Concerns About Forest Kindergartens

Posted by Donna Simmons

I have worked with children, largely on the land (city farms, youth projects, farm visits–all sorts of outdoor adventures and play) for more than 35 years. Ten years ago, had you asked me if children could be outdoors too much…

Homeschooling in Extraordinary Circumstances

Posted by Donna Simmons

Over the years I have often heard people worry that they cannot homeschool because of extraordinary circumstances–illness or death in the family, a natural disaster, divorce, job loss and so on. Homeschooling is about the reality of human relationships–and to…

Homeschoolers First and Foremost!

Posted by Donna Simmons

I am coming to the end of creating our new (summer 2019) sixth grade curriculum and a few things have happened recently which have helped me recommit to homeschooling as homeschooling–as opposed to trying to create Waldorf school at home….

Geometry in 6th Grade

Posted by Donna Simmons

I am presently (late February 2019) working on the geometry section of our sixth grade syllabus. Thought folks might be interested in a peek…Here is an excerpt from its opening: In a Waldorf school, geometry holds a special place in…

The Wholeness of Waldorf Education

Posted by Donna Simmons

I am currently working on our Christopherus sixth grade syllabus (available mid-July 2019). This is the first new syllabus I have written in years. There are a number of reasons for this and one reason is that the Waldorf middle…

The Beauty of Astronomy

Posted by Donna Simmons

The following is the introduction to the Teacher’s Guide for our new publication, A Year of Astronomy, available to purchase mid January 2019. On the one hand, astronomy is such an obvious and simple subject to study—all one needs to…

A Quick Autumn Craft

Posted by Donna Simmons

I rarely put craft ideas on to my blog—there are so many other folks out there who are so creative and ‘crafty’ I generally leave it to them—but this craft has always been one of my favorites. It is so…

A Few Tips for Staying Sane During Breaks from Homeschool

Posted by Donna Simmons

Following on from my exuberant plea to let children be children I do of course realize that many parents find the near-chaos (and sometimes, downright chaos) of the summer months to be, well, unsettling, to say the least. What happens…

No School During the Summer!

Posted by Donna Simmons

That’s right—‘school’s out for summer’—including homeschool! (Alice Cooper eat your heart out– I bet most of you are too young to get the reference…sigh…!) Here in the US we are blessed with the phenomena of a wonderful loooong summer break…

Empathy and the teen

Posted by Donna Simmons

Just going through old blog posts and deleting dated or no longer relevant posts…and stumbled upon this goodie. I read it and was pleased to see that I still agree with what I originally wrote below! The following is an…