This page is dedicated in loving memory to Opal Whitely.
“This is only the beginning Princess.”
A beautiful inspiration.
I have been teaching all ages over a span of ten years now. I have taught in primary, secondary and college educational environments. Half of that time I have specialised in teaching English and more recently I have stumbled upon Rudolf Steiner pedagogy and Waldorf teaching.
The more I undertook the training, the more I realised that this is what I believe in and this is what I have always incorporated into my lessons to begin with.
Steiner teaching is holistic and to describe it in a nutshell is to say that it focuses on the pupil, mind, body and soul.
The following are short lesson plans, some of which can be done in five minutes during class. They are aimed at teachers but of course, parents may like to use them also.
I would very much like to hear from anyone who uses these ideas and also, lesson plans will be added to the site throughout the year. If you have any you would like to contribute, please get in touch.
If you are a teacher, and you want to expand the world of your children who are probably constantly working towards exams and being bombarded with homework because the government are demanding numbers and figures, why not take five minutes out here and there and get them doing some of these tasks. They cover mind, body and spirit…
Be Yourself
Breath
Sit down. Focus on breathing in and out. However long you choose to do this is perfect.
*Encourages calmness and relaxation
Body and feeling awareness
Wherever you are now, have a look at yourself. Look at your toes, feet, ankles, legs. How do they feel? Focus and feel them. What can you feel?
Look at your stomach. What is your back doing? Your neck? Feel your shoulders and arms and hands.
*Encourages awareness of the body
Thinking
Stop. What are you thinking? Pay attention to your thoughts.
*Encourages self awareness
Heart
Dance or move to some music you like. Stop. Can you feel your heart beat? Listen. Your body is speaking to you.
What does it say?
*Increases knowledge, gratitude and understanding of the heart in general
Emotions
Stop. How do you feel? Hungry? Happy? Tired?
Thank your body for its message.
*Encourages self awareness
Geography, Earth Science, Environmental Study
Listen to nature
Go into a safe place with the grass, trees, stones and wind. Stop and listen for as long as you like. What did the grass say to you? Pick up a stone and hold it in your hand. Can you feel anything? Can you hear the wind? What do you think its saying?
*Creates a relationship between nature and the child
Perception of nature
Go outside and find something that interests you. A rock, a leaf or a tree. Touch it. Smell it. Look closely at it. Listen to it. Is it hot or cold? Is it fresh and green with life or brown and dry with autumn sleep? Throw it. How does it move? Describe it with one word. What do you have in common with it? Think of at least two things.
*Discourages thoughts of separation from nature and those around the child
Being in nature
Find some mud or a puddle! Go play! Who can get the dirtiest?!
*Lets kids be kids!
Connecting to nature
In warm weather, walk barefoot on grass. How do you feel?
*Connects child to their ancestors and nature. People didn’t wear shoes a long time ago so there was no barrier between themselves and the Earth.
Singing and dancing in nature
Go into a private place in nature. Sing or dance in wide open spaces (or imagine it). How do you feel?
*Promotes freedom of spirit
Nature’s wisdom
Sit by a wise old tree. Imagine what it must have seen in its long life. War? Battle? What must the land have looked like when the tree was just a young plant? Close your eyes and let the tree tell you.
*Encourages respect for nature
Gratitude for nature
The next time you go out into your garden or in the park, leave a small gift for the faeries, trees and grass, to say thank you for sharing the beauty of their space with you. Leave a crystal or fruit or a strand of your hair. They especially like little cakes and chocolate! Be careful not to leave any rubbish behind.
*Teaches children to perceive and be grateful for the beauty of nature
Seeing nature
Go outside to find a space that seems welcoming and then see how many angles you can view it from. Lie on the ground. Look left and right. Climb a tree and look down. Look at the trunk up close and then from a distance. Crouch. Stand. Look into branches from below. How does what you see change from place to place? How do you think the animals, birds, plants and insects around you see the same place?
*Encourages the child to look at things from other/s points of view.
Elemental awareness
Wash your hands. Really feel the water cleansing them. How does it make you feel? Thank the water for its refreshment.
Eat a piece of fruit. Take your time to chew it. How does it taste? How do you feel? Thank the Earth for the apple.
Take a deep breath in and then out. How does it feel? Thank the air for life.
Close your eyes and imagine the sun shining on you, or go to a window and feel it. Thank the sun for its firey warmth.
*Encourages awareness of the elements in everyday life and how they keep us alive
Seasonal alter
Keep an alter space dedicated to the changing of the seasons. Encourage the children to bring in nature’s treasures to place on the special alter to honour the change in seasons.
*Creates an awareness of the seasons and what happens to nature during that time
Qualities of nature
Imagine that you are a tree. Express the emotions in your posture and face. How would you move? What would you say? Imagine that you are the sun, the wind and the ocean. (The children will express the qualities they think the sun etc possess. For example an ocean is calm – but there is no wrong or right answer. Let them express what they feel).
*Encourages children to be able to relate the qualities of nature with their own qualities
Rhythms in nature
Our bodies have their own drum beat. Sometimes you are hungry. Sometimes you are full. Sometimes you are happy. Sometimes you are sad. Sometimes you are awake. Sometimes you are asleep.
How do we know that nature also has her own drum beat? What rhythms can you see in nature?
*To relate their own bodily rhythms to those in nature
Crystals
Take a crystal in your hands. It can offer you a gift. What do you think it is? More happiness? Love? Health? Confidence?
(Never try to enforce the ‘true’ answer on them. Let them have their own experience)
*Encourages intuition and receiving from nature
Overcoming Fear
Choosing how to feel
Write a list, make a voice recording or a video of the things that make you feel afraid. Now go through the list and imagine the details of these things happening to you. Now focus on sending love into it.
*Encourages child to see that they can change a negative perception into a more positive one
Throw fear away
Pour your fear into a stone and through it as far away from you as you can.
Pour your fear into a helium balloon and let go of it, watching your fear fly away.
*Symbolically releasing fear. Encourage them to be active in doing something about negative emotions
Protecting yourself
Whenever you feel afraid for yourself or for someone else, you can use your circle of protection. In your mind imagine white light in the shape of an enormous circle and you can put things inside it that you want to protect. Even yourself!
*Helps the child to feel more empowered when they are afraid.
Achieving
Dream Board
What gifts do you want from life? If you apply yourself you can be anything you want to be. Make a dream board to stay focused on your goals.
Get lots of old magazines and cut out the words and pictures that you feel represents your hopes for your future or for yourself. Stick them onto A3 paper. Hang it up in a place where you can see it everyday.
*Encourages intentions for the future. Ideal for secondary school children.
Magick Box
Teacher; decorate a box/shoe box or get the kids to. Put a small slit at the top. Get the class to write or draw pictures of things that will make them happy or things they want to achieve. They post it into the box at the beginning of the year and look back on it at the end to see what has come true!
*Encourages focus on personal goals and achievement
Magick balloons
Get a helium balloon for each child or get small groups to share one. They write/draw their wishes for their future. Release balloons together. See the balloons flying away and wishes being sent out to the universe.
*Ideal for young children
History/Literature
Archetypes for children
The following is a program that you can implement in class. You can choose elements of it and expand on parts. It has been successfully used across schools in inner city London thanks to Tyson Joseph.
The underpinning idea behind the program is to allow kids to connect to their personal archetype. By using reflective consciousness and using a simple set of questions this would allow kids to see that the hero’s that they admire are just untapped parts of their own soul that are awaiting a fuller expression.
Following on from this is a coaching program which you would be able to implement by teaching them the art of storytelling, this would be a simple tool that would allow the students to really internalise their insights and develop a way of life around growth and loving who they really are, with the focus on developing the mindset for growth and full expression.
Course Aims
- Provide underachieving and disruptive students an opportunity to learn the art of storytelling, allowing them to understand themselves and enhance their behaviour
- To allow the students to connect with the hero of their own life, by writing the story of how their life will be. In the process of this the students will identify the qualities and the traits that they need to develop now in order to be the person that they want to be.
- To help students to set and achieve goals using a holistic program, where true learning is embarked on all three levels of the human being: mental, spiritual and physical
- To teach a system of spiritual practice, that is engaging and exciting.
How it works
Question 1:
Imagine that you could invite a group of your favourite heroes round for dinner, these people could be living, dead, real or fictional charcters, they can be anyone, list the people:
Question 2:
Describe the qualities of these people, list them
Loving, kind, wise, disciplined, powerful, committed etc
Question 3:
Imagine now that you have been invited round to dinner and when you get there, you are surrounded by the most annoying people that you can imagine. Describe the characteristics of the people around the table.
Lazy, ignorant, etc…..
Reflective consciousness
For kids this bit can be really beautiful, for some adults too, but from the feedback I have had from the schools that are using this part of the program it seems to work really well.
The heroes that they list are- who they really are. What we’re looking at we’re looking with. I normally frame this as” ok guys this was a trick question, your subconscious mind knows this. It knows that what I'm really asking you is, to describe your higher self, describe who you would be if you were living at your best.”
The bottom list of qualities are the things that you do that stop you from being your higher self, the bottom qualities are your lower self.
Once this is set up, the next thing that I do is to get the kids to list as many ways in their life that they use their higher qualities, this is crucial for their ability to really internalize and connect with their higher self.
They have to find at least a hundred ways in which they use or could use their higher selves.
Once they have started with this, at this point is where I would bring in the spiritual practice. In order to do this I would get them to visualize and imagine their hero self, imagining themselves as their hero in their day.
Through the teaching of the science of this, mental rehearsal (visualization) bring in the facts that all of the top sports stars, now train at a 70/30 ratio, 70 percent of their training is now being done as a visualization versus the 30 percent that is the actual training.
We practice what we become.
Now the next part is where the beauty and magick comes in…
The project for the kids is a hybrid of a journal and a story.
The students are given the task of writing their own superhero story. They write out a heroic story in which they save the world. Doing your magick you make sure that their hero story includes the spiritual practice that you want them to use.
So in my world my heroes charge up their powers through meditation. So during the meditation practice I would get them to anchor into the earth and feel the energy from the planet making them stronger.
So in their story you could find a way to connect the spiritual practice as an exciting and engaging thing and in the process they are essentially channeling their future higher self
At the end of the story the students would do a self evaluation form.
See below
Needs Analysis and Action Plan
Name: ...........................................................................
Date: ............................................................................
- What are the qualities of your inner hero?
- What do you need to work on or practice that will allow you to become more like your hero?
- If you could be better at any one thing what would it be?
- How does your inner villain try to stop you?
- How would your hero over come your challenges?
- If you could do one thing that you think would really help someone else, what would it be?
- What are the three things that you could do on a daily basis that would allow you to use your hero skills
…. Add your own questions also if you wish…
The next stage to internalize what they have learnt is to have the students keep a 30 day journal, it’s a secret powerful journey in which they detail how it is to use the ‘hero training’ for 30 days.
In doing this we give the Kids an opportunity to channel their higher self for 30 days.
A journal is an extended project and would allow you over time to build in key principles and spiritual practice.
Module 1:
The heroes journey:
Here we will look at your life story. Everybody in the world has a story to tell, whether you are David Beckham, or the local corner shop owner. A hero is someone who decides to overcome something in their life Great stories are made by great heroes. Here we will look at the story of your future too.
This module of the course will give you the chance to re-write your life story by deciding who you now intend and want to be. You will be using the ‘aladdin’ structure to express yourself.
Module 2:
Conflict Expression:
Here we look at how to successfully manage conflict.
Using examples from the media and ancient stories, TV icons comic book heroes etc.
Looking at the ways in which conflict can be healthy, you will learn how to identify and then pursue a successful outcome. Here we will use role-plays to demonstrate the different psychological approaches that can be used to navigate problematic situations. Here we will use practice role plays to see how our inner heroes would deal with our own conflicts, here our kids would write out after acting out alternative ways in which they could deal with conflict. At the end of which time they would meditate on what they had learnt.
Module 4:
State management:
We are constantly being bombarded with images of people displaying anger in the media.
What the TV does not always show is the consequences of not controlling your anger. Anger is a natural response and is healthy if balanced. Babies often display periods of anger when they are hungry or need attention of some sort. As we grow older we unfortunately are not taught how to cultivate our anger and work with it, so very often we find ourselves having outbursts that we later regret. Such as lashing out at family members or close friends.
Here you will learn the techniques that all the worlds leading footballers use when the going gets tough, how to manage your anger and let anger and passion work for you, rather than against you.
At this point our kids are leaning an advanced from of forgiveness, you would teach them a powerful releasing technique like the Sedona technique. Something that has a physical movement. Super important.
Module 5:
The Journal:
This final part of the program is getting our kids to make a vow of the hero. They make a plan for how they could practice the hero ways in their own life and then through the journaling they can follow through. Within their journal would be a checklist of spiritual practice.
Visualization – power sight
Meditation – turbo charge
Etc.
Disclaimer
Please exercise common sense when administering these tasks by supervising and guiding the children at all times. I am not responsible for anyone else’s negligence. In carrying out these tasks, you are agreeing to be the responsible person in charge of the children’s health and safety.