It’s rather academic, and a matter of personal emphasis, whether one chooses the term ‘homeschooling’ or natural learning. From the Steiner, standpoint, World Schooling might be more fitting. All three agree, however, that the school environment, by definition focusing on the group rather than the individual, will gradually become obsolete. Schools are a convenience for teaching the masses, rather than a utopia of ‘education for all’. Many children, at the bitter end of their schooling experience, are anything but ‘educated’. Schools are organizational in a nature, which in varying degrees reduces their inmates to parts of a system rather than enhancing their uniqueness.
— Alan Whitehead, A Steiner Homeschool: Resources and Facilities
Category: Bio-dynamic Farming
Books at the State Park
In this amazing little book the author teaches us how to become sensitive to the nature beings that sustain and effect plant life. Whether you begin next to a favorite potted plant or out in a beautiful meadow, you’ll find van Romunde teaching you things that will forever change the way you look at the natural world — and will probably forever change your life. For, once we become truly awake to the helpful nature spirits, it is very difficult to go on as though they didn’t exist, as if what we did really didn’t matter.
Verena Stael von Holstein has learned to communicate with elemental beings in nature, and to translate their language into human terms. In her remarkable book Nature Spirits and What They Say, we heard from fire-spirits, air-spirits, water-spirits and stone-spirits, among others. In this new volume, we hear from the nature spirits that most closely resemble human beings— the trees.
The interviews disclose beautiful, fascinating and often challenging insights into these wonderful beings and the natural world, and will inspire us to approach trees in an entirely new way.
For beginners, intermediates, and advanced flower essence buffs alike, The Flower Remedy Book addresses the single most commonly asked flower essence question: how do you know which essence(s) to take?
This vital companion guide takes the mystery out of essence selection, in a comprehensive and easy to digest manner. It diffuses the sense of confusion and overwhelm one faces, with so many reputable flower essences, and essence lines, presently available. In this book, Dr. Garsen Shapiro has provided credibility and dimension to an old healing art recently rediscovered.
Young children love creative play, stories, nursery rhymes and games. These are not only good fun, but are also good for the brain. Sally Goddard Blythe analyses why early movement matters, and how games develop children’s skills at different stages of development. She offers a handy starter kit of stories, action games, songs and rhymes, and explains: why movement is an essential ingredient for healthy brain development; why music, song, lullabies and nursery rhymes prepare the brain for language; how fairy tales can help children face their fears in in safety; how rough and tumble play develops the neural circuits for creativity and self-regulation; the links between learning problems and sedentary lifestyles and overexposure to electronic media; and what to look out for if your child does not seem to be “ready” for school.
The kindergarten years, when children are aged between about three and seven years, can be some of the most formative in their development. At the heart of early years Steiner-Waldorf education is the concept of ‘life forces’, or an ‘ether body’. For a child to grow into a healthy adult, fulfilling their potential, these forces must be recognised and properly nurtured. Teachers in particular must understand and work with their own ether bodies, to best help the children develop.
This book, which is essential reading for any teacher, and equally insightful for parents, offers accessible ways to understand and visualize the difficult concept of the ‘ether body’. It also provides practical examples of how to nurture them at different educational stages, through particular issues faced by Waldorf kindergartens.
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