Articles by Nancy

Originally $24.00 –

Is the philosophy we use to educate our children responsible, at least partially, for the attitudes and general tone of our societies? A recent UNICEF report on wealthy countries saw the United States and the United Kingdom ranked lowest in the quality of life for young people across a wide range of categories?including poverty, health, drugs, friendships, and happiness. According to experts, those nations that performed best in the survey have created “child-friendly” societies in which, for example, young people are not pressured to achieve academically until their teens. In contrast, educators in the US and UK generally press toward economic success, using education as a means of generating?through “No Child Left Behind” and increasing use of tests?the high achievers needed, it is thought, to produce material wealth.

Brien Masters?an educator for more than fifty years?asserts that education has a central role to play “in bringing into human lives those qualities that can take us forward to a progressive future.” He proposes that Rudolf Steiner’s educational approach, which is practiced primarily in the Waldorf schools around the world, is well equipped to enable this. In Steiner Education and Social Issues?via a series of short, engaging chapters and based on his broad personal experience of teaching and teacher-training?Masters tackles a wide range of modern social issues, from drugs and nutrition to boredom to the influence of television and multicultural societies. This is a wise and informative guide for parents, teachers, and anyone interested in the future development of our children and our culture.

Out of Print. Replaced by Towards Creative Teaching – 3rd Edition

Towards Creative Teaching is a truly comprehensive overview of all main-lesson and accompanying subjects, offering a wealth of guidance, knowledge and inspiration for Waldorf class teachers. This wonderful resource book for Steiner-Waldorf teachers offers ideas for planning, shaping and developing lessons for Classes 1 to 8.

Taking the Waldorf curriculum as its basis, and without being restrictive or prescriptive, this book comes out of a teachers’ working group and provides helpful suggestions to both class teachers and subject specialists, adding to the richness and imagination of each teacher’s own work.

It offers a truly comprehensive overview of all main-lesson and accompanying subjects, bringing with it a wealth of guidance, knowledge and inspiration for Waldorf class teachers.

A must-have for any class teacher or homeschooler working within Waldorf education. Very highly recommended!

This book began as a lark but kept on growing – especially when teachers and parents contacted Reg and said their kids loved this slightly zany, fast-paced tale. Pinrut’s fans have been of mixed ages, too: grade 3, 4, 5, 6 – also the kids in a grade 8 class were highly amused by him and inspired to write similar tales of their own as part of their writing block.

There was once a turnip. He was an ordinary turnip, one you’d pass by without noticing. He grew in a row of turnips, one of many rows of turnips in a field that was one of many fields of turnips. That’s how ordinary this turnip was. Neither bigger, nor smaller, nor fatter, nor skinnier, nor longer, nor sweeter, nor more peppery: that’s how he was. And he had company, as you can imagine, for there were lots like him—thousands in fact.One summer’s evening this turnip up and left. He’d had enough. He pulled himself from the ground, turned upside down, and took off on his leafy stalks. He ambled along the row and out of the field.“Hey, you can’t do that!” cried the other turnips.“Watch me,” said the turnip.And watch him we will, through all nine lives: in America, Canada, China, New Zealand, New Guinea, Mars and Wobbles. Naturally he has a few adventures on the way, but his skills and savvy, indeed, his sheer existence, also come to the attention of the devilish boss of a nefarious GMO seed corporation called Nonsanto. Need we say more?!

Delightful and true, highly recommended for grades 3 thru 6 and older.

Hettie the Highland cow has lots of hair to keep her warm and cosy. But other animals want to be cosy, too… In springtime, two blackbirds stop by and build their nest in Hettie’s hair. She’s a cow not a hedge!

In summertime, butterflies lay their eggs in Hettie’s fur, and they grow into wriggling caterpillars.

In autumn, a squirrel burrows into her fur to hibernate.

And in winter, a mountain hare hops aboard, too! Poor Hettie. She’s a cow, not a hairy hotel! Maybe it’s time for a haircut…

Charming and warm for ages 3-6.

This outstanding workbook is so beautifully conceived, with exercises that are so creative, engaging, and masterful in their ability to teach the basics of English grammar and syntax that I can only imagine parents, teachers and, yes, students cheering as they explore its pages. Accompanied by the information the teacher will bring from The Teacher’s Manual for Three Workbooks, students will discover clear rules for punctuation, parts of speech, and spelling. They will also discover how exciting English can be and some of the many wonderful things one can do with it.

• Nouns and Verbs
• Adjectives
• Adverbs
• Nouns
• Articles
• Pronouns
• Prepositions
• Connectives/Conjunctions
• Simple and Compound Sentences
• Interjections
• Numbers
• Punctuation
• Capitalization
• Writing a Personal Letter

Ted Warren is an experienced Waldorf teacher who has dedicated his life to discovering effective ways to us Waldorf methods to firmly implant knowledge in the minds of students. The Fourth Grade and Fifth Grade manuals are the beginning of a series, and this Workbook is filled with the sort of content for which homeschoolers and class teachers have been yearning.

Recommended without reservation!

96 pages, 8 1/2″” x 11″, 2014.

The authors, each expert in various aspects of early childhood development and pedagogy, approach their subject from a variety of perspectives, ranging from physical development to social development, cognitive development and studies demonstrating the impact of early academic education and more. This little book is a powerhouse of information and insight, and comes with a multitude of illustrations in color and duotone that chronicle the changes in human beings from birth through the early grades. Especially interesting are the full color reproductions of children’s artwork that follow the development of different children over time. Being able to “see” these children develop is a fascinating journey as well as being concrete evidence of the changes taking place within each human being.

This research was originally presented at a colloquium at the Goetheanum in February 2013.

Schools reflect the state of society. If society is materialistic, competitive, egoistic, technological, and without concern for human values and long-term thinking, our schools will tend to reflect those values. However, what if education were about something else? What if education were about the future? What if education were a about nurturing a new generation of human beings, integrated in body, soul, and spirit and able to think for themselves and have the capacity to love? Perhaps the world would change. The Waldorf school, initiated and guided in 1919 by Rudolf Steiner, was conceived with precisely such an end in view.

In this passionate, inspiring, and moving book, Peter Selg, speaks from a deep knowledge of Anthroposophy and from his extensive experience as a child psychiatrist. He returns to the original impulses behind the first Waldorf school to show their continuing validity and how they still respond to what we need.

From this view, Waldorf education is future-oriented, based on a holistic worldview and cosmology that is humanistic, scientific, and spiritual, and develops through a curriculum and a teacher-student relationship based on love. Its focus is the miracle of the developing human being. Recognizing the equal importance of thinking, feeling, and willing, Waldorf education works through bodily movement and art, as well as through intellect and mind.

Waldorf Education is not a theory but a living reality, and Selg brings this reality to life before us through the biography of the first Waldorf school. Thus, we learn to see it in a new way—in its essence, as a healing model of what education might become if the primary relationship, the inner core of a school, is the free relationship between teacher and student.

Originally $17.00 –

The author who has written one of the best-loved and genuinely helpful books for parents whose children have sensory processing disorder (The Out-of-Sync Child) has followed it up with this companion volume, which presents more than one hundred playful activities specially designed for kids with SPD.

Each activity in this inspiring and practical book is SAFE—Sensory-motor, Appropriate, Fun and Easy—to help develop and organize a child’s brain and body. More importantly from your child’s point of view, each activity is playful, warm, funny and interesting.  It should be quite easy to engage a child in these games and projects — and perhaps quite difficult to disengage both the child and yourself from playing them because they really are so much fun.

Whether your child faces challenges with touch, balance, movement, body position, vision, hearing, smell, and taste, motor planning, or other sensory problems, this book presents lively and engaging ways to bring fun and play to everyday situations.

This revised edition includes new activities, along with updated information on which activities are most appropriate for children with coexisting conditions including Asperger’s and autism, and more.

In going through this outstanding collection of Rudolf Steiner’s thoughts and observations of 6-7 year old children, I was struck at almost every page with how extremely practical his suggestions are, and how very clearly insightful he was.

This gathering of Steiner’s thoughts about children at this age can serve parents, teachers, and caregivers in so very many ways: as a quick resource of useful suggestions as to how to help children through “bumpy times;” as an enriching account of the lives of children during this transition period; as food for thought as we find our own way with the very unique children in our care; as a bellweather indicator of how much and how little has changed in the 100 or so years since Steiner penned and spoke these words.

Ruth Ker is to be highly commended for her wisdom and discernment in the excerpts she has chosen to present.  Her compilation is masterful, its potential to help the world’s children beyond reckoning.

Recommended without reservation!