hendersonville, NC about a year ago and our lives changed drastically. My husband began working from home and we had so much access to nature that we never had before, as well as much more time to spend together as a family. It only took a couple of months to realize that there were much better ways we could be spending our time that didn't include the television and I began to feel that I needed to take more responsibility for her routines and schedules, that maybe one of the reasons that she was watching so much tv was because I wasn't setting the stage for her to do much else. At this time I also had a 9 month old, and I knew that I did not want this for her. I knew I needed to do something different. I had always heard of waldorf education and was always intrigued by it but had no idea where to begin.

A popular blogger that I follow shared a book that she was reading, "Understanding Waldorf Education" by Jack Petrash. I bought it but it sat on my bookshelf for a while. After a string of really mentally challenging days, I decided to pick it up. I devoured it. I fell in love with the way that the early years were described and was so fascinated by the methods that are used to teach children in the older grades. The idea of holistically educating a child resonates with me so much and I just knew that this is what I want for my children.

The next book I picked up was on my library's shelf, "You Are Your Child's First Teacher" by Rahima Baldwin. This book quite literally changed my life. After I finished it, we stopped watching tv cold turkey. I immediately began to implement rhythm into our days. We spent hours outside, went on nature walks, dabbled in art, had a regular quiet time, started a BEDTIME ROUTINE. My children were actually going to bed around 8 pm when they were previously going to bed at 10:30 or 11 pm.

I shuffled through their toys and supplemented what we didn't already have with natural items such as branch blocks, seashells and drift wood. I stopped buying cheap art supplies and invested in quality supplies. I went through all of their clothes and rid what didn't align with my new philosophy of what I wanted my child to be wearing. We were pretty strict waldorf for a while.

Since then I have given birth to another daughter and we got a puppy. Our rhythm is a little more unpredictable these days. I tend to spend time doing things that I shouldn't *cough* facebook *cough* and don't put as much effort as I should. This is a new month and a new week and a new chance for me to change that!

I want to start my day with affirming meditations, I want to single task, I want to help my children move smoothly throughout the day and be more thoughtful of transitions. Here's to a new week to new chances to better myself for my family!