You know you are a Waldorf parent when....

• your son comes home and chastises you for "never making kale chips"
• your daughter wants to give a friend brie for a birthday present
• your daughter receives seaweed as a birthday present
• the highlighter you have at work is a wooden pencil that came from Life Without Plastic
• your lunch box collection includes - plastic bento lunch boxes, metal bento lunch boxes, handmade fabric fliptop lunch baggies, travelling chopsticks, titanium sporks and more metal water bottles than a sports team should have
• your kids wear a hat outside without even thinking about it
• the most important factor in getting dressed in the morning is the weather check
• your fronthall looks like a photo shoot for MEC
• you know exactly what is meant by 'gifts from nature' and 'rainbow bridge'
• your daughter wants to been seen in the yard wearing her violin on her back - as a symbol of being a really 'big kid' in the yard
• you have purchased freshly butchered chickens, fresh vegetables, native perennials, samosas, eggs, handspun wool, honey and fair-trade coffee from people in the school community, at school
• you feel a sense of relief when your children ask if they can stay at the school forever, or until high school anyway

Imagination

Is Active Play Extinct?

"Play comes in many forms, but it is generally freely chosen, spontaneous, self-directed and fun. The 2012 Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth reports that Canadian children and youth are not playing enough; assigning an “F” grade for Active Play and Leisure. Forty-six per cent of Canadian kids are getting a mere three hours or less of active play per week, including weekends. Additionally, kids spend 63 per cent of their free time after school and on weekends being sedentary. "  The report also says that children are getting more than 7 hours a day of screen time!!

read more here

May Fair is this weekend!

One day not too long ago, I had occasion to go back to the school after the children had all gone home and the yard was empty - or so i thought. I happened upon the teachers in the yard having their own little May Fair and I grabbed a few moments of the magic with my phone.

I have written about May Fair before and this video includes images from years past.

See you on Saturday!

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
-- Plato

Waldorf in The Ottawa Citizen

Yesterday The Ottawa Citizen ran an article about The Ottawa Waldorf School that specifically addresses issues related to technology. It is worth the read and in the online version there is a lovely video that showcases some of the musical talent in their older grades and also some kinesthetic mathematics in the classroom.

The comments on the article are the usual mix of clarification, testimonials and harsh warnings about the cultishness of Wladorf, including a link to an old article that warns against Waldorf education since everyone truly believes in Gnomes.

In the end, Waldorf is a pedagogical approach, not dogma, not a cult.  If people are interested in learning more and considering this as an option that might work for their family, then this article is a nice Canadian resource to add to the growing list of accounts in the media about the benefits of the Waldorf approach to education and delayed integration of technology in the classroom.

Teaching without distraction (with video)

The Waldorf Orthodoxy Scale - WOS

How Waldorf are you??
Completely unvalidated, unreliable and irreproducable 19 times out of 20 and JUST FOR FUN!

Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

Quiz can also be found here