Sunday, August 9, 2009

Just a wee pet peeve of mine...

A HUGE part of waldorf education, any holistic education is the level of involvement children have in MAKING. They make their recorder bags, they make their readers, they make their main lesson books, they pound nails into wood to make times table circles, they make rulers when they learn to use them, they make simple computers as preparation for using them. They make the tools they'll use in learning about life through practical activities and they give them a tangible reason to use those tools.

Holistic education promises an end to worksheets and learning simple fractions with plastic pieces of pizza pie. It promises that your child will learn about the cycle of life through growing plants and tending to animals rather than cut and paste sequencing activities or puzzles.

So it drives me nuts when I see people selling math gnomes or times tables circles on ETSY. I don't care if it is handmade. It isn't HOMEmade. You have stolen that experience from a child.

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