Library Lady's Corner
Book Review: Towards the Deepening of Waldorf Education October 19 2017
In the 1980s and early 1990s, The Pedagogical Section Council of North America worked closely with the Pedagogical Section in Dornach, Switzerland, to develop a publication that gathered the esoteric material Rudolf Steiner gave to the Waldorf teachers in the first Waldorf school in his first training lectures and along the way at teachers’ meetings. The book was beautiful and lovingly compiled. It had a linen hard cover with gold leafing for the title.How Do Children Learn to Write and to Read? October 13 2017
Literacy has been made an urgent issue in the last decade. As parents and teachers, we worry, often deeply. Back in the 1900s, we didn’t worry so desperately. Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat, and T.V.’s “Sesame Street” were ever present to reassure us that ways were there for children to learn to read. Maybe these extrinsic tools for children to learn to read and copy writing laid the foundations for the worry — if these tools did not do the trick, perhaps there was something wrong with the child.Book Review: Willibrord - A Wandering Saint in Dialog with His Friends October 02 2017
This new book by Frans Lutters, experienced Waldorf teacher from Holland, Willibrord, A Wandering Saint in Dialog with his Friends, holds great potential for teachers and parents looking for the right mood for story telling with seven and eight year olds.Teachers and parents of second graders face the delicious challenge of filling eager young souls with rich ideas filled with ideals in a right way. In Waldorf schools, the teacher’s efforts of forming a class in grade one settles over the summer months and second graders arrive ready for good stories and new knowledge.
Book Review: The Dynamic Heart and Circulation September 13 2017
Edited by Craig Holdrege
Reviewed by Ronald Koetzsch
Most of us learned in high school biology that the human heart is a four-chambered mechanical pump. The size of a fist, it sends blood to the lungs to be oxygenated and then sends the returning oxygen-rich blood throughout the body in the roughly 60,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries. Even considered only as a mechanical pump, the heart is amazing. The heart beats, without ceasing, about 72 times a minute, over 4,000 times in an hour, about 100,000 times in the course of a day, 365,000,000 times in a year, and about 24 billion times in the course of an average lifetime!
Book Review: The Moon Prince and the Sea August 21 2017
Waldorf graduates like Daniela Rose Anderson often carry a global consciousness. They often volunteer for service in unlikely places with the greatest needs. Daniela did such volunteering and came to know a boy named Sumit and a girl named Marina Both were very young and both had terminal leukemia. The heart of Daniela linked the two hearts of the children who shared the same illness from faraway places.Book Review: Award Winning "Helping Children on Their Way" August 16 2017
Waldorf Publications is proud to be recognized by Mom’s Choice Awards with Helping Children on Their WayElizabeth 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.
Book Review: Earth Science July 17 2017
By Hans-Ulrich Schmutz, PhD
Reviewed by Ronald Koetzsch
Many Waldorf parents and Waldorf teachers regret that they themselves did not receive a Waldorf education. But parts of the Waldorf curriculum can be studied and experienced at any age. Earth Science, by Hans-Ulrich Schmutz, although meant as a guide for Waldorf high school science teachers, gives any rueful adult the opportunity to work through the rich Waldorf earth science curriculum for grades nine through twelve.
Summertime and the Livin’ is Easy — and the Reading is Fantastic July 08 2017
At this time of year being a teacher looks like a good career. After all, teachers “get the summer off!” Sure, they don’t have to show up at school every day, and sure they can wear shorts and sandals instead of dresses and collared shirts. However, once school ends, once reports are completed and meetings subside, the energetic work of preparation begins.
Through books galore, teachers travel to exotic lands from times gone by — India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece if you are a rising fifth or tenth grade teacher — back in time to the reformation in Europe and the many wars around the world in the last 150 years if you are a rising eighth or ninth grade teacher — ‘round the world for the first conscious time with Magellan (was it worth it when so many died along the way?) if seventh grade will be you destination in the fall — back to the land of stories from before recorded history if you are starting as a first grade teacher — and lost in a miraculous world of new life in embryology if you are a twelfth grade teacher.
To be ready for classes in autumn, the reading is varied and enormous in volume.
Book Review: At Home in Harmony: Bringing Families and Communities Together in Song ~ New Release June 29 2017
Meg Chittenden’s new book, At Home in Harmony, Bringing Families and Communities Together in Song is both artistic and magical. The volume is beautiful, from the clean, bright cover to the charmingly illustrated pages of sheet music, to the quick anecdotes about every song. Her goal is to make it easy to learn songs and to add harmonies that can also be absorbed and then sung again and again as accompaniment to life. Singing is so much more beautiful when it harmonizes in a round or when a simple harmony can make a song that is fresh and simple, blossom like a rose in marvelous harmony.Book Review: The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education ~ New Release June 24 2017
The Pedagogical Section Council of North America has produced for us another beautiful book to help in understanding the esoteric basis of Waldorf Education,The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education (Waldorf Publications, 2017, 124 pages, $24).
The Pedagogical Section Council developed the seven, essential elements that make a school truly a Waldorf school. Pedagogical Section Council members then took up elaborating on each of these principles, the essays written were published in the Research Bulletin over a couple of years, and then the essays were gathered with a few additional treatises on the principles and made into this fine book explaining what makes a Waldorf school a Waldorf school.
Book Review: The Falconer June 11 2017
by Christopher Sblendorio - reviewed by Ronald Koetzsch
In Waldorf schools, history is taught largely through the medium of biography. The life stories of individual human beings, famous and not so famous, good and not so good, are told by the teacher or read in books. Each life, interesting in itself, illuminates the events and conditions of the time in which the person lived.
Can Morality be Taught? June 08 2017
Math and Arithmetic in a Waldorf School May 24 2017
Children learn arithmetic in school. Most of what we call “math” is arithmetic — the skills of computation and calculation. When we do addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, times tables, square roots, calculating area — for examples — we are doing arithmetic. Arithmetic is a division or department of mathematics. Geometry, algebra, and calculus are other branches of mathematics.
Teaching children skills in arithmetic tends to be a cause of anxiety in our culture. Comparative studies accomplished in the latter part of the last century, comparing the attitudes of Japanese parents and American parents about arithmetic skills was revealing. Read More
Book Review: Difficult Children – There is No Such Thing May 16 2017
Today "difficult children"—children with attention deficit disorder, high levels of anxiety, restlessness, aggressiveness, and other emotional and behavioral problems — are a major challenge for parents, educators. and therapists. Once the child has been diagnosed and labeled as having ADD or autism or some other condition, the standard approach is to use psychotherapy and/or psychotropic drugs to change behavior. Millions of children today, for example, take the drug Ritalin for attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity. Continue reading...
The End of Year Report in Waldorf Schools May 12 2017
Assessment is a “hot topic” in the news and in educational debate. In Waldorf schools assessment takes many forms, none of which includes standardized testing.
During the year, concentrated “blocks” of study might include an end-of-block assessment. A block might be three or four weeks long and concentrate study on one topic. After a botany block in the fifth grade an outdoor “treasure” hunt to find, for example, a monocotyledon, a pistil, a tap root, a deciduous conifer branch, a dicotyledon, and so on, might be the "test.” After a block on physiology in grade seven, an essay entitled, “The Diary of a Sandwich,” might be the means of assessment.
Coming Soon– Several New Waldorf Publications on the Way! May 05 2017
Check out the new titles arriving just in time for summer reading!Book Review: Active Arithmetic! and Math Lessons for Elementary Grades April 28 2017
Are you concerned about your child’s math skills? Are you wondering how to bring a math idea to your class in an unusual, memorable way? These books are indispensable! Perhaps the best thing about these books is that they turn your mind from the drier approaches to teaching arithmetic, and open the faucet of your own imaginative ideas for teaching math.Traditional Tales Retold by Kelly Morrow April 20 2017
Lazy Jack; King Thrushbeard; The Prince and the Dragon; and Sylvain and Jocosa
When class teacher Kelly Morrow’s search for first readers appropriate and challenging for her students proved fruitless, she created her own. The four little books range from 18 to 38 pages. Each book tells a folk story in a simple, clear, but interesting way, and each story is enriched by a moral truth. The cover of each is an engaging color illustration, and there are black and white drawings throughout.
Book Review: Liputto ~ Stories of Gnomes and Trolls March 30 2017
The first few stories in this collection recount the exploits of a disagreeable troll, who ensnares unsuspecting creatures – a goldfish, butterflies – in his net and keeps them in his dark cave; other animals help to free the captives. Then begins the story, in short chapters, of Liputto, a gnome whose job it is to bring drops of sunlight deep into the earth; after seven years of work, he is awarded a kind of sabbatical, to explore for a year.Book Review: Three Plays for Small Classes March 24 2017
Three Plays for Small Classes offers class teachers an inspiring start at approaches to drama with only a few in middle school. Vivian Jones-Schmidt demonstrates her Waldorf class teaching experience in the ingenious re-telling of profound tales through the scripts she offers. Drama is a source of endless redemption for pre-teens and for students of all ages, really.Happy Spring Equinox 2017! March 20 2017
March 20th or 21st always marks “the first day of spring.” Jokes abound in the Northeastern part of our country because it often doesn’t feel at all like spring on this inaugural day.
But the real event is a cosmic one that takes place in the stars and planets. This is why the exact day is not possible to state without stellar calculations. The day is called “The Spring (Vernal) Equinox.”
Book Review: Second Grade Development, Observation, and Assessment March 06 2017
Over the decades of developing and deepening of Waldorf Education, teachers have come to recognize the need for attention as children approach the change in consciousness that occurs around nine years old. Much has been said about this change. Waldorf Publications’ book Rubicon, is a collection of everything Rudolf Steiner said about this significant moment in a child’s development.Waldorf Publications and WECAN Form a More Perfect Union February 26 2017
Here in the land of publishing it’s not always easy to tell what is happening beyond the borders of a completed book process. During the journey of publishing a book there are proposals from authors, committee decisions about those proposals, backs-and-forths with authors, decisions about the age range of the book’s usefulness, permissions from other publishers, decisions about illustrations where needed, layouts, font choices, size of the book, cover decisions, edits, proofreading, biographies of authors, sometimes translation issues, and then the actual lining up for printing of the book before going to press. Read More...