Waldorf Early Childhood Info

Nursery and Kindergarten Program

The nursery program is a stepping-stone between the parent-child program and kindergarten. Many of the children have outgrown the parent-child program and are ready for more social interaction with other children and for separation from their parents.

We typically have between 10 and 15 children per day ranging in age from 2 1/2 years old to 4 1/2 years old with one teacher and one assistant. The day begins between at 8:00 am and some children stay for a half-day until 12:15 pm, others stay a full day until 3:30 pm.

Much of the teacher's work in the nursery is to help the children gain independence and make the transition from parallel play to integrated, collabortive play with their classmates.

The curriculum of the nursery and kindergarden derive from the recognition that the young child, until around the age of seven, relates to the world primarily through his/her senses and body. Primary modes of learning, therefore, are through sensing (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling and touching-indeed, lots of touching!) and doing.

The activities in the nursery and kindergarden respect and support this sensory-motor mode of the young child.The nursery and kindergarten classrooms are filled with simple toys of wood, wool, and cloth, cozy corners for creative play, and blankets and pillows for snuggling. The teachers are actively engaged in household work, such as baking, cooking, ironing and cleaning.

 

A typical day in our nursery and kindergarten classes begins with the children helping to prepare food--porridge, vegetable soup, popcorn or such--followed by about an hour and a half of morning free play. Then all the toys are put away, each in its proper home, and all gather for a circle time (described more fully below.).
 
Following circle, they eat the healthy snack, that they helped prepare earlier in the morning. The children play outdoors for about an hour, then come inside for a story time, when the teacher tells (never reads) stories rich with imagery and action. Following story is lunch. Half-day children are picked up after lunch, while full-day children transition into naptime.
 
During naptime, lullabies are sung and stories are quietly read told to the children until they go to sleep. A nap teacher cares for the children during nap and supervises in the play yard afterward. When the children wake up, they may play outside in the yard until their parents come to pick them up (usually between 2:30 and 3:15pm). The children may also color or have quiet playtime in a designated classroom.
 

This schedule is the rhythm of the day, and it may vary from class to class. By consciously balancing inward and outward activities, a healthy discipline and a sense of trust and security in the environment are established. The teachers also work consciously with a rhythmical school year, bringing the elements of fall, winter and spring to the children, as well as festivals, i.e. Michaelmas, Stone Soup Day (Thanksgiving), Advent, Hanukah, etc.

 

Indoor Play/Activities

The children engage in activities that develop eye-hand coordination and manual dexterity, and that support hand dominance. This meaningful, practical work is integral and essential to the early childhood day and includes such things as baking (kneading bread), sewing, sweeping, chopping vegetables, polishing wooden toys and shelves, cleaning, and dishwashing. Boys and girls participate equally in these activities, thus building inner strength and self-esteem as they become accomplished in purposeful work.

The teacher encourages healthy, creative play by providing the essential ingredients: silks, cloths, play stands, stones, logs, shells, simple dolls, capes, wooden figures, puppets, and the like. Boards to build houses, stands for puppet plays, balancing boards for obstacle courses are all incorporated into the rich spectrum of movement throughout the creative play. Boys and girls alike have tea parties in the play kitchen or build spaceships from wooden planks, chairs and play cloths.

Creative free play allows the children time for self-directed exploration and discovery and myriad opportunities each day to helps them develop their sense of social skillscompetence, industry and self-esteem, and as well as social skills that will form an important basis of their grade-school success. a healthy inner strength. Through the building up, transforming, and rearranging of the indoor environment, the children innovate, interact, and grow stronger and more physically adept physically, emotionally and cognitively.

While play serves the important psycho-social function of "transforming" reality into something in which the child may play an important, competent and powerful role, the trials, errors, and revisions of free play are in many ways a most sophisticated curriculum in science, humanities and math!

 Through free play, children learn to distinguish first between classes of things, then between things in each class. Free play helps the children experience the three dimensions of space, the different qualities and quantities of things, the weight, texture and usability of things. It also helps develop their sense of touch as they experience themselves in relationship to the rest of the world. The children come to know the world actively -- through doing and experiencing. In an hour of such play, a child is stimulating robust growth of important new neural connections in the areas of the brain that most need it at this age.

This direct sensory-motor interaction with the things and people in the environment is not only the ideal way to best nourish what Steiner called the child's "will energies," but it lays an essential foundation for later reading and math: the symbols of letters and numbers will have a depth of meaning for the child who has been given the chance to experience the concrete realities of what these symbols represent.

As Dr. David Elkind wisely points out, "The language of things must proceed the language of words, or else the words don't mean anything." In other words, the rich and extensive play experiences in nursery and kindergarden serve as an important foundation for later academics!

  Circle

Each morning at circle time, the teacher leads the children on a journey of movement, verse, and song. The theme of the circle reflects the seasons of the year. For instance, in the fall the circle might be about galloping ponies to the orchard to pick apples, in winter it might be about woodcutters hiking through snow and chopping firewood, in spring, caterpillars transforming into butterflies.

The theme and activities of each circle are enjoyed daily for two to four weeks. Through this repetition, the children gradually learn all the verses and songs (building their memory and vocabulary skills), as well as the movements and gestures. This enriches the children's language experience and allows them to engage their forces of fantasy while inwardly creating mental images of apple orchards, and snow covered forests, and myriad other enchanting subjects

Songs in the interval of the fifth are often used: these are simple pentatonic melodies with no major or minor keys, which allow the children to sing at their own developmental level.

In circle, the children imitate the gestures and movements of the teacher. Spatial awareness is enhanced through larger movements in the three planes: up and down, front and back, and side-to-side. Through movement and singing of traditional songs and the recitation of rhythmical verses, the forces of expansion and contraction are worked with from the fine motor (grasping and releasing), to the gross motor (going out and coming in).

 

The loco-motor movements of running, skipping, hopping, jumping, leaping, sliding, and walking are artistically implemented into each circle. The teacher also works with activities that encourage horizontal and vertical midline crossing, spatial awareness, and establishment of hand dominance, as well as sensory integration of the following systems: proprioceptive (self movement self-awareness), vestibular (balance), tactile (touch), and somatic (mind-body connection.) sense of life. The loco-motor movements of running, skipping, hopping, jumping, leaping, sliding, and walking are artistically implemented into each circle.

This play of singing, verse, rhyme, and movement is the children's work. It also allows the teachers to observe potential challenges that might need remediation before the children move to the next developmental level -- the second seven years.

  Eurythmy

The school has a trained Eurythmy teacher who visits each class once a week at circle time and leads the children in a eurythmy circle in place of the nursery/kindergarten teacher's circle. The Eurythmy circle is similar in that it consists of movement and gestures, combined with song, verse and story.

  Outdoor Time

At  outdoor playtime the children are given ample opportunities to run, climb, dig in the sand and the earth, haul wheelbarrows, jump rope, play on the swings and play structures, slide, look for bugs and blossoms, or and engage in imaginative play. The children are free to help with gardening projects, water the plants, sweep the patios, and take weekly nature walks on campus. The conscious landscaping of the yard has been consciously designed to includes such things as hills to roll down, boulders to climb, and logs to carry and build with, which greatly supports and enhances the variety of the children's movements, as they work to create their own new challenges.

 

 Story
Through daily puppetry and story telling, the children's listening skills, memory skills, and vocabulary are strengthened and they develop a deep soul connection to the human voice. In the nursery, the stories are often nature stories, sequential stories, or simple fairy tales. These stories and more complex fairy tales are told in the kindergarten. Through the telling of fairy tales, nature stories, and seasonal tales, the children begin to find their relationship to the world. The seeds of man's human evolution, of his our relationship to the earth and its cycles, are imbedded in these stories. Fairy tales bring to life human qualities such as courage, kindness, honesty, etc., while nature stories enhance the children's experience of the seasons and festivals of the year.

As the children develop the capacity to allow a story to penetrate permeate them deeply, and to live into the story through different experiences (spoken word, puppet-play, and playacting), the seed is planted for them to do the same with their thinking when they develop into teenagers and adults. This prepares the way for them, many years from now, They are beginning to learn how to become clear thinkers think with depth and clarity, and to imagine and see different sides to the same story.

  Artistic Work

Artistic work in the early childhood program is an experience that guides young children toward abilities that can be transformed throughout life. For example, watercolor painting is accomplished with simple materials: fine paints in the three primary colors, a good paintbrush, and very good watercolor paper that has been soaked in water and gently dried. These materials allow children to experience not only the beauty of color, but also the soothing fluidity of the paint. In the kindergarten, the children sew, finger-crochet, finger-knit, mold with beeswax, and do simple craft activities that are offered seasonally. Crayon coloring and drawing are available to both kindergarten and nursery children.

An aftercare program is available from 3:30 pm until 6:00 pm, and is staffed by two nap teachers. The program includes a circle time with a simple story and finger plays, followed by a snack. The program concludes with either outdoor play or quiet indoor play.