Library Lady's Corner
The Poetic Meaning of End of Year Reports in Waldorf Schools May 16 2023
Children, students, everywhere strive for excellence. All children who have not been traumatized by extraordinary experiences or abused by adults one way or another, want to learn, to be smart, to understand this large and confusing world into which they have been born. Some children hide this yearning. If they find out early that those delivering education, in whatever form, have decided they are not excellent, or have not met invisible expectations, they might become seemingly insouciant, uncaring, indifferent to what is happening in a learning environment. Some children crumble and dissolve into confusion, striking out at whatever they can identify that might be “right.”Book Review: Form Drawing October 11 2021
Form Drawing is a book about a subject unique to Waldorf schools. This book offers the best introduction to form drawing this Library Lady has ever seen! Form Drawing is full-color and bursting-with-illustrations—it is a must-have for understanding this powerful and engaging artistic subject!
Beginning on the first day of first grade, form drawing helps artistically to develop in children a sense of space, movement, balance, proportion,
Drama and Young People June 02 2021
The tradition of the annual “class play” in Waldorf education has been built up over decades but was not one of the original ideas in the first Waldorf school. Teachers have discovered over time how important and helpful the play is for youngsters; emotionally, spiritually, and socially. Watching a quiet child come into her own like never before through a role in a play, or feeling a class develop gratitude for a slightly marginalized classmate when that child is the prompter who saves everyone from losing lines, can transform the structure and dynamics of a class.Waldorf Grade 6 Book Recommendations February 19 2021
In sixth grade, the 11/12 year-old is usually beginning to experience the onset of puberty. Growth happens at an increasingly rapid rate and the child often goes through a time of alarm, not recognizing who he or she is anymore. Just as a single example, somewhere during the time of puberty a girl’s larynx grows to three times its original size and a boy’s, seven times its original size. This growth rate will never be repeated in the life span of human development.Book Review: Growing Up Healthy in a World of Digital Media January 02 2020
Growing Up Healthy in a World of Digital Media: A guide for parents and caregivers of children and adolescentsThis is an essential and timely book that addresses the dangers of screen time, addiction, and EMFs on human beings, especially on young ones. It helps empower parents and teachers to be mindful and vigilant. The overwhelming acceptance of digital media (digital everything!) happened as if without Input from us, parents, teachers, everyone! Schools, businesses, and ordinary people were, within a decade, all managing, reading, learning and communicating on wired, digital devices. Only recently have the deleterious effects of free-range use of digital media become well-known. Behavior disorders, depression, addiction, loss of concentration, and general feelings of malaise or unhappiness have been traced back to screen time for many. The younger the user, the more powerful the impact.
Interview with Betty Staley, author of "Tending the Spark" May 02 2019
Betty Staley’s new book, Tending the Spark, Lighting the Future for Middle Schools Students, has generated a spark! Clearly, all of us responsible for this vulnerable age need help in understanding. Meg Gorman stepped up to interviewing Betty to find out more about her motives in writing this book.Book Review: Tending the Spark April 04 2019
Tending the Spark: Lighting the Future for Middle School Students is Betty Staley’s latest contribution to better understanding child development to better educate the child. This is a book every parent and teacher of eleven to fifteen-year-olds must read! Tending the Spark covers a multiplicity of topics related to raising and teaching middle-schoolers. Everything from physical development, brain development, peer pressure, social media, and creativity are covered in this thorough sweep through middle school changes and realities.Book Review: A Phenomena Based Physics - Volume I May 01 2018
Waldorf Publications just redesigned the cover of the classic book for sixth-grade physics teachers: A Phenomena-Based Physics, Volume I (Volumes II and III are for seventh and eighth-grade teachers respectively). Manfred von Makensen devoted his life to the study and teaching of science. This first volume of this three-part series pays tribute to this lifetime of devoted study and experimentation.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: 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.