Not Feeling Guilty!

My new personal goal is avoiding Waldorf guilt. People joke about Waldorf guilt but it is real, let me assure you. Because W. is so tied up in the healthful development of the child, you believe that if you do it incorrectly you are actually injuring your child for life or, at the very least, keeping them from reaching their full potential. I believe that your best try at Waldorf is better for your children than the public schools so why beat yourself up? But it's easy to say that and hard to put it into practice. I decided at the 11th hour to begin FD with Natalie and my day has been a frantic rush to look through all my books, get organized, and begin. And, since Natalie has been doing her letters in school, she is saying things like, that makes an X and, hey, there are straight lines in my name. But she did have an excellent lesson and we went through all the things that hands do, like Live Ed suggests, as well as finding straight lines and curves all around us (which she really enjoyed) and practice in the air and with feet. Then we did some practice on paper and I could see her getting tired (her curves were starting to wiggle) and so we did the main lesson book page before she got too too tired and then she went downstairs to play with Leah. I told her that I was teaching her drawing as a special treat and she was happy with that. But the Guilt Monster definitely kicked in when she drew a curve and said, that's a letter! That's the letter C. Because in a perfect world she wouldn't know that yet. She does. And hey, that's OK. I was in such a rush to get her set up and organized at Tidewater I completely forgot about Form Drawing; otherwise, we would have done it in September.

Tomorrow is our first running form -- the "bridge". For this we will do The Three Billy Goats Gruff.