A Day in the Life of an Eight Year Old at Michael House School

Part Two

It’s 3:05pm. I’ve been working from home at my desk pretty much all day, so you can imagine my mood. My hips are stiff, my bum is numb and I’m desperate to do a back flip off my chair, but I’m smiling, ‘cause this is my favourite time of day.

I anticipate the soft warm thud of the car door followed by a scuttle of feet in the distance and BAM! In she bursts like ‘Jack-in-a Box’… “mummyy mummmyyyyy!” I get the feeling she has something to tell me.  Before I can take a breath to say, “yes dear?” She pulls me into her magical world taking me this way and that, wrapping me in her roots, throwing leaves in my face and tickling my ears with sticky sweet stories…

“Mummy, we were playing ‘wolves’ on our walk today, Zade and Lily were wolves and I got lost and” …she gulps down her water and pants like a little cub. “…it was soooooo scary cos I reeeeally felt lost and it was like I was actually being hunted down!” She flashes me a lupine grin, and then pants a little more until she gets her breath back.

While I gaze in awe at her with my proud mummy-smile she begins to scratch her head. “You know mummy, I often wonder… if I had decided to go a different way,  erm you know like if I went in through the front door instead of the back door, would the same things happen?” Tea spurts out of my mouth in reaction to the profundity of her questioning. She’s referring to ‘Determinism’ right?

She looks at me amused and confused, her chin pushed back into her neck, one eyebrow up, one down as if to say “mum you’re being weird, again!” I feel like she’s thrown a bag of soft sparkly stars between my eyes. One minute she’s talking about playing ‘wolves’ and being hunted down and the next minute she’s asking very significant philosophical questions about whether her deliberations, choices, and actions are necessary links in the causal chain that brings something about!

After brief consideration as I stroked my tea-drenched chin, I decided not to get her involved in anything too intellectual, even though she started it! I realised how brilliant this was and how I will be eternally grateful for the education Michael House School gave her in her early years. The first four years she spent in Kindergarten from the age of three was all about encouraging free-will, by allowing her to make ‘free-choices’ based on her own judgments and learn through experiencing causality. She has learned through reverent imitation not incessant instruction, in a calm, peaceful, predictable and unhurried environment and her learning has simply gained meaning by its relevance to her life. So it’s no surprise to me now that through her own natural contemplation she is comfortably starting to consider these philosophical concepts.

So she’s done with her deep reasoning for now and appears to be bouncing up and down on her massive trampoline in the blazing sunshine. I’m not at all concerned she’ll get too hot because she’s already stripped off to her pants and has created her very own refreshing rain storm, by somehow attaching the garden hose to one of the poles and it’s spraying up into the air and over her, as she leaps like a frog in a giant water-feature!

 

It’s reaching teatime, so after towelling down and jumping into her jimjams we decide as it’s Friday and getting late we’ll have a picnic on the floor. So she carefully lays out a blanket and sets places for us all, even taking care to make a little flower decoration in the middle. As we munch our grub Cassiopeia giggles to herself and scrunches up her nose making a little grunting sound. “What are you doing little pig?” I say. “No mummy, I’m being a hedgehog. This reminds me of kindergarten”, she says with a warm glow.   “I was just remembering one time, my friends and I made a den and played hedgehogs, it was so exciting because we were allowed to eat our lunch inside it!”

Tucking her in after stories, I sing the song I have always sung her, ending with “So close your eyes and feel the world turn around if you’re not lost I guess that makes you found”. She strokes my face and holds my hand gently all soft and warm. “You know, I do still like playing hedgehogs sometimes, but I much prefer being a wolf ‘cause they get to explore more don’t they mummy.“   She snuggles up and her eyes gently shut concurrently as I close her curtains on the bright moonlit sky.

A Day in the Life of an Eight Year Old at Michael House School

Part One

7:30am. It’s breakfast time and we’re sat together at the table. As usual Cassiopeia is wide-eyed and sparky, barely finding moments in her loquacious enthusiasm to munch her cereal. Me? Well, at least one eye is almost open and I am listening, I am. I really am… “mmmm…. Yes Cass … mmmm zzzzz” You must bear in mind that my eight year old has been up since six this morning preparing for her school day and has only just woken me up with a cup of tea.

Cassiopeia is pulling faces into her spoon and singing a song in German about a man who gets up, gets dressed and goes out for a walk with his wife, while I head for the kitchen. I notice her sandwich box full and ready on the side with three very long beautifully finger-knitted colourful threads of wool. What that’s all about I don’t know!

8:00am news: “Today thousands of people are keeping their children off school in protest against SATS tests….” I turn up the volume in interest and pour another coffee.

“Mummy!” Cassiopeia exclaims, “you’re not keeping me off school are you?” with a look on her face to suggest she’d been told chocolate no longer existed. “No darling” I replied. “Some children are staying off school because they are not happy about doing tests”. “Tests?” she said scrunching up her nose still peering into her funny spoon reflection. “What’s ‘tests’? Is it like when you test whether you food is too hot to eat?” I smiled in adoration as we gathered our things to leave, whilst feeling horribly sick at the thought of the thousands of kids that have that word “TEST” stamped on their head, glaring at them every morning as they peer into their spoon.

On the way she checks her bag, “all set!” she says with a sparkle in her eye. “What ya put on your sandwiches today then petal?” I say. “Soft cheeeeese” she replies licking her lips, “and I wanted cucumber on it but I put it in a little separate box though so it didn’t go soggy, I can put it on when I eat it later”. “Ace idea Cass!” I say, thinking to myself, “why on earth have I never thought of that? All those years of soggy sarnies!” She pulls her three carefully made wool bits out of her pocket. “So what’s that all about then?” I ask. “Well I’m playing doggy families with my friends and I’m daddy dog so I have made some special leads for my puppies”. “Oh ofcourse, I should have known!” I say with a giggle.

The bell rings and Cassiopeia’s school day begins. She runs in with the nine other children in her class, forgetting to say goodbye or give her ol’ mum a hug. She’s on a mission!

Now, I have to say I shall struggle to give you a detailed account of her day after this. The reason being that she rarely tells me what she’s been up to because she’s usually too busy focusing on the ‘now’, not what has been or what’s next. Despite been given feedback from her wonderful class teacher that she has in fact become quite a competent reader since beginning to learn her alphabet at the age of seven, all I really know and want to know is that she comes home with muddy hands and grass stained knees, rosy cheeks and a massive smile. Today she happened to burst through the door holding a beautiful crown of flowers she had made for me all by herself at break time; not a group activity controlled by an adult, but purely created through her own will, her independent search for materials and desire to create something beautiful.

Cassiopeia’s Waldorf education since three years old has been so rich and beautiful it’s like trying to explain how watching a sunrise makes you feel. It’s deep and warm and bright. My daughter has learnt all her amazingly independent skills and most importantly who she is and how she fits in her world by simply being allowed the space and time to explore.

During tea Cassiopeia entertains us with a Native American tale she remembered from her lesson, which must have lasted as long as it took me to eat a whole baked potato! Then makes plans of how she is going to finish her knitted piggy in her handwork lesson tomorrow and she can’t wait to be daddy dog again.