Happy Spring!
My husband and I just got back home to Cincinnati, OH from Seoul, South Korea. We were welcomed back home by beautifully sprouting flowers in our front yard.
We were so happy to see them sprouting since we had a very unexpectedly cold winter. Seeing the flowers, I could feel the vibes of spring energy. It reminded me of our LifeWays Korea first years’ experience, which we started last spring.
I myself graduated from the LifeWays Training in Boulder in 2009 with Rahima and Cynthia. Since then I dreamed of someday bringing the LifeWays Training -Life as curriculum, Home as the model – to South Korea. I felt my home country could greatly benefit from including living arts in everyday life
In furtherance of this goal, I published a book titled “Grow Slowly, Grow Well” based on my experience with LifeWays training and Waldorf education, family rhythm, temperament, storytelling, etc. in Korea in 2016. The book also includes an interview with Cynthia Aldinger and a recommendation letter from Rahima Baldwin Dancy. Furthermore, we were able to begin a LifeWays Korea program last spring.
LifeWays Korea has been a tremendously meaningful journey and I feel so grateful to have met a group of like-minded mothers and teachers hoping to enrich their family lives in joyous ways.
The journey started one beautiful day in April 2017, eight wonderful mothers from many different backgrounds got together and started our journey together. Since then, we have had so much fun together. We have shared life stories through biography and social art, and have created a warm empathetic community through lots of tears and laughter.
During our time, we have also made simple but delicious foods together with joy. We have observed how our children grow with curiosity and learned how to support their needs through careful observations. We have also learned many seasonal songs, games, arts, puppet shows, Eurythmy, and crafts.
Additionally, we organized wonderful seasonal festivals for our families and local community. Through all of this, we have grown to greatly appreciate daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms.
In addition, we plan to have parenting classes and Saturday morning enrichment class all year round.
When we started our first spring session last year, we didn’t expect our current adventure at all. We feel blessed to have this opportunity in at a public school and are greatly enjoying working with the children. We will keep you updated as our adventure continues to unfold!
We are also planning to have our next training this upcoming fall from Oct 1st – Oct 9th, 2018.
I would like to say thank you to Rahima and Cynthia for all their inspiration, wisdom and support for LifeWays Korea. It is such a delight to work with you both.
With gratitude and joy,
Young Sook Kim