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Christopherus
Homeschool Resources

PO Box 231
Viroqua, WI 54665, USA

Tel: (608) 637-8031

e-Mail: enquiries@
christopherushomeschool.org

Articles by Donna Simmons

An Introduction to Waldorf Homeschooling
The Waldorf Approach to Science
First Grade Readiness

Much more from Donna on the Homeschool Journey blog. We've also put together a complete list of blog articles by category.
 

Articles by Other Authors:

(See the bottom of the page for links to articles from the Online Waldorf Library)

Waldorf teacher William Ward addresses the question, Is Waldorf Education Christian?

The Alliance for Childhood has written an extensive report on children and computers. We have the executive summary of Fool's Gold.

Experienced public and Waldorf school teacher, Alicia Benoit-Clark looks at First Grade readiness in this article reprinted from Head, Heart, Hands. And we now have a further article on school readiness by Earl J. Ogletree from the perspective of developmental psychology.

We have two articles by our friend  Eric Fairman:

• The first is  a long article about 'experiential education' and Waldorf schools - complete with suggestions for activities in 7th and 8th Grades. We think homeschoolers will find this relevant too. 
   
• The second is about the danger of hearing loss from Walkmans and iPOds.

We have a number of excellent articles for you to read, reprinted with kind permission from Steiner Education (formerly known as Child and Man), which is the journal of the UK Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship. Hopefully, non-British readers will not find the British references too difficult to overcome. Likewise, the articles are written mainly for teachers, but we felt that there was enough in each article that speaks to parent-educators as well.

• This is especially so in the first article, Working with the Spiritual Basis of Waldorf Education by Dennis Demanett, which is an excellent introduction to the true nature of Waldorf education.
   
• Voices on the Green - The Importance of Play is our plea against early intellectualization. Play is no longer valued in our overly-scheduled children's lives and Sally Jenkinson tells us how much of children's culture has been lost.
   
• The third article, Narrative by Trevor Mepham, is a thoughtful piece which can help us understand something of the living word, appreciate that language arts are indeed arts, and see that learning to write is not merely the acquisition of mechanistic skills.
   
• Teaching Biology in a Human Context is written by Graham Kennish, who developed the Steiner science teacher training course in the U.K. The article gives a good sense of how the teaching of science is approached in Waldorf schools, with particular reference to older students.
   
• Master Waldorf teacher, Christopher Clouder, has written a fascinating article related to high school Art History: Taurus - Aries - Pisces: Three Stages in Culture
   
• A short article on the importance of fantasy play in children: Childhood Fantasy: A Passage to Adulthood by Damian Mooncie
   
• The Dawning of Conscience: Moral Education and the Waldorf Curriculum in Class Four by Deborah Leah encapsulates how the Waldorf curriculum meets the different stages of the child's inner life, specifically with regard to the sense of morality.
   
• Environmentally Friendly has a slightly misleading title: it's a short piece by a Waldorf teacher in Kenya with an example of a nature story.
   
• Sleep, written by a UK Waldorf school parent, deals with the vital significance of sleep for our children.
   
• A leading UK Waldorf teacher writes about the real reasons for learning languages.
   
• Introducing Physics by Hans Gebert focuses on questions of color.
   
• Van James approaches questions relating to painting in the Waldorf early grades: Painting Problems: the Exercising of Color Sense
   
• Organic Chemistry and the Ninth Grader is a fascinating look at the way the 9th grade Waldorf chemistry curriculum relates to the developmental processes happening within the 15 year old young person.

A good resource for articles about all aspects of Waldorf education is the Online Waldorf Library. Unfortunately, searching their archives can be challenging. Here's a few articles, by category,  that we can recommend. Please note that they are all PDF files:

Health/Therapeutic Education

Supporting the Development of the Hand, Ingun Schneider
Teaching our Children to Write, Read and Spell, Susan R. Johnson, MD
Healing our Children with Attentional, Emotional and Learning Challenges, Susan R. Johnson, MD
The Real Meaning of Hands-on Education, Frank R. Johnson, MD
TV and ADD, Foster W. Kline, MD
Hand Movements Sculpt Intelligence, Arthur Auer

Grades (1 - 5)

Image and Morality - a Fruitful Way for Moral Education, Rudi Lissau
Birthday Verses for Students in 1st - 5th Grades, Roberto Trostli
There's More to Reading than Meets the Eye, Barbara Sokolov
The Importance of Handwork in the Waldorf School, Patricia Livingstone
From Beauty to Truth in Mathematics, R.A. Jarman
A Creative Approach to Foreign Languages for Waldorf Teachers, René M. Querido
You Cannot Pick a Dandelion, Arthur P. Moor
Babylonian Gods and Heroes, Walter Johannes Stein

Middle Years

What is Phenomenology?, Michael J. D'Aleo
Star Polygons - Revealing Cosmic Laws, Ernst Muller, PhD
Astronomy for the Middle School, John Trevillion
Wish, Wonder, Surprise, Betty Staley