There are two main sections to this forum. The Christopherus Homeschool Resources section is free for anyone to read and post to and contains news about Christopherus publications, talks, studies on the forum, etc. as well as an area for questions and comments about our materials.
The other, larger section, The Waldorf at Home Discussion Forum, requires registration and the payment of a subscription fee ($50 for 1 year or $15 for 3 months). Sub-forums include Early Years, First Through Third Grade, Fourth Through Eighth Grade, The Waldorf Home, Networking and Introductions, Personal Development, Therapeutic Waldorf, Waldorf Philosophy and Anthroposophy and Marketplace.
Please join us for friendly, supportive and interesting conversation!
Joining is a two step process:
- Go to the Board and click on Register. Read and agree to the basic rules. Choose a user name and password. Give an e-mail address and then there's this funny little box with weird sideways letters - you have to type what you see into a blank box - this is to prevent mass spammers from joining. There are a couple of other settings there as well. NOTE: when you agree to the rules you must click on the little box to indicate you agree.
- So once you click on Complete Registration, the screen will now remind you to pay your subscription in order to participate fully. You'll see instructions on that. And, you'll also get an e-mail which has the same info in it.
So now you can pay for either 1 year ($50) or 3 months ($15). Payments are through PayPal's secure server. (Remember: you don't have to have a PayPal account any more to make a payment via PayPal.)
Now off you go!
Make sure you read the FAQs (you can do this before you pay - or if you don't intend to pay). These should hopefully give you all the technical How To info you need so you can actually figure out how to post and how to read things! The general guidelines for the list appear there as well. There is also a Technical Questions section and a Test Posts section.
Please fill out a Member Profile and choose an avatar if you like. You don't have to do either! You could also stop by at the Networking and Introductions forum and say hello. It's fun to read a bit about the different members!
There are many, many options available for how you receive posts and what they look like on your screen, etc, etc. Please don't be intimidated by all this! If a Computer Know-Nothing like me (Donna Simmons, co-founder of Christopherus Homeschool Resources and chief moderator of Waldorf at Home) can more or less figure all this out, then you can, too! Have fun and fiddle around - don't worry, you can always go back to where you were (and you need to become a paid member to do all this). You will have a User CP (User Control Panel) which you can click on and do fun things. For instance, you can choose how your messages are displayed - you can just see the thread titles or you can see the posts themselves. (In the former case you could then just click on the titles you want to read instead of scrolling through everything as in the latter option. Another thing to consider is whether to set the posts in order that they were posted or last post at the top of the screen - like in a yahoo group).
For those of you wishing for a free and less organized group, do consider joining the Christopherus Users yahoo group. Please note: this group is not formally linked with Christopherus Homeschool Resources.
Don't forget that the Forum isn't like a Yahoo group - you have to go there to read and post once you've logged on. Individual e-mails do not come to you. However, when you find a discussion thread which interests you, you can click on "thread tools" on the navigation bar at the top of the thread. You'll get a drop-down thingie and you can click on whether you want to be notified when people add to that thread.
-- Donna Simmons