Lesson Planning - A Dozen Tips

This month has been all about lesson planning for us. I've been spending hours every day putting the finishing touches on the 4th, 5th and 6th grade Earthschooling curriculum for this coming year, planning our coming year and listening to everyone talk about lesson preparation and planning. With this in mind I'd like to share some tips to make your planning process easier:

1. Don't Over-plan: When planning lessons you don't need to plan out worksheets and step-by-step instructions. Lesson planning should be like storytelling or like giving a speech. In both of these cases the speaker/storyteller has an idea of what they want to convey but they let the mood and the audience carry the actual process. Have you ever heard someone read a speech directly from their notes? And then heard another public speaker share an idea while speaking and responding to you directly? Which was more inspiring and fun? In which situation did you feel more connected with the speaker and involved in the topic? Now, imagine your children feel the same way.

As a teacher you need to be responsive like that storyteller or public speaker. You need to be able to adapt your lessons to the audience mood, abilities, interests and energy. Make sure you have a general idea and outline of what you want to do, but also make sure you don't over-plan.

For example, if you are telling a story to a Kindergarten student, you simply need to get out the story, set up the characters on the table (wooden figures or stones, scarves, shells and clay or wax to represent some or all characters), highlight the main points and then tell the story in your own words. For an older child you simply need to highlight some of the main points of the story (this is done for you in many of the Earthschooling lessons) and, once again, tell the story in your own words.

2. Don't worry about getting the words exactly right in the story. Don't memorize the story. As the stories get more complex you can choose to insert passages from the original (chosen passages are highlighted in the Earthschooling lesson plans) and combine this with your telling.

You will get more skilled at this very quickly. The first few stories may take you an hour to plan. However, after some time you could simply read through the story once and tell it the next day. When you tell stories or teach the lesson put the emphasis on what questions the child has, what interests them about the story or lesson and how they relate to the story or lesson. This will help "round out" your lesson, require less planning time and allow more understanding and interest in the lesson. For example, when I told the biography of Avicenna to my children I talked about each highlighted part of his life. However, I would stop each few sentences and "ad lib" the lesson with them. For example, when it says "Avicenna was home-schooled by his father and learned math from the grocers" I talked about what it must be like for his busy father to manage his lessons and had my children imagine that I sent them down to the corner store to learn math. We talked about how this would be hard to do today because of all the cash registers.

3. Plan a 10 minute lesson for each hour of teaching. If you spend hours planning for a lesson you will often not use 80% of what you planned because children are naturally curious, want to ask questions and want to interact with you. Children also take more time to complete tasks than we imagine. If the lesson is done in a careful, interactive and creative way the ten minute lesson you planned could easily turn into an hour. Even if this seems uncomfortable in the beginning - try it for a week or two and try to get used to it. It will make your life much easier in the future if you can learn this skill. A good lesson, like a good newspaper article, should be able to distill what you want to teach in a short period of time. Remember what your High School speech and language instructor always told you - "Be concise and not verbose". An interesting lesson filled with about ten scattered minute of well-presented and explored facts is much more effective and memorable than an hour information-packed lesson.

4. Don't be afraid to look things up. Every teacher will tell you that planning is essential. However, a lot of parents and teachers create stress for themselves because they feel the need to know everything in great depth and detail before they teach it. As a homeschooling parent this is often impossible as you may not have gone through years of training as a teacher and you are most likely teaching numerous subjects to multiple grades - a task far above what any Waldorf or public school teacher is doing. You need to respect the great task you have taken on and realize that you will most likely need to look some things up and sometimes this will happen during a lesson. Doing this in front of your child teaches them: The skills of research, humility and the ability to always learn new things and not say "I already know that", a thirst for knowledge and a respect for the resources available to us in this age of information.

5. Plan more than lessons. Don't plan your week solid with lessons you are leading. This creates a stagnant feeling in "the classroom" and is very stressful for you. Even in Waldorf schools the teacher has a break and is able to hand off the class to a handiwork teacher or language teacher from time to time. Make sure you plan in plenty of time for rest, silent reading or picture books, free play, house chores (this is a fantastic learning experience which I've discussed in another article), walks, field trips and completion of old projects. Once you have allowed for all of these aspects of the day you will find that your week really has very little planning involved. Some weeks I only have three hours of actual lessons where I am teaching the child directly. We are all programmed to think we need to plan something from 8am to 3pm. However, keep in mind that even at a local school they "waste" hours taking roll, having recess, eating lunch, filling out forms, handing out work, listening to daily announcements, moving from class to class, completing worksheets and waiting for teachers to start the next lesson. Also remind yourself that the reason you are homeschooling is so you CAN be more creative and responsive. If you are like me, you may have to post this on your wall for the first few months of homeschooling.

6. Use outside resources. Make sure you plan, at least once a week, to visit a local place that relates to a lesson you are giving that week. Even if you have been there before. We visited the local Mexican grocer the week we learned some Spanish words for food items. We visited some of the bridges in town the week we studied Roman architecture and visited a friend who breeds dogs the week we started our animal science unit. We also use the local zoo, science center and Living History farms, local festivals and museums. However, often, it is the everyday places that can provide the best learning experiences. And using these everyday places helps the kids open their eyes to the wonder around them.

7. Use your children as resources. Even the youngest child can plan a lesson. Block off some time each week for each child to give a lesson of some sort. If you have multiple children this can turn out beautifully as the older ones can then teach some of the lessons to the younger ones and the younger ones feel very proud giving a "lesson" to their older siblings. Even if that lesson is telling a story with some puppets. Teaching is actually the best way to learn something so these "student teaching" moments are essential to the child's learning experience.

8. Start with one lesson. Are you intimidated into starting or don't know where to start? Choose just one thing for the week to plan and take it from there. Before you plan this first lesson you won't be able to imagine planning more. However, by the time you are done planning it you will have ten more ideas in your head.

9. Take an hour or two on Saturday or Sunday AFTERNOON. Take an hour or two on Sunday to look over the week, briefly outline your goals and what you want to teach and skim through the stories and lessons. This will make a big difference. If you have a curriculum this is probably all the planning you will need all week (this is all I need since I have my curriculum written already) but even if you don't this hour or two done at a rested time of the week when you don't have the pressure of a lesson looming so close, can equal tens of hours of planning during the week. This brief, focused time of planning is much more effective than many short sessions of "last minute" planning.

10. Honor Simplicity. Teaching in the Waldorf method is not the easiest way to teach. It involves becoming familiar with a lot of stories you may not know, handiwork you may never have been exposed to and more art in first grade than you may have done your entire school career. A lot of parents are intimidated by this process and decide not to continue with Waldorf because of this. However, what we all need to remember is that not all teachers are artists, not all the Main Lesson Books look like the ones people post online and it is the process that is most important - not the quantity or sophistication of the lesson. So, for example, if you are teaching a lesson about a Saint Francis you don't need to paint an elaborate picture of St. Francis standing with the birds. You could paint just a bird, or even just the sky where the birds fly. If you need to teach a lesson about Roman history and are not prepared you can, from time to time, READ the lesson instead of telling it. Then, after you read it, you can tell some parts again, talk about the story again or do a "story play".

11. Don't get buried in over-information. If you are using the Earthschooling curriculum keep in mind that there are a lot of extras on the website. If you are using multiple curricula or another curriculum and belong to multiple groups and lists remember that you CAN actually have too much information! Follow the simple schedule given with each Earthschooling curriculum (or create your own if you are using a different curriculum) instead of getting drawn in by the "magic" of all the options out there. You will only end up using about 20% of what you have on your shelves, in your curricula and in your in-box. That is OK. As long as you have a schedule and the goals for the year (also found in the Earthschooling curriculum) you know that you are at least getting through the basics and any extras are optional but should not be stressful. Don't stress about not completing that awesome craft you saw on the Yahoogroups or telling that amazing story from India you saw next to the story you chose for the week. You don't really need all those extras and you can always save them for the summer, the weekend or a rainy day. In fact, that's a good way to help you feel less stressed and guilty for not using "that awesome lesson". Keep a notebook especially for those "lost lessons I wished I had time for" and get out that notebook in the summer or in a pinch when you need inspiration for the day or find yourself without enough planned for the day!

12. Save money and balance your budget by purchasing curriculum.
We tend to forget how valuable our time is. How many times have you ordered out for pizza or eaten out because you were so busy planning lessons you could not cook? This cost adds up quickly. Within a month or two you could have paid for a curriculum or two. In some cases this may even effect your budget directly. An Earthschooling curriculum represents an average of 180-250 hours of planning or more. What money could you earn starting an ETSY shop, doing some part-time work or putting in more hours at your job if you didn't have those 180-250 hours lost? Probably much more than $85.00!

The first year of homeschooling I started the year thinking homeschooling would be "free" and ended the year having spent hundreds of dollars on books. The second year I was ready to purchase some supplies and books "up front" but then realized later I was missing some items and ended up spending another couple hundred as the year progressed. On top of this I spent at least ten hours a week looking for the right song, verse or lesson. I spent more hours trying to re-learn some things I had forgotten since childhood.

In a curriculum like Earthschooling you purchase a year of curriculum for only $85.00 and have everything you need to teach with all year. You do not need to purchase any additional books, stories, verses, MP3s, teaching guides or anything. The lessons and teacher's guides contain explanations about how to teach them and instructions on how things work. If you decide to purchase anything that year it is optional so it is a lot less stressful on the budget knowing that, if you have a rough spot during the year your child's education will not have to suffer.

In addition, all the planning has been done for you. There are even charts that tell you when to teach each subject, what time of day to teach it and where to find the lessons. All you need to do is take an hour or two on the weekend to fill in a few personal details, take about 15-30 minutes per day to look over the stories and lessons and then enjoy! I have heard from a lot of Earthschooling members that they are happy to finally be able to enjoy teaching instead of spending so many hours planning. I know I am!

If you've made it to the bottom of this article I have a surprise for you which I am not announcing to the group or anywhere else ;) When you purchase any curriculum from Earthschooling this week (offer ends August 7th) I will send you a $10.00 instant refund. This means you can purchase curriculum for only $75.00 this week ;)

Spring Cleaning in the Craft/Homeschooling Room

I am SOOOO excited about our new craft and homeschooling space! It has been clean all year - keeping my office, kitchen and homeschooling room clean are top priorities around here (although the rest of the house may not look so good sometimes and don't even look in the garage). However, I don't think we realize how "bogged down" a place can get - even if it is clean and organized. Even the most organized spaces need a spring cleaning.

It was not intentional. I started because I had purchased some new crafting supplies - terra cotta clay, some more beeswax, etc...and I didn't have anywhere to fit them. One thing led to another and two days later we had completely re-arranged the rooms, we steam cleaned the carpets (I can't even believe it went THAT far LOL) for the first time in two years, we organized everything again, cleaned everything, sorted, etc....

The results are amazing! The kids have already spent much more time in the room than they usually do and their self-initiated activities have increased significantly (now that they can find everything and know where it is again). Even I am more inspired in my lesson planning. I think we have gotten more done this week than we did in the past month. WOW!

So I took some pictures to share with you all. I am just so excited. I have to share!

I posted a slide show at the NING. I didn't want to have to edit the pictures down but there are too many for the BLOG.

Also, if you are interested, I have a few videos and downloads about organization at http://www.thewaldorfchannel.com/ - if you can't find them and are interested I can send you a direct link. They are really helpful videos! Especially the E-book/Video combo of "Organizing for the Temperaments"

Enjoy the photos at:
http://earthschooling.ning.com/photo/albums/craft-homeschooling-area

PS: Someone mentioned the white walls - sigh! Don't remind me - LOL :) I have moved so many times in the past twenty years & each time I repaint the walls and create a wonderful garden and then we move. I'm sorta on a "break" waiting to see if this house "sticks" - but this does remind me of two tricks I want to share if you have white walls - drape scarves on your walls. We have one that looks like the sunset in the livingroom (see pictures) and another that looks like a rainbow in the art room (no picture, sorry). We also have one small wall that I made (just last week) into a blackboard and I will be posting some fun we are having with that. Another wall is dedicated to the children's art so that brightens up things a bit too. These things really help if you are "stuck" with white walls!

Blessings & Health,
Kristie

Class Mantras

We are always working together to develop workable class mantras. By workable, I mean ideas that work for everyone in the class, are understood by everyone in the class and are meaningful to what we want to accomplish. I thought I would share some of my favorite "mantras" with everyone. What are some of your favorites? If you have some favorites yourself please post them to the end of the BLOG. Thank you!

1. Mantra One: We need solutions and not problems. This is to encourage students to come up with solutions to their problems instead of complaining. It is so easy to fall into the "I don't WANT to do that activity" mode. This mantra encourages students to come up with workable solutions instead of complaining. This works well because in the process of coming up with workable solutions students are given wonderful opportunities to be creative and they are allowed to "be in the teacher's (or parent's) shoes" for a moment and experience the actual difficulty of coming up with ideas. A good example of this was two days ago a child in the enrichment class said, "I don't want to make bread again!" When it was suggested that she find a solution to this "problem" she realized that she actually did want to make bread, she just didn't want the same toppings on the bread so we found some additional selections for her and she enjoyed her bread very much!

2. Mantra Two: We need to keep the air clean too! This is a reminder that our words and attitude can pollute the air in the same way the dust or dirt can pollute a surface. If gossip ensues, or children are teasing or focusing on negative thoughts they can be encouraged to keep the air cleaner by putting happier, more peaceful thoughts into the air. This idea can be expanded on. You can have an "air cleaning" session with a sage stick and some positive thoughts said outloud by everyone or you can do a little "acting" and pretend you are wading through a thick sea of dirty air.

Repetition helps enforce the ideas so instead of repeating the ideas 500 times, the familiarity of making it a regular statement helps to reduce the need for repetition and encourages everyone to participate in the "reminding". If you were to make a different comment every time someone complained it would become confusing to the child and would create an ongoing need for the parent or teacher to repeat their ideas over and over. When you use a "mantra" it makes it easier for the child to remember.

You can also create verses, poems or songs out of these mantras, you can draw them and hang them on the wall, or include them in the Main Lesson Book.

MEMBER BLOG TOPICS THIS WEEK
(there are many more topics in previous weeks. Scroll down to previous BLOG posts to see the previous member topics)

Montessori and Waldorf Meet on a Rock
My Favorite Nature Walk Theme & Activity - Full Lesson

There were many member questions answered this week as well. These questions included: Ideas for reluctant readers, natural tick removal tips, how to deal with "selfish" behaviour, and more.

The member video this week was "How to Make a Felted Bendy Doll"

Remember - for a limited time - when you become a member at www.herbnhome.com you only pay for ONE of the services (Waldorf Channel Membership, BLOG Membership or Health and Homeschool Consulting) and you get the other two services for free!

Life is Homeschooling

Visiting my friend on her farm is always the best reminder of what homeschooling is all about. Because they run a little homestead, their entire life is "homeschooling". A lot of the things us "city folk" think of as part of our program is just part of their life because they don't have a choice. They need to live off the land they have, they can't go into town every other day and shop for prepared foods, and electricity is too steep out in the country for them to be running a dryer. However, although many of us DO have a choice, we can choose to make some of the same decisions her family has made, and get the children and family much more involved in the running of the house as part of the homeschooling day.

One of my friends once said, "I don't have a nature table. I LIVE in nature" - H's family is like that - they naturally do a lot of things that we need to make a conscious choice about.

When it came time to start the fire to roast hot dogs, the eldest daughter and Mosi collected the wood and started the fire. The younger boy gathered the roasting sticks and the middle girl gathered all of the food items from the house and brought them out to the picnic bench. H sat by (taking care of one of the foster babies) directing her little group like the skilled manager of some major company. When late afternoon came, she asked the girls to make bread. Without hestation, they went into the kitchen, mixed the ingredients, let them rise for the proper time, and then called everyone to come shape some of their own dough. As we chatted H and I took down the wash that had been hung on lines the night before. The highlight of the day for my children was of course "chore time" - the children looked for eggs, checked to see if any of the hens that were sitting had hatched any eggs, cleaned the duck "pond", chased the ducks into their pen for the evening so they would be safe, watered & fed the sheep and mowed the lawn. Weeding had obviously been done on a daily basis because the garden looked gorgeous!

I enjoyed a spelt sandwich with fresh tomatoes and fresh basil. My favorite thing to eat is basil and tomato sandwiches...my friend was so sweet to remember!!! I ate two of them...I usually don't eat so much! LOL!'

My friends on FACEBOOK can see some more photos of our visit at:

A Day at the Farm

Blessings & Health,

Kristie

Organization Magic

(I WISH I had a before picture! Imagine the floor strewed with stuff and the bed was a loft bed but we cut off the legs and there were about 20 stuffed animals on the bed, etc...etc...)

You have probably figured out by now that I LOVE organizing things. But as I always say in my seminars on organization: "Organization is a point of balance you come back to but life is always changing. It is impossible to be organized all the time."

As I looked at my house two months ago this certainly looked very true to me. My organized house that usually took a brief run-though to clean, and usually looked in order was looking like a tornado hit it. And it wasn't that is was never organized. It was often organized...but it took a lot of work to get it to that point again every few days.

Something had to be done. So I looked into the first rule of organization. Did everything have a place and was everything in its place? It turns out part of the problem was that not everything had a place or the place was too small or not convenient so a lot of the things that were laying around were "homeless". And somehow homeless items always seem to invite company so...the cycle had begun.

So I looked at the things that did not have a home and realized that many of them we did not even use that often. So I went to the second rule of organization - do I have things that need to be thrown out? It turns out this was our main problem. And this is the hardest problem to solve because it involves taking everything out of drawers, shelves and rooms and putting back only what is still used and sorting the rest.

So we started the project. I thought it would take a week but it dragged on for 6 weeks. What kept me going was that I had a goal in mind and although there were boxes all over it was being done in an "organized" manner.

What we did was this:

1. We tackled five rooms at once - livingroom, art room, Suni's room, Mosi's room and Sofi's room. All these rooms were joined by a common hallway (or if not joined, at least near the hallway). I placed the boxes there.

2. I provided an endless supply of boxes with labels - garbage, Goodwill or charity clothing (each box was labelled with sizes so they were organized according to boy, girl and size), Ebay items, memory box items (old photos and art projects to keep), art supplies from bedrooms (so we could integrate them with the art room), and various other boxes as the topics came up. At one point we even had a box for memory album things because the kids had been working on them in their rooms and left supplies in there instead of the art room.

3. We dumped everything section-by-section in each room into the middle of the floor and the children and I sorted it all together (everyone did their own stuff and then I did a final sort after they sorted...because some things ended up in the wrong boxes LOL). We had boxes piled in the livingroom for 6 weeks. My friends were starting to give me strange looks and my kids were embarrassed to invite anyone over. I started wondering if I had made a BIG mistake!

4. Finally one day all the boxes were sorted. We had 40 boxes of things to go to Ebay, Goodwill, friends or storage. I put the boxes in the garage to deliver/sort later and we all re-claimed our space.

That was 5 weeks ago. Since then some major changes have shown up in our lives and they look like they are here to stay (after 40 days of something you can assume it is here to stay unless you work to change it...that is an old adage that runs true for many things)! Of course, I KNOW that having too much stuff causes clutter and makes it hard to clean, but I didn't realize the depths to which that goes (having moved so much in the past 20 years I never lived anywhere long enough to gather that much clutter) until I saw the change in myself and children.

Without the overload of extra stuff the following changes have happened:

1. Sofi, who has never had a clean room in 9 years suddenly is obsessed with keeping her room clean. Because she does not have an overload of stuff (but still plenty - whew!) she is able to clean her entire room in about 15 minutes which makes the time span more manageable for her. After she has things straightened up she has taken to 'redecorating" and moving things around - having fun with her new space.

2. Suni, who has always been organized, but has had trouble keeping things in place the past year, has had a meticulous room for the past 5 weeks. He reduced everything he owns to one shelf and 4 bins that fit under the bed and is quite happy.

3. I have not had to spend more than a few moments every day straightening up the house (of course deep cleaning takes extra time) and have been astounded at this change. It seemed that for a while I was always picking up things and putting them where they belonged. What helped the most was making sure all the art supplies, crafts and scrapbooking supplies were back in ONE ROOM. So now, they all have a place and they are all together in one room. This means that instead of having colored pencils all over the house they are only "all over" one table now. And the kids have been using the craft supplies much more frequently now as well.

Now I just have to list those four boxes on Ebay....sigh...

The other 36 have already been distributed to the appropriate homes.

I hope this inspires someone else to try the same thing. It really was difficult and seeing that mess in my house for 6 weeks was "painful" but in the end the results are something I can certainly live with for a LONG time! And like I said, I have never lived long enough anywhere to acquire so much so I really didn't realize what a gigantic impact all this extra stuff had on our lives and our state of being. Not only did the space change, but the Feng Shui changed too. Our entire lives are "lighter".

If you are interested in seeing any of the organizational videos I have done you can check out the "Homeschooling" link at http://www.thewaldorfchannel.com/

Blessings & Health,

Kristie

http://www.thewaldorfchannel.com/

http://www.earthschooling.com/

Homeschooling Outlawed in Germany

This may be old news to some of you but I found this news posted on another list I am part of and I found it amazing! How ironic that we are all doing Waldorf enriched homeschooling but the country Waldorf was created in does not allow it! I didn't even believe the post at first. I had to look it up on Google. So if you are interested - try it yourself - "Google" HOMESCHOOL GERMANY and see what you find. WOW! There are articles about people selling their homes to pay a homeschool fine. Fleeing the country, having their kids taken from them. Yikes! I am not going to write any more since I am not sure of all the "ins and outs" of this...like is there a way around this law? Is it getting better? For now I am just sharing information. But if there are any people who know more about this please share with us! - Kristie

Inspiration for New Home Schoolers

Dear Parents,

I was updating my websites tonight and found this wonderful page with many pictures of my old classroom on it. It would take you about ten links to find it from my main site so I am not sure how many of you have seen it. It has some samples of our classroom organization, crafts we did, breadmaking time, music time, etc...

You can find the photos at:

http://build.tripod.lycos.com/trellix/sitebuilder/f_edit_page.html

Enjoy!

Blessings & Health,

Kristie