The child can gather the sounds together to make meanings from whole words. The child can write some of the poems or rhymes she has learned and see that the sounds of the words match the pictures in the poems and she can then remember the words to read them again and again. This more magical, story-like way to learn reading avoids the painstaking practice of simply having to memorize a sound and link it to other sounds to try to figure out what a word might be.
Artistic work is of synthesis, the gathering up of similar things to make a wholeness; not pulling individual pieces from the whole to decipher its sense. The rewards of this approach of teaching from pictures and beautiful sounds is rewarding. There is a depth of comprehension, a satisfaction with books, a joy in the effort of writing that cannot compare to more standard contemporary approaches. The goals are different in each approach. See the signs in nature! Hear the sounds of the wind and of the word!
What do you think the birds are singing to you? Reading from books is a marvelous thing, and writing books more marvelous still. Most marvelous of all is the ability to read beyond mere sounding of letters, mere simplicity of meaning into the deeper meaning of a poem or a tale — the ability to read nature along with books to enhance both with life and meaning. Today Only! Posted on November 08, Telling stories is better than reading them, because the child must imagine his own pictures.
This ability to imagine is an important step in preparation for reading. Children prefer to hear the same story over and over, sometimes for weeks! But do tell as many as you can. Even make some of them up, or tell stories about your own childhood. One of the hardest tasks for a parent involved in helping a child to learn to read in the Waldorf way is divesting yourself from the ingrown attitudes about reading prevalent in our culture, and then defending your method from well-meaning but critical relatives and neighbors.
Children learn to read in the same way they learn to potty train or talk. Children learn these things when they are ready and the age of success varies greatly with the child. To me, a child is not really potty trained until she has the skills necessary to take herself into the bathroom, pull down her pants, do it, and re-fasten her clothes.
We are fooling ourselves when we think we are teaching a child to read. The child cracks the code, and does a lot of memory work, just as he did when he was learning to speak. If you watch a child who is at the stage where he is ready and wants to learn to read, you will see him repeating words and sounds to himself, memorizing books that are read to him, and suddenly he goes from memorizing to really reading, seemingly overnight!
Then he can read everything, including newspapers, and big chapter books. All this will not happen until the child is ready, and forcing it may make him avoid reading for life. To me, just as in potty training, a child is not really a reader until he can pick up any piece of written material and read it. Rudolf Steiner believed that the child recapitulates human cultural evolution in his development.
At age the child is living through the period of human cultural evolution when human beings developed a written, pictorial alphabet, so it makes sense to develop the alphabet using pictures.
Human beings had to write something before they could read it. The child is still interested in fantasy and fairy tale, so we develop a picture alphabet using fairy tale stories.
From this grows the writing of simple sentences which they have made up. Reading English is mostly memory anyway. No reading is required in Waldorf schools until the end of grade 3, or later.
The Waldorf curriculum is based on the developmental interests of children, and does not require reading in the early grades. Material is presented by the teacher in dramatic, interesting ways and the children make use of the material in their play and hands-on dramatic and artistic activities. Waldorf schools have several rules-of-thumb to determine readiness for first grade in a child. Physical development:.
There are many other subtle indications of readiness in the child that a parent may be able to recognize. The human brain is divided in two halves, the right and the left side. The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body and the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body. In most people, the left side of the brain dominates and the person is right handed. However, in a significant number of people, the right side dominates and those people are left handed.
Some people do not have a dominant hand. It is often children who are either left-handed or who are ambidextrous who are also late readers. The two sides of the brain are connected by a bundle of nerves called the corpus callosum, a late developing organ in the brain.
This organ becomes complete somewhere around the age of seven, give or take a year or two. Forcing children to read too early often hurts their self-confidence and general passion for books. This research clearly indicates that kindergartens and preschools should focus on age-appropriate activities such as playing, exploring and socializing. Finland is a great example of this, given that its schools lead the world in education standards.
And kindergarten is focused mainly on play and socialization, there is no reading or writing. Additionally, their school days are not more than 4 hours long. English also has ways to spell 44 sounds! Many words have the same sounds but are spelled differently or contain silent letters. Learning such a language takes a long time and requires many abilities that develop over time. Being able to decode words is essential for beginning readers. Another important skill for beginning readers is learning to recognize words at a glance.
The Waldorf approach, in its own way, sets the foundation for reading starting in Kindergarten. If anything inspired you from this article about bringing literacy alive with the Waldorf approach — take it with you into your homeschool!
Bring art, music, games, and stories to your family. Enjoy your time with your children and relish those victories on the literacy adventure.
Jean Miller. Jean is the mother of three two boys and a girl - all grown now! With a Master of Arts in Teaching, she's taught in public and private schools, as well as tutored and homeschooled. She helps hundreds of parents cultivate creativity and connection at home through her online courses, coaching, planning tools, membership community, and in-person retreats. Homeschoolers are amazingly creative people. We are out of the box thinkers, and work to figure out how to best teach to each of our children.
It is best to create a custom homeschool schedule based on the needs of your family, not what others are do. Find out what to consider when doing this. Rebecca Devitt. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. How Waldorf Brings Literacy Alive. Share 0. Tweet 0. Pin 0. About the author. Visit My Site.
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