Resource Teacher's Developmental Exercise Manual

Waldorf Resource Teacher Training Program

Association for a Healing Education

Wirebound

$24.00

What an amazing resource this little book is! It holds the instructions for 33 developmental exercises and their variations, discusses what the purpose of each exercise is, how often to do it, what sorts of observations are helpful and includes a space for your notes.

Additionally there is a beautiful and highly useful introduction by Mary Jo Orestito offering insight into the nature, origins and goals of the exercises and a section on "Teacher Tips for Many Ages and Various Situations."

The potential of this simple tool nearly takes my breath away -- with it, teachers and parents will have at hand the means to help their students and children move into the world more firmly, develop their capacities more fully. The Association for a Healing Education is to be commended for bringing this exceptional resource into print.

Contents:

• Dedication to Ruth Nilsson
• Introduction by Mary Jo Oresti
• Teacher Tips for Many Situations
• Blind Man's Bluff Forms
• Run, Hop Numbers
• Animals Out West
• Clogging Numbers with the Feet
• Form Drawing Homework
• Group Letters in Space
• Memory and Concentration
• Multiplicaiton Table Forms in Movement
• Blind Walk
• Nature Creep
• 20 Creeping Games
• much, much more
• Bibliography

Understanding Children's Drawings
Tracing the Path of Incarnation

Michaela Strauss

Hardbound

$30.00

Michaela Strauss's landmark book was first published in 1978, and sold out so quickly that if you blinked, you missed it. The same thing happened to the 1988 reprinting. Since that time, the only copies available have been used copies handed down, or worn out xerox copies. Which is tragic, considering the wealth of wisdom Strauss shares about how to see children's developmental progress and well-being in the way they create their drawings.

Happily, we now have another edition available, this time in a format that makes the picture presentation a bit clearer. Hopefully, it will stay available long enough to impart Strauss's wisdom to another generation of parents and teachers.

It is a deep pleasure to be able to offer this wonderful book to you - it is the sort of book that, once read, can live in your heart and awareness through your life.

The Extra Lesson
Movement, Drawing and Painting Exercises to Help Children with Difficulties in Writing, Reading and Arithmetic

Audrey E. McAllen

Softbound

$31.95

Audrey McAllen's treasured resource has been revised and expanded -- the result is a work of depth and insight which is even more practical and valuable than before.

This edition of The Extra Lesson gives careful and thorough instructions for the remedial drawing, painting, and movement exercises developed by McAllen. The difficulties students experience when struggling to learn writing, reading, and arithmetic are addressed with specific activities -- the results? Students in both elementary and high school discover new relationships to themselves and the world, and find their path beyond the obstacles they face.

This latest edition of The Extra Lesson gives many more insights into the difficulties children are experiencing now. In it you are shown how to check for these disruptions, and how to remediate them, in far greater detail than before. The book has now increased in breadth and shows the depths from which this work has come. It is clear to me, having communicated with Audrey over the years, that no one else has come close to developing a program so universal in its application and yet holding such deep spiritual truths and insights.

Lalage Craig
Institute for Learning Difficulties
Sydney, Australia

Reading Children's Drawings
The Person, House and Tree Motifs

Audrey E. McAllen

Softbound

Full color and black & white illustrations

$23.95

There is so much helpful material, examples, insight and inspiration between the covers of this book that it is hard to know where to begin. Audrey McAllen shares the fruit of her lifelong study of children and their remedial needs and gifts us with a book that, in the hands of loving parents, dedicated teachers and able healthcare practitioners, is sure to make children's lives better.

This is the book we have all been waiting for with bated breath. What an amazing achievement this book is! Audrey has made links to health, illness, and the development of the child from her observation of children's drawings and of the child. Audrey has an amazing gift to bring so many aspects of anthroposophy into a very practical application to help us better understand the child.

Lalage Craig, M.Ed.
President of the International Extra Lesson Association

Sleep
An Unobserved Element in Education

Audrey E. McAllen

Softbound

$23.95

Back in print!!

One of the first things Rudolf Steiner told the original Waldorf School teachers was: teach the children to breathe and sleep properly. Audrey McAllen, a remedial teacher of no small genius, can be said to have devoted her life's work to this directive.

In The Extra Lesson, she developed therapeutic exercises for children and diagnostic tools for teachers -- the goal: to help children integrate more fully into their bodies and develop their capacities to the utmost. It is in this way, not through superficial and inappropriate breathing exercises, that the breath becomes rhythmic and regulated in a child's developing body.

In Sleep, McAllen goes on to look at the inner significance of children's sleep, particularly its relationship to education. McAllen notes that children take their daytime experiences over into their sleep life; from that she offers both insight and artistic exercises to help that sleep be everything it should be for the child. She also offers meditative material for adult contemplation, for who but adults create the world our children live in?

This is a deep and profound work which addresses an aspect of life that is often hidden and overlooked, but is nonetheless at the heart of our children's well-being.

Take Time
Movement exercises for parents, teachers and therapists of children with difficulties in speaking, reading, writing and spelling

Mary Nash-Wortham
and Jean Hunt

Softbound

$28.95

To my mind no therapist or remedial teacher should be without this edition by their side.

( Dr. Béve Hornsby PhD, MSc, MEd, MSCT
Consultant Speech Therapist
and Clinical Psychologist
From the Foreword )

Take Time has been used in Waldorf schools by Extra Lesson teachers for years and is regarded with love and gratitude by everyone who has benefited from this wonderful marriage of curative eurythmy and speech therapy. It is recommended for by all the major advisory and learning support organizations in the UK and many more in other English-speaking countries. Because it is highly readable, it has also become one of the most popular resources for parents.

The authors of Take Time tackle some of the root causes behind difficulties in speaking, reading, writing and spelling, especially where there is a lack of co-ordination, rhythm and timing.

The innovative movement exercises, based on curative eurythmy, and the other activities described in Take Time can be tailored specifically to individual situations. This feature has resulted in the enormous popularity of the book, especially for use by parents. It is recommended by all centres concerned with dyslexia, dyspraxia and other difficulties.

Take Time features:

• 'Pointers' to clarify areas of difficulty, including timing and rhythm, direction, spatial orientation and movement, sequencing, laterality and fine motor control needed for clear speech and successful writing and reading.
  
• general exercises for co-ordination and body awareness.
  
• specific exercises to help with particular areas of difficulty and individual situations.
  
• details of useful resource equipment, books and contact addresses.

Phonic Rhyme Time
A unique collection of phonic rhymes for precise practice in speaking and reading

Mary Nash-Wortham

Spiral bound

$39.95

An outstanding resource for class and remedial education teachers, speech therapists, homeschooling parents and ESL teachers!

Here we have hundreds of rhymes, each of which concentrates on one specific sound. When repeated as an exercise, they train the mouth to form the sound correctly. Or, use them as a creative way to expand vocabulary or to learn to correctly spell words that sound similarly.

The first part of the book describes how speech sounds are produced and illustrates consonant and vowel positions. The wide range of rhymes and verses means it is suitable for both children and adults, including those learning English as a foreign language.

Mary Nash-Wortham has extensive as a Speech and Language Therapist. She is co-author along with eurythmist Jean Hunt of Take Time, widely used in remedial and extra lesson settings for children with learning difficulties.

Snip, Snap, Snout!

A Waldorf Reader for Third Grade Extra Lesson Work

Text by Arthur M Pittis

Illustrations by Ausa M Peacock

Hardbound

$8.00

By third grade, if a student is still having significant struggles with the written word, extra lesson work is often recommended. Snip, Snap, Snout! is perhaps the best remedial reading book ever written. Stories are kept short, but they are never dull or contrived. The trained eye can catch that each story focuses on different word groups, sounds, punctuation and grammar, but all this is done so very artistically that someone who didn't know this was a book of stories for remedial reading would never notice. As with the other grade 3 readers, this one recapitulates the grade 2 curriculum of fables and saints, and does so with grace, charm and warmth.

The Left-hander's Handbook
The guide for parents and teachers to help left-handed children succeed in a right-handed world

Diane G. Paul

Highly Commended by the British Medical Association Book Competition

Softbound

$28.95

Most left-handers perform most activities with little difficulty most of the time. But left-handers are sometimes at a real disadvantage, for example, handwriting problems can have a serious effect on career opportunities. So left-handed children do need help - and parents and teachers need guidance.

This handbook defines and explores reasons for different types of left-handedness. It has a major section on handwriting, with contributions from Dr Jean Alston, Audrey McAllen, Dr Rosemary Sassoon and Prue Wallis Myers, and it gives instructions for crafts and music, sources of equipment and suggestions for projects.

Diane G Paul is a well-known writer, broadcaster ard lecturer, whose research (funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) gave rise to this Handbook. The book is an essential resource for anyone responsible for left-handed children and contains advisory Guidelines which have been adopted as an educational resource for teachers by the NFER.

Education as Preventative Medicine
A Salutogenic Approach

Michaela Glöckler, MD

Softbound

$26.95

How and when something is taught affects the student's disposition towards health or illness for life. The whole Waldorf curriculum is built on an understanding of the development and physiology of the child. … The healthy development of the physical body is the basis for a healthy unfolding of the soul-spiritual individuality of the child. Therefore it is of great importance that doctors and teachers work together.

- Astrid Schmitt-Stegmann

Dr. Glöckler has brought together for the first time in English research and insights into the relationship between how we educate children and the health they enjoy both as children and later as adults. This is a book to read deeply, to ponder over. The application of these insights in our teaching and working with children has the power to resonate far into the future, creating a healthier world as it does.

In addition to Dr. Glöckler's insights, Education as Preventative Medicine also includes contributions by:

Johannes Bockemühl, Ernst Bücher, Wolfgang Göbel, Wolfgang Kersten, Daniela Greif, Mariana Kayser-Springorum, Armin Husemann, Gisbrt Husemann, Helmut v. Kügelgen, Karl-Reinhard Kummer, Hans Müller-Wiedemann, and Maria Theresia Pehm.

Being Human
Diagnosis in Curative Education

Karl König

Softbound

$18.95

Karl König's point of view is that "disabilities" are exaggerated forms of ways we all use to cope with life. He presents the outline of a comprehensive child anthropology for diagnosis in the areas of motor disturbances, sensory disturbances, right and left, the world of language and the gestalt of the child. Finally he introduces us to convulsive disorders, epilepsy and hysteria.

This unique book is of value not only to those working in special education but to anyone interested in the dynamics of all human development.

Animals in Translation
Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior

Temple Grandin
and Catherine Johnson

Softbound

$15.00

I've read and heard many reviews of this remarkable new book by Temple Grandin. Depending on the reviewer's focus, Animals in Translation has been seen as a groundbreaking revelation of animal behavior and awareness and/or an inspiring revelation of the world seen from within autism. It is both these things, but in my opinion it is also something else - I experienced it as one deep and brilliant insight after another into human nature itself, not just autistic human nature, but all human nature.

Grandin's insight into animals is so uncluttered and straightforward that she penetrates into the recesses of the human heart as well. The descriptions she gives of the sources of many animal behaviors apply unswervingly as well to the things hidden in the depths of the human soul that well up as surprising, irrational or inconsistent reactions.

If you work with children, this book has more to offer you than I can describe in the space of one review. I can, however, give you an example which I think goes to the heart of how this book can be used on behalf of other people, especially young people. On page 145, Temple begins a discussion of Fear-Driven Aggression. She has previously described Assertive Aggression and is now contrasting it with aggression resulting from fear:

Fear-driven aggression causes so much violence and destruction in the animal and human worlds that I've often asked myself, What is rage for?

Why do we have rage circuits at all?

When you look at animals living in the wild, the answer is simple. Rage is about survival, at the most basic brute level. Rage is the emotion that drives the lion being gored to death by the buffalo to fight back; rage drives a zebra being caught by a lion to make one last-ditch effort to escape. I once saw a videotape of a domestic beef cow kicking the living daylights out of an attacking lion. It was some of the hardest kicking I have ever seen. Rage is the ultimate defense all animals draw upon when their lives are in mortal danger.

When it comes to human safety in the presence of animals, fear cuts two ways. Fear can inhibit an animal or a person from attacking, and very often does. Among humans, the most vicious murderers are people who have abnormally low fear. Fear protects you when you're under attack, and keeps you from becoming an attacker yourself.

But fear can also cause a terrified animal to attack, where a less-fearful animal wouldn't. A cornered animal can be extremely aggressive; that's where we get the saying about not getting someone's "back up against the wall." An animal with his back up against a wall is in fear for its life and will feel he has no choice but to attack.

On average, prey species animals like horses and cattle show more fear-based aggression than predatory animals such as dogs. That shouldn't be a surprise, since prey animals spend a lot more time being scared.

I categorize maternal aggression differently from some researchers; I put it in the fear department. I think maternal aggression is fear-driven at heart because over the years I've observed that the high-strung nervous animals will always fight more vigorously to protect her young than will a laid-back, calm animal like a Holstein dairy cow. Many a rancher has told me that the most hotheaded, nervous cow in the herd is the one who is most protective of her calf.

Any mother, nervous or calm, will fight to protect her baby. That's why on farms the human parents always warn their children to stay away from mama animals. But the fact that it's always the most nervous, fearful mother who shows the most maternal aggression makes me think that maternal aggression is driven by fear, even when the animal is calm by nature. When mother animals think their babies are in danger, they feel fear, and their fear leads them to attack. That's my conclusion.

This brings me to the fundamental question you have to ask yourself any time you're trying to solve a problem with aggression: is the aggression coming from fear or dominance? That's important, because punishment will make a fearful animal worse, whereas punishment may be necessary to curb assertive aggression.

The Higher Senses and the Seven Life Processes

Dr. Lotte Sahlmann, Anke Weihs, Rev. Baruch Urieli

Softbound

$16.95

Perhaps at no other time in human history have our senses been so bombarded by the outside world, whether through visual or auditory stimulation (TV, video, computers) or more subtly in the areas of language, ideation and human encounter. The world is simply overflowing with ideas and issues that we have to deal with.

The first part of this book deals with the higher senses - those of word, thought and I - as described by Rudolf Steiner. The authors attempt to further reveal these unrecognised senses and the role played by them in social interaction.

They then go on to consider the workings of seven active forces which affect our everyday lives. These are the seven life processes, which function unconsciously within our organic system, but which can appear as disturbing forces affecting our physical and spiritual wellbeing.

Given our need to understand how we communicate with one another, and how our physical and mental states are affected by our unconscious life, this is a book with a great deal to offer all of us.