Book Review: Award Winning "Helping Children on Their Way" August 16 2017

Helping Children on Their Way achieved a silver medal award from the prestigious Mom’s Choice Awards.

Elizabeth Auer has assembled a remarkable group of educators to write about many aspects of supporting children in their different and varied “stuck places” along the road to a balanced development for life.

The CEO of Mom’s Choice Awards, Dawn Matheson said about the book:

“We are happy to award deserving books like "Helping Children on Their Way". Our panel of judges really felt this collection of classroom support essays merited a place on our list of the best in family-friendly products that homeschooling parents and educators can feel confident in using.”

Helping Children on Their Way is a treasure trove of ideas and explanations from teachers with many years of experience to help parents and teachers to understand the difficulties children have along their path of learning and to offer ideas of how to help.

Children are born now into stressful situations with many demands placed upon them to understand things that are difficult for adults to comprehend. Sometimes this stress can lead to developmental delays or “cramping” in the flow of a child’s learning.

This big book offers big assistance for untangling learning knots that children get into as they grow and digest an often-indigestible world.  Never has there been such a collection out of the wisdom of Waldorf education for the world to study to understand the unique approach held in Waldorf schools of child development and therapeutic approaches to learning.

This is a must-have-must-read for every school and home library in the section on child development, and for every teacher and parent wanting to understand more deeply what gives a child difficulty and what brings a learning experience of eagerness and joy.

Waldorf Publications is proud to be recognized by Mom’s Choice Awards with their dedicated mission to finding literature that brings health and harmony to families and children.

Essays include:
• Child Development: Constitutional types, the temperaments, and school readiness
• Today’s Child: An orientation
• The Twelve Senses
• Dominance
• The Care Group: Referrals, assessments, therapies, and academic support
• The Extra Lesson: First grade readiness screening and second grade assessment
• The Art of Child Observation
• Points for Observation and Description for the Child Study
• Movement in the Classroom: Morning circle and beyond
• Verses and Movement: For the younger grades
• The Movable Classroom
• Boys and Girls in Movement: Stereotypes and archetypes‑ balancing gender needs in the elementary school movement
• Development and Integration of the Human Body: The role of the lower sense and primitive reflexes, signs of motor dysfunction, and reflex retentions
• The Importance of Morning Circle: How to create a therapeutic movement circle
• Reading and Writing
• Music, Gym, and the Pencil Grip
• Therapeutic Aspects of Form Drawing: An introduction
• Children’s Drawings: What they can tell us
• Math: Introducing it the right way
• Executive or Higher-Level Function: One aspect of understanding day-to-day thinking
• Incarnational Disrhythmia: Hypermotoric and inattentive challenges, cumulative stress reaction, sensory overwhelm issues, non-verbal disorders, oppositional defiance
• Imagination and Memory: Rich or poor?
• Sleep on It: The most important activity of the Waldorf school day
• Therapies: Music, art, eurythmy, and Spacial Dynamics
• Extra Support with Music: Singing and recorder
• Speaking and Listening: A teacher’s greatest tools
• Drama: Does Perseus have to hold Andromeda’s hand?
• Imbue Yourself with the Power of Imagination
• Listen and You Will Hear: Meditation as a way of life
• Parent­–Student–Teacher Triangle: Night and day - Waldorf education in practice