Some of the most frequent questions I receive are about homeschooling, so I thought I would delve into this topic a little more today and share some of my thoughts, how our homeschooling journey began and books/supplies that we have loved using in our homeschooling. And my new YouTube video where I chat more about homeschooling. :)

*“A child’s mind is not a container to be filled but rather a fire to be kindled.”*
*-Dorothea Brande*

I love this quote so much because I think it encapsulates everything I think learning should be. Learning should be encouraging the innate curiosity in every child and their sense of wonder and desire to do meaningful and beautiful work.

My journey into homeschooling began when I became pregnant with my first child. I think like most parents, lots of soul searching and researching took up a lot of my headspace (and it still does - never goes away!); deciding who you want to be as a parent, how to do the best job, what to prioritize and what will be most important were/are constantly circling thoughts.

Growing up, I was already somebody being deeply formed by music, literature and art, though I didn’t realize that as a child. I had a father who would recite poetry at the drop of a hat, be able to rattle off the year a certain song came out and tell me exactly where he was and what he was doing when the song came on the radio. Combine that with a house full of books, art and music instruments and you will get the picture.

If you were to take a walk through my parents’ house you would be astounded at the number of sacred art pieces everywhere. It’s like a museum. If you saw the number of books… you would probably faint! When I say that music, literature and art are deeply formative, I speak from experience.

My father who worked an extremely hard and dangerous blue collar job his entire life in NYC is probably one of the most intelligent people I know. He prioritized music for me and my siblings and made sure we got our piano lessons, our Irish music lessons, Irish dancing classes, language classes…and so many other things that would be so unexpected you wouldn’t believe.

My mother was born in the Irish speaking part of Ireland, known as the Gaeltacht. Growing up in this strong cultural community, music, especially sean-nós, story telling, and dance were integral parts of the community. I grew up listening to Irish music, the Irish language and spent much of my childhood visiting Ireland and being deeply impacted by the culture. I remember falling in love with the Irish harp at a young age and here I am all these years later teaching an Irish harp ensemble in New York City. I am just always in awe contemplating how the childhoods we have, deeply impact our adulthood in so many ways. In ways that are probably still even unknown to many of us.

It’s probably why I spend so much time speaking about the ways things were done in the past that were of true value; not because I over idealize the past, but because I think tremendous wisdom can be found from reflecting. I know that there was unspeakable hardship generations ago; but the point I make is that these generations came out resilient, hard working and appreciating the true things in life that are of value. We have started to lose so many of the good ways of our ancestors that made life truly beautiful and meaningful. The appreciation of good song, good story, good food and good company were what gave people purpose to get through the hardships of life with a smile on their face.

We have the blessings and luxury of many incredible things about modern life, and yet we have grown vastly disconnected, unhappy and anxious as a society. You think that running hot water and electricity would make most people happy, but the reality is that what makes people happy or contented is far more deeply rooted and value based. If we don’t have morality, ethics and appreciation of what is good, beautiful and meaningful it does not matter one iota how much money we have in the bank or the square footage of our house.

I want to share a quick story with you all. Since my father loved books he had collected quite a collection of the Classics by the time I was reading. We didn’t own a television for a large part of my childhood, so I spent a lot of time reading as a child. I would often pick up the Easton press leather bound books from the bookcases and peruse through them. Most of them I would usually put back after seeing that the storyline was not something I was grasping, until one day I picked up a book with a rather startling title called, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

I still remember to this day when I opened the book. I think I probably expected it to show pictures of mockingbirds in varying stages of demise or something else equally literal, but was pleasantly surprised to see the book started from the viewpoint of a child. A girl named Scout. I was pleased with my luck that I had landed on a children’s story (so I thought) and read the entire book within about a week. I had absolutely no idea what the book was truly about. I was probably about 9 or 10. I had loved it! I had interpreted the book purely through the innocent viewpoint of a child. I had taken from the book what I could, and what couldn’t be fully interpreted sat there in my mind till many years later…

The reason I share this story is because this is one of countless examples I had growing up where I was exposed to literature, music and art that was beyond what I could fully appreciate or understand at the time. But that wasn’t the point. It’s never the point. The point was that the seed was planted and I was given ownership of all this great work. I was formed by beauty without even knowing it.

I say all this, because I think if anything, childhood is so completely overlooked and under-respected. Everything has been dumbed down, sterilized, and demystified and it just completely misses the point. The point is to plant the seeds. Not to expect immediate results.

So coming back to where I started, when I was pregnant with my eldest, already having very set views on what I hoped to be like as a mother and how I wanted to raise our child, I was constantly looking for ways in which I could create a beautiful and magical childhood and be inspired.

I happened to come across someone who had sewed a gorgeous wool felt birthday crown for their toddler. I immediately thought it was such a thoughtful, heartfelt and truly unique thing to do and became curious about the tradition. I have always been someone who enjoys making things, even though I am no expert by any means, but it struck a chord with me.

As soon as I found out that these birthday crowns were called Waldorf birthday crowns I fell down the rabbit hole. I immediately appreciated the sense of beauty Waldorf education nurtures in everything. The simplest of acts and the most simple of work is done with such creativity and reverence and respect for childhood. There is also this standard of excellence that is very much aligned with Classical education in the way that it approaches learning. An emphasis on fairy tales, myths, legends, poetry, song and art are all pillars of Waldorf education. Great literature and art forms a basis on which to teach concepts and shape morality.

I resonated immediately with so many aspects of this philosophy and started to read so many books. Fast forward seven years and here I am having made 14 Waldorf birthday crowns, all inspired from that one woman sharing hers, for my own three children (a new crown for each birthday) and utilizing so many aspects of this educational philosophy in my own music method and our homeschooling journey.

Now I want to preface the rest of what I am saying in that we utilize many things from Waldorf education, but I am no Waldorf expert or teacher. These are are all my own perspectives and interpretations. I have come to discover that I like to blend many things because there are so many wonderful ideas, and methods - from Charlotte Mason to Montessori, and Classical education. So this is what you will find when I talk about our homeschooling journey. My only dogma is that what I teach be taught with a sense of wonder, beauty, creativity and respect.

When we “formally” began learning with my eldest, I started teaching letters (sounds and formation) in the Waldorf manner. Each letter of the alphabet is introduced with a story and pictorial drawing of the letter.

Developmentally this makes so much sense. Just think to Ancient Egypt and some of the first writings were pictorial- hieroglyphics. Children also develop their sense of meaning pictorially. Letters are abstract to them and bear no significance to them in their understanding of life. By making the letter into a picture, it gives the letter meaning. And the picture often comes from a story that inhabits the physical nature or qualities of the letter.

So what I did when we were learning our letters is I would often draw a picture on the chalkboard the night before, or sometimes my kids would help draw it too, and the picture would represent the new letter and the story that was being told for that day.

I particularly loved the Waldorf Alphabet book with it’s clever pictures and it was very inspiring for finding imagery for letters, along with Pinterest and so many blogs.

Here was the letter S for swan. I told the Irish legend, “The Children of Lir,” that is about four children that are turned into swans by their evil stepmother. It is a renowned legend in Irish mythology. You can even see that I tried to make the swan head and body into a S shape. This was often my goal to make the letter inside the actual picture. If you want an excellent telling of this story I highly recommend Tom Sweeney’s album “Irish Songs and Stories for Children.” The way he tells this story is an absolute delight.

Here is letter M for mountain which was an easy one to accomplish this goal with making the picture be the letter. I told the Grimm story, “Simeli Mountain,” which is also one of my favorite Grimm’s fairytales.

Now I can say without a shadow of a doubt that my child LOVED learning the letters this way. He already loves stories and would probably be content listening to me tell stories and read books to him all day long. This philosophy approached learning the letters in such an imaginative, creative and embodied way. The child becomes intimately familiar with the letter, in not just a purely functional phonics sound way, but in a way that captures their imagination. And isn’t that what learning is all about?

Now of course, hand in hand with starting formal letters and writing and phonics sounds, music has been integrated into everything we do. It has not only made learning easier, but more joyful, fun and connected.

Just today I was listening to my son sing London Bridge Is Falling Down while he was rummaging in the kitchen for a snack, and it goes without saying that a huge part of our homeschooling has been music and will continue to be music. Because music is intrinsically linked to everything; to our deepest memories, our visceral feelings and emotions and to how we express ourselves authentically. To remove music from learning or life, seems counterintuitive and most especially with children who learn in a holistic manner unknowingly.

The beauty of homeschooling is that we have the freedom to make childhood as musical, creative and connected as we want. Playing clapping games, singing nursery rhymes, learning musical concepts have all been the key to making learning to read not only easy, but joyful. I’ll continue sharing more about how music has become deeply integrated into how we live life and learn. I will also share more about specific curriculum and texts we selected for certain subjects, but I will save that for its own post.

Books and Materials We Use and Love

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through them, I may receive a small commission - at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my work!

Since there are so many items we use and it would take so long to list them all here, I am going to upload the lists via Bookshop.org (which supports local bookstores in your community) and my Amazon storefront (not ideal I know, but at least helps send me income and support my work). You can peruse the lists and drop any questions you have in the comments below. I’ll be digging into a lot of these books and supplies in future blog posts, so stay tuned for more insights about a lot of these books individually, soon!

Bookshop.org Booklist

(Books)

My Amazon Storefront

(Books + Supplies)

Music Supplies

(The Nestling Company, supporting a small mom owned shop in Maine.)

If I was to recommend two musical instruments to start learning with music it would be music bells and rhythm sticks. We use these almost every single day. So much musical learning can happen with these simple instruments and our voice of course! Click the photos to be sent directly to the item.

Use my links and code: magicalmusicmethod for $5.00 off the music bells, + free shipping in USA.

Bella Luna Toy Store

(Click each item for link.)

Stockmar Modeling Beeswax

We warm the beeswax in our hands while listening to a story or singing and often shape things we are singing or learning about - flowers, animals, buildings, you name it!

Watercolor Painting Board

This board is light and easy to clean and saves our wood table from water and paint (for the most part) and is perfect for wet on wet watercolor painting. We often tape our work to the board with artist tape and it then creates a lovely framed edge around the art piece!

Watercolor Paintbrush

This brush is really superb. It doesn’t shed terribly like a lot of other paintbrushes and I think the size is perfect for small hands.

Grapat Beehives

We have loved the Grapat set for math and have imagined lots of bees and honey with subtracting, adding, multiplying and dividing happening.

If you would like to see links to more resources and items I love, they can be found on the Links page of my website. I have lists of musical books, playlists, teaching knitting with song to children and favorite supplies and a link to my new YouTube channel where I will be delving into lots of topics, including homeschooling. Would love to see you over there as a subscriber. :)

Here is my latest video: