Subsistence Farming - Hawaii

i have been trying to absorb and assimilate as much information as i can on waldorf-inspired high school. lots of information and i am keeping myself from forwarding all sorts of things i think are interesting to you. it is too early and you might get overwhelmed! but i have such an urge to share all i am learning and inspired by with you.

i have two topics i want to put out there now and mull them over together.
1- where on the scale of unschooling as one extreme and public school and the other extreme, do we want to be?
2- how can we create a weekly schedule that is serving all of us? (i am considering ideas like 3 weeks on and 1 week off or for special projects, teaching in blocks so that there could be for you 3 weeks all mornings and then nothing another 4-8 weeks. i also want to create a schedule that will be workable for other students who want to take a particular block or an ongoing class.

head, heart and hands is the theme in waldorf education that this one home schooling mom used as the foundation for teaching. meaning you need to speak equally to the student’s head, heart and hands and have them all activated for each lesson. i liked that.

i also like the waldorf daily structure of a main lesson block in the morning that lasts for around 3 weeks and then in the afternoons are the classes are the ones that are continuous (like grammar, language, art, music and math–even though there might be a math main lesson block for geometry or a language arts block on comedy and tragedy).

here is a sample of main lesson blocks for 9th grade for one waldorf school (they are all pretty close to this).

3-4 weeks in the mornings of each of these ten main lesson blocks (you would be teaching the 5 science blocks plus language arts and creative writing, i will be teaching the other 5 blocks and art, life skills, scott will be teaching math and lauren will do independent study for spanish and horsemanship.

-literature (comedy and tragedy, short story or american literature)

-chemistry (organic)

-history (american history)

-regional studies (africa)

-aesthetics (history through art and drama)

-life science (human biology 1)

-physics (thermodynamics)

-physics (2&4 stroke engines)

-earth science (geology paleontology)

then the afternoon classes (2-3 per day, 1 hr each) would be something like:
-math 2x each week
-language arts (the grammar stuff) 2x each week
-foreign language 2x each week
-art (drawing, basket weaving) 2x per week
-music (hopefully voice) 2x per week
-phys ed (hula, horse riding) 2x per week
-work and service (working with the local vet)
-homework time

thats probably enough for now. i just wanted to give you some things to consider.