Still Waldorf Inspired?

This is something I've been giving some thought to lately. Sonlight is, well much much easier to use. You look at the days plan, get the books off the shelf and do it, adapting it a bit to suit yourselves. On the whole its well written and the extra resources are great. So can you use a mix of the two? I think you can use the principles behind a Waldorf approach and apply them to teaching anything in the main. So for instance today I read Charlotte's Web while they made beeswax models of Wilbur and Charlotte. We've been doing copywork, something we would do with Waldorf and I read out loud/teach and then we discuss it. We have no tv except at breaktime and no computer games until we're done. Both the girls are still knitting away and we're getting our sheep fleece to look at wool making. I take more account of their maturity in approaching a subject and never push them to do more than they can manage. We spend time together as a family. I constantly refer to all my Waldorf books for teaching ideas.

Isn't that the beauty of home education that you learn and adapt as you go along. Hettie will probably revert to a Waldorf curriculum again in the future, she enjoys it and it suits her. But I feel we need more focus on the maths, english and reading at the moment. I need them working together for most areas or it will be mayhem, and its working out pretty well so far, although there is now a lot of giggling! Both girls are doing really well with the Language Arts and readers so far. They're loving map work and reading about different people around the world. We fit all the scheduled work in a day easily with time to spare for other more Waldorfy things.

Something that really struck the heart of me this week in Jenny's wonderful 'Taking Stock' post was, if a square peg doesn't fit in a round hole, change the hole and leave the peg just as it is. She's spot on right - our children are all unique and wonderful.

We're following Sonlight but are we still Waldorf inspired? You bet we are! Purists of Waldorf may disagree, but I never claimed to be pure! So here's todays pics of my lovely, unique girls:

Busy with a writing assignment about describing an animal.

Looking up countries around the world. We read about various forms of make up and jewellery, and so that led to face painting this afternoon. (The tv isn't on - it's paused until lunchtime)

Isobel painting Hettie.

A Clown!

A Flower!

Oh, and a few tears when I had to get it all off.