The Beauty of Creating in Waldorf Education

This article is now located at: http://earthschooling.info/thebearthinstitute/?s=beauty+of+creating

Planning Lesson Blocks in Waldorf & EarthSchooling

This can now be found at: http://earthschooling.info/thebearthinstitute/?p=1846

Fairytales and Language

This post can now be found at www.BEarthBLOG.com

May Lesson Plan E-Book Ready for Download

The May E-book has been organized and is ready for download. This 200-page E-book contains Waldorf lesson plans for ages 3-11 Preschool through 4th grade and includes membership in the Waldorf School Online and free consulting. The book is indexed and has sections for each age group for verses, crafts, stories & lessons. Although I have been using these plans for years (and adding to them every year), creating E-books from these plans, stories and verses has been a wonderful opportunity for me to re-explore the material.

And May is one of my favorite months! So many of my favorite activities are in May - so many activities with flowers including a guide to edible flowers and what to make with them, ideas for Mayday and Mother's Day, Soapmaking for all the ages, some adorable beginning and advanced crochet patterns, extra Spanish verses and stories for Cinco de Mayo, some original form drawing stories, skills for beeswax crayons and so much more.

And my favorite part - Lessons, verses, crafts AND a planning guide for MAYFAIR! (The guide can help you plan for 1 person or 100 people!)

http://waldorftv.weebly.com/waldorf-lesson-plans.html

And of course, the May Lesson Plans have always (and will always) include:

MP3s of all verses
3 Video Tutorials
3 Original Watercolor Stories by Kristie Karima Burns
Sixth Sense Math Lessons & Sixth Sense Writing & Reading Lessons
Vintage Book Selections Online from my own personal library

Come join us for May!

Blessings & Health,

Kristie Karima Burns, MH, ND

http://www.waldorfschoolonline.com/

http://www.thewaldorfchannel.com/

What is Waldorf? Waldorfize your Lesson Plans

I am excited to announce our new Waldorf Channel show for this week. It is called:

What is Waldorf? How to Waldorfize a Lesson Plan

I am thrilled with this video and would LOVE to hear feedback on this from anyone and everyone as I will probably revise it at some point and make it a feature video on the channel. I think it is a very useful video for new Waldorf parents, experienced Waldorf parents and families of Waldorf parents who have no idea what they are doing! I am going to send everyone in my family a link to this video tonight!

You can link directly to the video at:
http://waldorftv.weebly.com/theory.html

Enjoy!
Blessings & Health,
Kristie Karima Burns, MH, ND
List Moderator
Mother to Mosi, 13, Sunii, 11, and Sofi, 9
http://www.thewaldorfchannel.com/
http://www.thedreamangels.com/

How can I deal with iresource/information overload? MEMBER QUESTION #14

Dear Kristie,

I get so much good information from this list and others too. I guess I just love lists! But after a few days of reading all the information and resources I just feel overwhelmed and often the e-mails get lost and I never do end up looking at these great links! How do you deal with this? - JK

Dear JK,

I also belong to many lists and have found hours of inspiration from them. However, it can quickly become overwhelming if you don't have a system to organize everything into! If you are part of the monthly lesson plans you received a lesson planner with those plans and that is what I use to organize all of this information. I plan themes for each day, each week, each month and for the year. Every month I include themes of many kinds including a handicraft theme and a science theme, etc...

Now, when I get an e-mail from a list that has a link I just can't resist I file it in my notebook under the theme where it belongs. If I get a post that does not "belong" anywhere (in any month, holiday or theme) I create a new category. However, I have not created any new categories for a while!

You can do this in a notebook and "write in" or "clip in" information when you receive it and over time this becomes like a big scrapbook of learning and an invaluable resource. You can also organize this online in your e-mail account by creating a MAIN FOLDER called Lesson Plans and then SUBFOLDERS called Math, Science, March, April, etc....

You can also file the e-mails in your computer in the same way.

If you would like a great starting point for organizing your year you can use the Waldorf Lesson Plan Guide for the Year with ANY lesson plans you are now using. They are not just for use with my lesson plans. So even if you are using other lesson plans you can also "plug them in" the system.

If you are not part of the program you can purchase just the lesson planning guide at:

A Year of Waldorf Lesson Planning Guide

I will also be giving a lecture on organization and lesson planning at the Eastern Iowa Homeschooling Conference in April.

Hope this helps!
Blessings & Health,
Kristie

How can I teach counting by 2s? WALDORF QUESTION OF THE WEEK #13

How can I teach my child counting by 2s?

You can try doing some verses and when you say them you emphasize every other word. It helps with the Rhythm of 2's and gets the whole body involved which helps. Here is an example: (on the capitals stomp your feet or clap or throw a bean bag or bean bag animal or something).

The DRA-gon SEES a TOAD and HIS tail GOES swish-SWISH, swish-SWISH
(he still wants that toad for his lunch)
2, FOUR, 6, EIGHT, 10, TWELVE, four-TEEN, six-TEEN, eight-TEEN, twen-TY

Another one of my FAVORITE ways to learn counting by anything is to do a "math circle". This can also be a really fun woodworking project and is really very easy.

Take any scrap of wood or a circular tree slice and make a perfect circle on it (by tracing the outside of a bowl). Now, place ten dots around it - all evenly spaced.

Hammer nails into all ten dots.

Now you have a circle with ten nails around it.

Take some yarn and start at the top. Count by 2's and each 2nd nail you get to wrap the yarn around it. See what design you have after a while!

Count by 3's - there is a different design.

I LOVE playing with this game! (oh, the kids do too)

You can see an instructional video on how to make it at:

http://waldorftv.weebly.com/lessons.html

These are all from my math e-book for kids ages 4-8 at: http://www.waldorflessonplans.com/

Hope this helps.

Blessings & Health,
Kristie

Our Essential Kids Kitchen Tools

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Still time to join the Parent-Child Healing Classes Online!

Dear Members,

I am excited to announce that we have started our first day of Parent-child Natural Healing Classes. We will be working on SuJok Reflexology the entire month of February so there is still time to "jump in" and join us! We will be studying herbs in March, iridology in April, nutrition in May and typology and temperaments in JUNE. The cost for the entire series of courses which includes course instruction for the parent AND the child as well as all video, audio, e-books, and two certificates is only $150.00 and can be paid in installments. Hower, no installment payments will be accepted after March 20th, 2008.

To join us you can register at:

INSTALLMENTS

http://tinyurl.com/2zq89k

OR FULL PAYMENT (save $20.00) at:

http://tinyurl.com/2gdrz7

If you want to find out more about the courses you can read about them at:

http://herbnhome.blogspot.com/

I hope you can join us this month! The more the merrier! And remember - you can sign up as a class or a co-op. But only two certificates are provided with the cost of the course.

Blessings & Health,

Kristie Karima Burns, MH, ND, Sunii, Sofi and Mosi

Waldorf - Montessori Enrichment Fun

The Montessori kids had two days off school this week so we had two full days of "Waldorf Enrichment" fun with my kids and three others. We did some Chinese Form Drawing (see member's video at www.thewaldorfchannel.com), we did some Chinese Brush painting while I told the story "The Boy Who Drew Cats". Then we did a play about the story.

We made our own pizzas the first day and although I had other plans for day two, the pizza was so popular they insisted on pizza again the next day :)

We played a cooperative game where you read words in other languages off of cards and you have to act out or draw the word so others can guess what you are saying. The game is called "Tower of Babel" and since nobody knew the story (GASP!) I told them the story as well.

We had a lot of fun talking in Chinese, Swahili, Japanese, Russian, Navajo and Greek (The words are sounded out on the card to help the child pronounce it)! We learned that Basketball sounds the same in Russian as it does in English, and that the word for crazy is similar in Greek and in Spanish (most of us speak Spanish). However, the most popular word of the day was "PEE-pee" , the Swahili word for candy. Now tell me....are you EVER going to forget the Swahili word for candy?

In the afternoon we had a coffee-making lesson with the hand-grinder and French press led by Sunii and the kids all had a basic lesson in Su-Jok reflexology. They were amazed and had a lot of questions!

I am offering a download of the Su-Jok reflexology lesson for kids for only $7.50. If you would like a copy of this video please e-mail me at: herbnhome@yahoo.com. You can also purchase the DVD for only $12.00. I will have this DVD avaialable on the website sometime this week. However, you can e-mail me and I can send it to you before I have it listed since I will not be listing things until later this week but I do have the DVD/download ready at the time of this posting.

And I do have to admit I have an ulterior motive in teaching the kids reflexology...it is a GREAT way to get FREE reflexology treatments. Really, the kids are so good at it and they love to practice (LOL).

Enjoy the photos!

Blessings & Health,
Kristie

Waldorf Purists Cover Your EYES!

Waldorf Purists Cover Your EYES!

Ok, if any Waldorf purist might have a few words to say about this but I decided that we needed a "quick" way to do some watercolor painting as well as the "meditative wonderful dreamy" way. So I took some of the elements of "set-up" and "processs" and improvised a bit. What I came up with is a Waldorf-INSPIRED way of doing water-color that is great when: A. You have kids over that don't do a lot of water color painting B. You don't have a large space to work in C. You don't have paintboards or a place to put your drying paintings C. You are feeling stressed and you want to paint but you want to make it a little easier...so here it goes:

1. Use smaller sheets of water-color paper - 8" x 10" and remember to round the edges!

2. Clip these sheets to a wooden clipboard (you can get these anywhere - office supply stores, etc...)

3. Put a big bowl of water in the middle of the table and put a large paintbrush in the bowl.

4. Instead of using a sponge to get the water on the paper or instead of pre-soaking the paper, have the child stroke the large brush across the paper until it is soaked. This also helps them practice their brush technique and is very relaxing!

5. Once the paper is soaked then take the "raw" watercolors and "dot" the color where you want to start painting. They can spread out the color from there. Remember, the paper has to be VERY WET for this to work!

Have fun! You can just dry the paintings on the clipboard - it works great!

MP3s of February Verses READY :)

This can now be found at www.Earthschooling.com

Waldorf DVDs Available for IMMEDIATE Download

Dear All,

Most of my video and audio instructions for craft projects and Waldorf enrichment blocks (not the lesson plans, just the blocks) are now available for immediate download from:

http://store.payloadz.com/results/results.asp?m=40979

This means you save a lot on the price of the DVD (since you are downloading the cost is less), you don't pay postage, you get to listen, read or view your file right away (this is great for people living overseas) AND we are helping to save the environment because we are not producing any more paper or metallic waste on earth :)

Titles Available are:
(I will upload more as they become available)

Videos (these are the full DVD - available in two downloads, I don't use ZIP files because not everyone has winzip and I have had trouble with it in the past)
How to Knit (A Unicorn)
Waldorf Birthday Parties
Herbs for Kids
Woodworking with Kids

E-Books
Knitting & Weaving for Kids
Multiplication Tables
Storytelling & Theater for Kids
Herbs for Kids
Woodworking for Kids
Natural Gifts Kids Can Make
Cooking with Kids

Audio Files
All sudio from our Radio Show can be downloaded for play on your MP3 compatible player here (this includes mobile phones and other devices other than MP3 players that play MP3s)

Blessings & Health,

Kristie Burns
Teacher, Healer & Artist
Storytime radio, Lesson plans, Free visual resources, Healing classes, Discount natural living items, Herbal consulting online, Crafts & More at:
http://www.thedreamangels.com/

Free Waldorf Tutorials & Resources

This can now be found on our new BLOG at www.BEarthBlog.com