A Parent's Perspective on Waldorf Education

One of the most worrisome areas that I had developed when my kids were small is that I would suffer with my children through public education. How was I going to make it through years of policies, teaching practices, and poor peer treatment without falling into my own black pit of despair? So, my oldest entered school and we were okay the first years. But, by 2nd grade my building fear became a nightmare living in reality. And this was a nightmare that I would not put up with, so I searched for another alternative. We found a dream in the fast-growing public charter Waldorf school. It took a move and still a 30-minute drive every morning to make this dream real for us. Since that time, we have been part of two Waldorf charter systems, and our life has found such peace. I am thankful every day for the blessings of the Waldorf system and its impact across the world.

So, what is drastically different that I could go from nightmare to dream that quickly? As I'm not one to be overly negative, I will highlight the principles that make the most difference. You will see the gaps instantly without me having to make any comparative remarks. Research has shown that a key driver of relationship and life success is being able to apply critical thinking skills to our lives. Waldorf education focuses on the development of imaginative thinking. With imaginative thinking, kids not only uncover answers to a problem, they take it a step further and envision many different solutions to the problem. How different is life when you have access to selecting or even designing the best possible solution for any problem that comes your way? I know the difference. It is living an extraordinary life, not an ordinary one.

But, we can't just be good problem solvers in order to tackle life eloquently. We have learned over the last few decades that even more important than IQ is emotional intelligence. Oh, but why should the education system care about a child's inner world? Because if emotional intelligence is a greater determiner of life success than IQ, why wouldn't we give our kids every opportunity to learn to be sensitive to their own and others' feelings? If our kids learned the skill of resiliency early on, bouncing back from life's storms would be quicker and less painful. Developing a strong emotional intelligence should be a #1 goal of our school system. Let's add one last ingredient for the life success formula. What if we raised willing, well intentioned children who know how to turn dreams into reality? Isn't this what the U.S.A. was built on? Waldorf education facilitates these talents and capacities within children through a very specific rhythm built into each day. In addition, the developmental focus shifts 3 times as the children grow through the grades. Waldorf understands how to build structure and discipline into a compassionate and safe school environment. Is it even possible to put discipline and compassion together? Of course it is. Is it done well? Most of the time, no. This picture is of a kindergartner's dining table where the kids learn manners, socialization, etiquette, order and helpfulness.

One day my now first grader brought home a placemat-size drawing paper excitedly trying to tell me that these were her chores. As she explained the step-by-step drawings, I was awe-struck by how she had assimilated her entire day's routine into what she was responsible for. Early on, kids in Waldorf schools have chore charts and participate in keeping their classrooms clean and tidy.

In imitation of that learning, my daughter had organized her brain in a systematic way to make her responsibilities make sense to her. I still have a picture of this system and I've written my own words by her drawing so that I understood the brain map of my child.

Oral stories used to be the way we passed on knowledge in past generations. For children, oral stories for children are a very important tool in developing imaginative thinking. Today, we don't leave room for imagination as we illustrate our books, we push visual stimuli everywhere, and we diminish day dreaming as wasteful time. What Waldorf gets that we've missed in the broader educational system is that they ask the question: how can our kids develop their own creativity and problem-solving skills if we hand-feed them to our children?

It's the early years of our children's development that plants the seeds of learning (how to learn and the love of learning itself). Once you've earned the heart of a child, the child will go leaps and bounds to embrace the next level of development. This is a picture of Gabi and myself in honor of her birthday where the teacher reads a beautiful story and presents a book of pictures about Gabi drawn by the kids in her class. This activity combines an oral story honoring the individual as important, while allowing classmates to show compassion to the birthday child through their own imaginatively created book.

Could our high illiteracy rate be more a factor of motivation than skill? When we force kids to read before they are developmentally and emotionally ready, we can scar them for life. This almost happened to my oldest, Lexi. Lexi began to detest reading by the middle of second grade. It was a battle to meet our required reading minutes every night and picking up a book to read for fun was not even a possibility. I have such great joy for reading that my heart was withering away with a foreseen conclusion that my child would not see books as a lifeline to adventure, knowledge and emotional connection. She wouldn't know the worlds it could open to her. Once we moved to Waldorf education, our house once again became excited about books of all kinds. I have the endless joy of reading to my kids every night. We pick our books to read together with excitement.

We constantly have a reading wish list of what we want to explore next. It's a far distance from a mother's broken heart and a resistant child who said she hated reading. There is no doubt that I am biased about education for our children. But, when you find the secret to living life fully and successfully, why wouldn't you share boldly? If you haven't been convinced to move your kids to a Waldorf school, I hope it gives you a deep pause for reflection and opens a door for future action.

The Mobile Jurassic Quest Exhibition: do I go when it reaches my city?

Yesterday we visited dinosaur land - okay it was more like dinosaur hall. Advertised as museum-quality dinosaurs in North America, the life-size dinosaurs were definitely impressive in size and movement. So, welcome to Jurassic Quest - and enter with caution. The moment you walk in the door, you are greeted by dinosaurs from the very start. Each exhibit has a sign that states the type of dinosaur, major facts such as weight of the dinosaur, location, time period it lived, as well as a sideline box of fun facts about the dinosaur. The exhibit makes it very easy to learn about the dinosaurs in both written form as well as from the fine form, color, and movement of the life-size dinosaurs.

For example, one demonstration of realness included two dinosaurs fighting over meat. You can see two dinosaurs behind my girls and a little glimpse of the "meat". Later in the exhibit, they have much more gruesome examples of dinosaurs eating other dinosaurs. I will "pass" on sharing pictures of those - that's how real they look.

Beyond the individual signs for each dinosaur, the exhibit periodically has bigger banners with more information about the dinosaur era. This picture is a little bleary, but you will get the idea of the content that the exhibit has generated about the dinosaurs. This one is titled "The Rise of the Dinosaurs".

Did you know there were dinosaurs with feathers? I may have learned it at one time and forgotten, but it was cool to come around the corner and see the feathers on a dinosaur.

After you visit the life-size exhibits the exhibit hall path opens to a larger area of activities. They have dinosaur jump houses, face painting, fossil digging and more. Most of these activities cost additional money. I was a bit disappointed that they had a 2-tiered ticket for the kids, so that you had to pay more for the kids to do the really fun things. We paid $62 for the 4 of us to get in, and that seemed a bit pricey to then cut out many of the interactive experiences. I can appreciate the cost that must go into the building and maintaining of the life-size dinosaurs, but people are always looking for value in exchange for payment. Many of the value-added activities were part of the "additional" cost. Hopefully, in the future, they will find a way to include those value-added activities in the one-ticket cost.

I did see one face painted and it was high quality. Paying extra for the face painting makes sense to me. The rides on the life-size dinosaurs looked fun. I suppose if they didn't charge extra for the dinosaur ride, they would have lines that never ended.

Gabi really wanted to do the fossil digging, which I do believe should have been included in the cost of the base ticket, at a minimum.

One fun value-add that we did get to participate in was seeing and petting the "walking babies". These are life-size walking dinosaurs that anyone can pet. It was interesting to experience the life-size baby dinosaur right in front of the eyes, and even to pet such a baby (that couldn't bite you like it might have in reality).

The exhibit also had a few mini-dinosaurs that the kids could climb on for pictures. As these are always a favorite for the kids and parents, I do applaud the exhibit for having this extra to interact with.

One last activity that was included in the base price that I recommend doing is the making of a fossil in the craft area. At first glance, the craft area is chaotic and could be overwhelming. Nonetheless, the results of taking home your own home-made fossil is worth wading through the chaos.

The exhibit didn't let us down by missing out on a little dino commercialism. My girls and I love any store at the end of an exhibit, so we didn't mind at all. Lexi picked up the cutest dino flip wristlet that was fairly reasonably priced.

Was the exhibit worth going for the price? I love experiences of all shapes and kinds, so it was worth it for me. My ten-year old Lexi was bored past the first handful of dinosaurs, but then she's more of the interactive type, so she missed out on a lot of the "fun" for her personality type with the purchase of only a base ticket My seven-year old, Gabi, enjoyed the show much more, as observation of the dinosaurs and watching others in action was okay by her. You have to decide what kind of price works for your family and whether the base price versus the higher-priced ticket for the interactive experiences would match up with your family members and their interests.

A Carnival Birthday Party

Birthday themes are the foundation of a great birthday party. There's something people love about themes! So many themes to choose from - how do you choose? Based on age, type of attendee community, and your child's interests, a theme should come to light easily enough. At first, we wanted to do a Monster High theme, because we found these great centerpieces at a garage sale. But, the strong, non-natural "image" focus doesn't work as well for our attendee community which has a Waldorf-focus. This year we had a carnival theme for my 10-year old's birthday party, which fit Lexi's interests and accommodated the Waldorf desire for more natural images. It was a lot of fun pulling everything together for this theme. My mom made these great invitations with an "admit one-type" ticket that you would use to get into a carnival. Including cute carnival pictures and the information needed to come to the party in the ticket format was a fun way to invite people to the event.

Selecting the decorations is usually one of the funnest parts of designing a birthday. I had a couple different decorative themes selected, and finally decided to go w/ the one that, while a little more expensive, had the characters wearing "more" than "less". We love elephants in this family so going with the elephant plates (while a tad juvenile for age 10) was a fairly easy decision. My daughter loved the seal playing with the ball; the cups had a nice variety of images in smaller circles. Most of the paper decorations were Party Partner Designs with the best price found on Amazon. Good 'ole Amazon.

We used a Barnum Bailey elephant for decoration that we have as part of our eBay store sales (newfoundtreasures2014). It added just the right touch to the overall theme. I was so fortunate to find popcorn holders at the $1 store. I had been looking online for the popcorn holders, where I find most everything, but they were out of stock. So, running across them at the $1 store in my final shopping run was such a great "find" and steal. The favor bags we purchased matched the cups. I got 100 favors off eBay for the best price purchased from Blue Marble Products, and the kids absolutely loved picking through the various toys. I was a little worried the kids, at this age, would see the stuff as "junk" but they had fun playing with the items, so if it was only for entertainment at the party, it was well worth it.

One of our favorites was the "big top" cupcake holder. It was easy to put together, and held just enough cupcakes. We picked up some multi-colored streamers and paper lanterns to pull all the decor together in a colorful and fun display.

Selecting the games was a little more challenging, but we finally landed on the five or so games that we thought would add just the right amount of fun. First, we had the "standard" count the jelly beans in a jar, except we used bubble gums, because that seemed a little more carnival to us. We made a quick game sheet and a sign for the bubblegums. We picked up the bubblegums at the $1 store and used two different sizes. The winner got to take home the jar of bubble gums.

The ping pong game (like the ping pong fish toss at the fair) was a big hit. I was able to pick up over one hundred ping pong balls for less than $10 from Mizz Starr on Amazon. The cups were 9-ounce multi-colored plastic, and they worked perfectly. A few got knocked over, but for the most part, they stayed upright. We gave everyone 15 balls, and the highest # was the winner.

Our make-shift coin toss game was very homemade, but it was decorated so well and customized to my daughter, Lexi, that you couldn't help but see its cuteness. We filled in points on the sheet within the circles, and then the kids added up how many points they got from five tries of tossing pennies.

We also bought these really fun swirl lollipops that looked so "carnival". This was also a game, with one lollipop having a black bottom. Whomever pulled that lollipop won the prize. The lollipops were put into styrofoam. And everyone got to keep their lollipops which were quite popular.

We had a game sheet for the kids to keep track of their numbers for the coin toss and the ping pong game. The game sheet also had spaces for the kids to write in their answers for the six items that were inside the mystery box. The mystery box was also a big hit, with everyone doing fairly well at their guesses. Although, it's best to clarify up front that each kid gets one pass at feeling for all six items. Ours was easier because everyone felt for the items as many times as they wanted.

And what would be a carnival party without the lion pinata? The lion made such a great decoration as well. We had rainbow-colored mattes underneath the pinata so when all the kids jumped for the candy, they wouldn't hurt themselves. They were definitely a nice addition cause the kids did make a huge heap getting access to the candy when the bottom part of the lion flew.

We had the party after lunch, so the food was finger-food. What would be a carnival without the corn dogs, popcorn, and pretzels? I made the pretzels using a Fleischmann's pre-made package, and it was easy to follow. They really tasted like soft pretzels you get at any pretzel stand (possibly better).

I also made some fun fruit on sticks. I had a cookie cutter shaped like a flower so I put that on the top of the stick with grapes and a strawberry on the bottom. These went pretty fast.

And, of course, we had to have the animal crackers. I really wanted the standard animal crackers, but they were pricier than my budget. I was fortunate again to make this "find" at the $1 store. So, for $4 I got all these animal crackers. They probably didn't taste as good, but decoratively they worked great.

My sister made the cupcakes, and Lexi got her own mini-cake. Here's a close-up of the "big top" cupcake holder. It added so much to the decor. Overall, everyone said the party was a hit. The blend of decorations, food, and games made for a great carnival party!