Home School Life

The family and I have moved and we’re settling in in our new spot. I am thrilled that beginning in just under three weeks I will be teaching a fifth grade class of 14 wonderful children. There is much to do between now and then — getting the room ready, especially. My new classroom was in dire need of a paint job, so I’ve been busily painting for what seems like weeks. Leave it to me to choose the most time-consuming painting technique ever. It’s coming along beautifully, though, and I’ll post pictures soon.

For now I’ll show you the wonderful stack of books that one of the teachers happened to plop into my chaotic classroom yesterday morning.

And I’ve got a whole box full still in the room — this is just the collection that I couldn’t resist stuffing into my bag and taking home immediately! Among them are all of the essential books for teaching Waldorf 5th grade:

Ancient Mythologies by Charles Kovacs

Ancient Greece by Charles Kovacs

Botany by Charles Kovacs

And The Living World of Plants by Gerbert Grohmann, which is wonderful but apparently out of print.

There were lots of other books, too, The Epic of Gilgamesh, Robert Graves’ two volumes of Greek myths, and a book of Buddhist tales, just to mention a few.

With these books I am completely set to teach 5th grade!

When I first moved here I went to the public library to see what was there. I had heard that the library was really good and when I got there I found that this is definitely true! Just look at what I found!

These are two volumes by Gerbert Grohmann titled The Plant. Grohmann is an anthroposophist who took Goethe’s work with plants and compiled it into a more digestible form. I have never seen these books anywhere other than my friend’s bookshelf. I’m about halfway through the first volume now and I’m just loving it. They are much like Grohmann’s book The Living World of Plants but with more depth. Perfect for the teacher who wants to have a little more knowledge than what she presents to the students.

I feel completely set, but I’ve got a lot of reading to do!

My lucky 14-year-old Calvin and his 21 lucky classmates are off on their eighth grade trip in Hawaii. It’s been awhile since he’s been gone for so long and I’m starting to miss him.

His absence has me thinking about my parenting of him and what it means to be the parent of a teenager. The past few weeks I’ve been noticing a shift in our work together and I’m feeling different parts of myself called upon in my parenting.

This shift I’ve been feeling reminds me of a lesson from my teacher training that has really stuck with me. It is a picture of the relationship between children and the adults in their lives. This picture involves Steiner’s view of the four-fold human being, which is composed four different bodies.

• the physical body (our actual, tangible body)
• the etheric body (also known as life-force, it is what gives our body life)
• the astral body (this is the body that holds our drives and impulses)
• the ego body (this is the part that makes us uniquely human and gives us consciousness of ourselves and others)

It took me awhile to really understand all of these different aspects of the human, but what helped me the most was to think of them in terms of other organisms that share our world. Stones, for example, have only a physical body. Plants have a physical and etheric body. Animals have physical, etheric and astral. Only the human being has an ego body. It really helped me to understand the etheric body by thinking about the difference between a stone and a plant. Studying animals helped me to better understand the astral body and recognizing the uniqueness of the human being helped me to understand the ego. (For a much more articulate explanation of these bodies check out this post by Carrie of The Parenting Passageway.)

Now, how does this relate to child development and parenting? In the different phases of child development children are working on these different bodies. Birth to seven is the time of the physical, seven to 14 the time of the etheric, 14 to 21 the time of the astral and at 21 begins the work of the ego. We can think that at each threshold the next body is born to be worked with and upon. The physical body is born at birth and up until age 7 the physical body is the child’s primary way of interacting with the world. At age 7 the etheric body is born and the child begins interacting with the world in a new way. Along the way, with each birth the child gets closer and closer to becoming a fully conscious human being.

As children are guided on the path of child development they depend upon adults in different ways. Children rely upon the next higher body of the adults that are around them. For example, a young child working on the physical body is most taxing on the etheric body of her parents and teachers (this is why kindergarten teachers and parents of young children so often feel that completely exhausting drain of their life forces). Grade school children depend upon adults’ astral bodies and 14-21 year old young adults rely upon adults’ strong egos. When I was feeling my students call upon my ego presence I was feeling them shift into this 14-21 year old stage.

My students needed to see that I was a striving, present individual conscious of my work and my interactions with them. Now that my own child is moving in this direction I recognize this same need in him. It is so clear that the respect that at one time was an automatic by-product of our parent/child relationship now must be earned as I demonstrate my conscious intention in every aspect of my life. Flying off the handle and losing my cool now has lasting consequences as my child can observe and recognize an emotional reaction for what it is.

Taking care with our interactions does so much more than preserve the respect we have for each other, it allows me to serve as a role model and to show my son an example of what it means to be a consciously-living adult in the world. I can only show him this by strengthening my ego.

Though this ego-strengthening is hard work, it is just another example of my children pushing me to become the best person I can be. For this, I can only be grateful.

During my little blogging hiatus, Alice and her class participated in the Pacific Northwest Waldorf School Olympiad. It was a beautiful day and the children competed with their whole hearts. It was simply beautiful to watch. At the end Alice said, “Now what am I going to look forward to.” I was so glad to attend given that I’ll be going with my students next year.

Here are some highlights from the day.

Seems like lots of the blogs I read are taking little vacations from regular posting. Which is a good thing because in addition to taking a little posting-holiday myself, I’ve been taking a reading-vacation, too.

In reading my most recent posts I see that I’ve been a bit vague and that perhaps some solid updating is needed. Here’s the scoop:

Our plans for next year have been decided. We’re moving to a neighboring state and I’ll be teaching grade 5 at a small and cozy but well-established Waldorf school. I’m excited to be teaching a grade that I’ve taught before, especially seeing that our family will have a new town and community to adjust to. The community that we’re moving to has been incredibly warm and welcoming. My children already love their classes and, and though it will never match the high school that is here in our current town, Calvin will be well-met at his new school.

Now we’re in the throes of selling our current house and looking for a new one 7 hours away. We’ve already taken a couple of trips and though they’ve been lovely, I’m growing quite tired of the drive. I’m looking forward to being completely settled by August 1.

I’ve already started planning out my year, which is a luxury made possible by the fact that I’m not currently teaching full-time. Most years a teacher isn’t able to even think about the next year’s curriculum until the school year has ended and reports have been written. Fifth grade is a fabulous year and lucky me got a little refresher this year homeschooling my own fifth grader for part of the year. The main blocks in the Waldorf fifth grade are:

• Botany
• North American Geography
• Math (decimals and free-hand geometry)
• Ancient Civilizations (India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt)
• Greece (mythology and history)

We’ll do about two three-week blocks of each, in addition to a block to work on our play. We’ll begin with Botany and a camping trip before the weather turns at the end of September. I’m already looking at music and thinking about plays. I’m leaning towards a play from Greek mythology. It’s interesting to note how much more seasoned I feel approaching fifth grade the second time around. Last time I covered just the basics — this time I’m thinking about all of the interesting projects and things we can do with each block. Square-dancing with North American Geography for sure!

It looks like this space will be going through a transition, too. Come fall, watch for documentation of my journey with this new class, in addition to glimpses of my family life.

In the meantime, wanna help me decide where to live? Here are the contenders:

House #1

• On a quiet street in the “desirable” part of town
• Small three bedroom/one bathroom rambler
• Completely updated with cool retro 50’s feel
• Full-size basement doubles square footage, with 4 rooms — laundry, storage, bedroom for Calvin, family room
• Pluses? Man-cave basement gives Calvin enough privacy, but not too much. Quiet, somewhat private location. Easily converted garage for another bedroom and bathroom. Huge yard.
• Minuses? One bathroom — four people. Price — list price is $15,000 more than house #2.

House #2

• 3 bedroom/2 bath main house
• Updated, beautiful inside
• Busier street
• Detached garage converted to studio apartment with soaring ceilings, sleeping loft and full kitchen and bathroom.
• Small lot but neighboring lot is empty and fenced with this lot. Owner lives out of state and would probably let us use the lot.
• Nicely landscaped
• Pluses? Two bathrooms in main house, and another one in converted garage. More square feet. Converted garage could become rental income. Very close to schools. Price.
• Minuses? How do we use garage space? Calvin could have it so we all have our own bedrooms, but that might be a little too much independence. We would all want to use the garage space but Calvin still needs privacy. Corner lot, busy street that all Waldorf families drive on which means very little privacy. Can’t build a fence for privacy due to city ordinances. Strong fishbowl feeling.

Opinions? Share in comments.

Human beings have a deep need to represent their experience through writing. We need to make our truths beautiful. With crude pictographs, cave men inscribed their stories onto stony cave walls. with magic markers, pens, lipstick, and pencils, little children leave their marks on bathroom walls, on the backs of old envelopes, on their big sister’s homework. In slow wobbly letters, the old and the sick in our nursing homes and hospitals put their lives into print. There is no plot line in the bewildering complexity of our lives but that which we make and find for ourselves. By articulating experience, we reclaim it for ourselves. Writing allows us to turn the chaos into something beautiful, to frame selected moments in our lives, to uncover and to celebrate the organizing patterns of our existence. This is why Anne Morrow Lindbergh says, “I must write, I must write at all costs. For writing is more than living, it is being conscious of living.”

from The Art of Teaching Writing by Lucy McCormick Calkins

One day last week I picked up this book looking for teaching inspiration. The last two weeks (during which I have been quite absent from this space) my life has been a roller coaster ride of emotion. Decisions have been made. Transitions have begun. Tears have been shed. Even waves of anger and frustration come and go. Tired of the emotion, I picked up this book trying to do something purposeful with a forward-moving gesture. Think about my new students. Get excited about them. Start preparing lessons!

I had no idea this book would bring me exactly what I needed, in a way I had never anticipated. I suddenly found the way to deal with my woes.

Distracting my attention with baskets of yarn wasn’t helping. Living in my pajamas and staying under the covers until mid-morning wasn’t helping. Obsessively cleaning the bathroom wouldn’t help (I didn’t try it, but I’m sure it wouldn’t help.) After reading this very first paragraph I realized that what I needed to do was WRITE!

A vacation from blogging was not what I needed. I needed to blog to make sense of it all. By writing, I could find that “bewildering plot line” that would give the story of my life an understandable direction.

In truth, I know the universe itself has given my life direction. And I know that I’m headed the right way, though I haven’t even wanted to admit this, feeling that recognizing the rightness of the path somehow takes away from the fact that this transition is very, very, very hard.

But that’s just what this is — an incredibly difficult, heart-wrenching, emotional, completely disorienting but absolutely perfect decision.

I made the big mistake yesterday of going on the website of that great online knit/crochet community Ravelry. My intention was to find a nice sock pattern, and perhaps some other sock knitters to talk shop with. Well, I found that and so much more — I’ve got quite a few patterns added to my queue.

First I found this great group of sock-obsessed knitters called Sock Knitters Anonymous.

I found a group of knitters that knits a pair of socks a month, each month with a different theme. This month’s theme is to knit a pair of socks from a pattern published in an online knitting magazine or some other online source. Some of the knitters within that group have decided to knit the pattern called Monkey by a designer called Cookie A. This was just what I was looking for, so I pulled out the green yarn that I had knit up into a sock that was too big and I cast on. So, Thursday night I started with this:

Now, after a day and a half of knitting obsessively I have this:

I really like the pattern — it’s knitting up nicely and is fun to knit without being too challenging. Perfect. I’m happy enough with the progress that I’m going to tuck this project into my purse and keep it in there for my spare moments knitting. I even found myself pulling it out of my purse while I waited in line at the post office the other day. Socks are so great for that.

But, I wasn’t done with Ravelry. A few months ago I bought a couple skeins of cute variegated yarn that I’ve been trying to decide what to do with.

This Melody yarn from a company called Jojoland has a great variegated, stranded color in pinks, purples and browns. I’ve been struggling with what to do with it because it is 100% superwash sock-weight wool. Though I know some people knit socks with 100% wool yarn, I don’t, just because I like the durability that a little bit of nylon gives. I knit one pair of socks with 100% wool yarn once.

Once. They died a quick, heel-worn and pill-filled death.

I won’t do it again.

But what to do with this yarn?

I started trying a scarf pattern called Clapotis that is published at Knitty. As cool as the pattern is, it just wasn’t right for this yarn. So I got back on Ravelry and found that it is so well-organized that I could actually search for patterns that had been used with this specific yarn. So cool! I found that quite a few people had used it to make a shawl called Haruni.

I couldn’t resist. I cast on last night, stayed up way too late knitting, and now I have this:

I quite like it, but it definitely represents a challenge for me. I’ve never done a shawl with this type of construction. I’ve also never really gotten into blocking lace, which this is clearly going to need. I think I’ll have to look into learning how to block with pins and wires and all.

Despite all of this knitting, I did actually go outside some in the last two days (we do still have a dog who needs walking.) Today the weather was a mixed bag but Lula and I did manage to get out between raindrops. Hopefully more tomorrow.

Tags: Haruni, knitting, monkey socks

I’m so grateful to be home from my trip to Eugene. I had a nice visit. I enjoyed meeting the other teachers there, and Eugene is such a great town. Quite a bit like home, but just a touch bigger. We could very easily see ourselves making a transition there. I do have some pretty big questions that need answering to make it a possibility, and though my visit felt quite positive, I’m not sure that it’s the right move for us. I’m realizing now more than ever that it is time to let go of all of these questions in the physical world and turn to my meditative life for the answer. Every night I include this question in my meditations — willing the angels to figure it all out on that plane and then fill me in when it’s all done. The shift of energy that spring has brought has me ready to move on and be done with this searching phase. The time feels ripe for action!

I didn’t take a single photo during my time in Eugene. I spent most of my time at the school and the moment never felt quite right to pull out the camera and start snapping. The school is a beautiful place — a lovely campus with enough space — a performance hall, a eurythmy hall and a gym. The school has been around for 30 years, so it’s quite established. It seems to be going through a rough spot at the moment, but the teachers seem wonderful, and I have no doubt that it will rally and become quite strong again.

The kids, their dad and I all drove down together and they left Tuesday morning for their family vacation to a nearby water park (indoor). I took the train/bus home, which was a lovely experience. It was all the lovelier because I brought my knitting. I knit for almost the entire 8 hour ride. Here’s what I have to show for it.

Here is the back. I think I had finished this before I left. I’m so happy with the hand and the weight of the fabric.

Here is the right front. I had just cast on for this before I left home and when I got on the train I had about 3 inches done. So I knit about 14 inches on that train!

So, I am officially sick of working on this for the time being. I did some hunting around on Ravelry last night and found a group of sock knitters that I’ve decided to join. I really do love making socks. There is something about the mathematical sense of it that I just love. The members of this group are challenging themselves to knit a pair of socks a month, and I’m going to join them in the challenge. When I’m really going strong I can finish a pair of socks in a weekend, but the best thing about socks is that they’re a great take-along project. They’re easy to just pull out of your bag when you’ve got a few minutes to spare. Infinitely portable, easy and fun. So, I’m ready to cast on.

A Green Sock to Frog

I made this green sock a few months ago and never made the second one for a couple of reasons.

1. It’s too big.
2. The ball is a giant tangled mess that I couldn’t muster up the will to untangle.

Well, didn’t I say a few minutes ago that it’s time for action? Let the frogging begin.

Then, I’ll start on these. The pattern is called Monkey socks by Cookie A, and even though I’m sick to death of cabling — this pattern does cable. Cabling on socks? Never done that before. Yikes!

In my hunt for needles that had not been in some way mangled by my dog I found an odd assortment.

The last pair of socks I made I used two circular needles, which I really liked. I don’t really mind using double pointed needles, but I found that using circulars meant that I didn’t need to switch needles as often, which made it go faster. But, the tip broke off this circular’s match, so I was lucky to find three double points that matched. I’m not quite sure how this is going to work, and I’m hoping it won’t affect my gauge, so we’ll see.

Well, I’m off to cast on. I’ve got a free weekend, though it’s so beautiful outside I’m not sure how much of it I’ll spend knitting.

We leave today for a trip to Eugene, OR. I’m looking forward to my visit at the school and I’ve had fun planning the lessons I’m going to teach while I’m there. This morning is full of packing and preparing.

• 6th grade math book? Check.
• Games books? Check.
• Beeswax stash? Check.
• Knitting for the car ride? Check.
• Camera? Check.
• Teacherly clothes and cheerful demeanor? Check.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with pictures and stories to share. Try not to miss me.

There’s nothing like turning the kids loose on the house with the camera for rediscovering all of the little imperfections. Here’s what Alice and Leo uncovered today.

Piles of laundry.

The dusty mantle with “kid and pet” cleaner at the ready.

Ewww. The buffet full of “borrowed and ready to be returned” items.

The up-side is that this means some ironing has taken place in our house the past few days.

But they did discover that in our home lovely things are happening all the time.

A loving puppy with soulful eyes.

Baking projects with friends.

Mmm. Cookies.

A crumpled couch from restful reading.

It was a nice day. Imperfections and all.

When I was a kid I remember having “freckle days” — days when my freckles somehow seemed more noticeable than usual. My Leo’s freckles were out today, and I somehow managed to talk him into getting in front of my lens.

At first he wasn’t sure.

Then he got a bit skeptical.

Then a little silly.

Then even sillier.

And then he remembered to be sweet. (It was probably that gum in the corner of his mouth that reminded him.)

Want some?