Waldorf Without the Box: Creating Your Custom Homeschooling Journey

EP229: Ever felt like you're drowning in curriculum overwhelm? The secret to Waldorf-without-the-box is creating a custom curriculum for your homeschooling journey.

You are not alone!

Many homeschooling parents purchase one curriculum after another, desperately trying to follow someone else's plan only to feel perpetually behind and increasingly frustrated. 

Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf education, never wrote a standardized curriculum. Instead, he encouraged teachers to observe their students and craft lessons specifically for them. When we embrace this freedom rather than trying to follow someone else's plan, our homeschooling journey truly transforms. 

A "boxed" curriculum can be a wonderful and necessary resource, but only if you embrace the key principles of your homeschool approach, understand the natural rhythm and needs of your family, and lean into simplicity and flexibility. 

Find the Show Notes here  https://artofhomeschooling.com/episode229/

Join Plan It Out inside the Inspired at Home community https://artofhomeschooling.com/inspiredathome 

Chapters

• 0:40 Why you don't need a curriculum to homeschool your children
• 2:01 Why I might be the only homeschool mentor who does NOT recommend curriculum
• 3:22 The child IS the curriculum
• 4:36 Understand the key principles of your approach
• 5:12 Understand the rhythm and needs of your family
• 5:43 Understand how to weave it all together
• 6:25 Waldorf without the box
• 7:34 How to simplify and stay flexible
• 10:29 Why it's so overwhelming to follow someone else's plan for YOUR homeschool

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

You're listening to the Art of Homeschooling podcast, where we help parents cultivate creativity and connection at home. I'm your host, jean Miller, and here on this podcast you'll find stories and inspiration to bring you the confidence you need to make homeschooling work for your family. Let's begin. I don't believe you need to purchase a curriculum package to homeschool with the Waldorf approach, or really any approach. I believe you can customize and create your own homeschool plans. Let me tell you about it.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Homeschooling parents come to me after they've purchased one curriculum after another. They're trying to follow the curriculum as written but feel like they're falling behind, failing and drowning in overwhelm, and that's no fun, is it? That happened to me too, as a homeschooling mama of three. At first, there was no Waldorf curriculum available for homeschooling parents back in the day when we started homeschooling, but after a few years I purchased my first curriculum and then I purchased another. I kept thinking maybe I just need to find a different curriculum and that one will work, but then it didn't. I was determined to discover a path to teaching my children at home in a way that felt satisfying to me and meaningful to my whole family, to each of my children and to myself. I loved the Waldorf approach but it felt kind of mysterious and out of reach or something. I wanted and needed to understand the approach but then also make it my own. So now, all these years later, as I help homeschoolers like you find your way, I think I'm the only homeschooling mentor who says you're actually better off not following someone else's curriculum right out of the box. So on the podcast today, I want to give you a simple starting point for what that might look like how to embrace Waldorf without the box and create a custom approach for your family. Because when you realize your homeschool life is not an open and go kind operation and that it will thrive from your customized inspiration, you'll feel so much better teaching your kiddos. I help all kinds of holistic homeschoolers discover simplicity, plan engaging homeschool lessons and gain confidence on the homeschooling journey. On the homeschooling journey and the fact is, you're more likely to gain confidence by designing your own lessons and finding out what works for you and your children than you are relying on a quote-unquote expert and trying to follow their plan.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Here's a quote from Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Waldorf Approach. He said as long as the teacher feels in harmony with the principles and with the methods employed. He or she must be given the freedom in his or her work instead of being tied to fixed standards. In the teacher seminar in 1919, when Rudolf Steiner was training the teachers for the very first Waldorf school, he asked them to look at the children in their classroom, the children before them, and bring them what they need, what those particular children need. He wanted every teacher to craft their own curriculum and lessons for the particular children they were working with. He did not write down a curriculum, and when we first started homeschooling, that was why you couldn't purchase curriculum, because the idea was that we would all create our own based on the children we were working with. So how do we do that? How do we create a custom approach for our family? Here you go Three steps to Waldorf homeschooling without the box.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Number one understand the key principles of the Waldorf approach. Here's my short description of the Waldorf approach. I call it my elevator pitch for Waldorf, and it goes like this Waldorf education is a developmental approach to learning that incorporates rhythm and the lively arts into all the lessons. That's packed right, I realize that, but in that one sentence you really can begin to understand the key principles to the Waldorf method, and this is a really good place to start. Okay, number two method, and this is a really good place to start. Okay, number two look at your year or month and make some decisions for your homeschool before you consult any curriculum package that you may have. For example, choose your next block topic or topics, if you have multiple ages, along with what skills you want to help each of your children make progress in or work on, and then find the resources you need for those topics and skills. Number three that's all done, before you plan out any details of a lesson. The lessons themselves, then, are going to bring together stories and the lively arts like movement and music, drama and poetry, painting, drawing and modeling. You don't have to do them all at once, but you're going to bring those into the lessons to help build them out and create engaging experiences. And then you can record the learning, have your children record their learning in main lesson books, blank books where your children illustrate and write about what they're learning. Those are the three steps to Waldorf, without the box. Here's just one little example of how you can make Waldorf your own.

Speaker 1: 6:34

Many of us hear, or have heard, especially when we first come to Waldorf that you're supposed to memorize all the stories. Well, here's the truth you can read stories instead of telling them. You can tell tiny stories to your little ones in the early years, perhaps about Sally the squirrel who lives in the pine tree in your front yard, or about little Joey who has a hard time waiting his turn. And you can also find high quality, carefully chosen books to read aloud that spark the imagination. To read aloud that spark the imagination. Storytelling is one of the lively arts and we use story to introduce new concepts to our children. And storytelling includes both stories you tell by heart as well as wonderful books storytelling by others. Even Rudolf Steiner himself talked about both telling stories from memory as well as reading stories to children.

Speaker 1: 7:34

So when it's time to plan whatever comes next for you, I want you to hold on to this idea that planning can be simple, straightforward and customized to suit your family. Start with the three steps in this episode. I know it may seem almost too easy, like you want someone to just tell you what to do, but you won't really know. Until you do it, you won't really know what's working. So we have to look at this like we're going to try something and we're going to observe how it goes and then we'll adjust from there. But you really don't want to spend tons of time obsessing over which curriculum to buy or which story to read. And if you have more than one child and more than one grade, it's enough to make you want to go out and buy dull, boring workbooks right grade. It's enough to make you want to go out and buy dull, boring workbooks right. Or stay up until 2 am searching and searching for the next best thing. If you've spent too many late nights exploring resources and searching for what to do next for your main lesson block, that's totally normal, but it doesn't have to be your normal anymore.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Your homeschool planning can be flexible. This is what I was craving myself and why I created specific steps to help me put together my own curriculum. I now show overwhelmed parents like you how to apply these steps to your homeschool in a masterclass called Plan it Out, so you can go from second guessing yourself to feeling prepared and excited about the year ahead with a system you can use year after year. Every summer, I go through this process with the members of Inspired at Home to help them prepare for the year ahead. We walk through these planning steps that I created for myself during my 25 years of homeschooling and parents say things like what an incredible resource and exactly what I needed. I even have parents in the Inspired at Home community who've been doing this with me for five or six years, maybe seven years. At this point, if you want to join us this summer, in June and July, just go to artofhomeschoolingcom slash inspiredathome, and I'll also put the link in the show notes for this episode.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Plan it Out is set up for you to work through the lessons at your own pace, on your own schedule. There are videos and printables to help you create your unique plan. Videos and printables to help you create your unique plan. It's that simple and along the way as you plan, you get coaching from me. Plus, a huge bonus is you won't be doing this alone. You can get feedback from other homeschoolers in our private Facebook community and on our live calls, so you can get your questions answered and get all the guidance you need.

Speaker 1: 10:29

Whether you choose to join Inspired at Home for Plan it Out or not, here's what I want you to take away from this episode. The reason why so many homeschool parents are overwhelmed over planning or stuck is that they haven't taken the time to tailor the lessons to the real needs of their family. Just like I was doing early on, we think that following someone else's plan is the answer because we believe they know better than we do or have more experience than we do. But by doing that we are imposing fixed standards rather than embracing freedom and flexibility, and we overlook the importance of making our homeschool plans sustainable and enjoyable. So start with the three steps I talked about here.

Speaker 1: 11:24

Number one understand the principles of the approach. Number two look at the year or month ahead and make decisions like which blocks to bring, what skills you want to focus on, and then craft your lessons around great stories and weave in hands-on, lively arts to bring those stories to life and create memorable experiences for your children. Because really homeschooling involves embracing these key principles along with a little technique, a generous stroke of creativity, a dab of patience and a big swirl of love to pull it all together. Thank you so much for all you do. And don't forget you can find the show notes at artofhomeschoolingcom, slash episode 229. See you next time. That's all for today, my friend, but here's what I want you to remember Rather than perfection, let's focus on connection. Thanks so much for listening and I'll see you on the next episode of the Art of Homeschooling podcast.