Like all of Waldorf Education, the Waldorf Kindergarten is based upon the idea of the human being as a threefold being. The three elements which weave together to form the single individuality are: Thinking – which is based in the nerve-sense system; Feeling – which lives in the rhythmic interplay of heart and lung; and Willing – which works through the metabolic and limb organization of man.
waldorf kindergarten Basics
Thinking, Feeling and Willing find their expression through the body, soul and spirit of every human being. In the child before the change of teeth, which occurs usually between the ages of five and seven, Willing is the faculty which undergoes its most profound development. Later, the Feeling life (7-14) and the Thinking life (14-21) blossom in their turn.
But along with the tremendous growth of the body during the first seven years, as well as the constant impulse for movement, one can observe that the child is also a total sense organism. When he sees, his whole being takes in the impression, and when he tastes, he tastes right down to his toes.
Absorbing the World
No sense impression fails to make an impact, though the adult may be fooled into thinking that the child has not noticed a particular event or object. Sense impressions are also not filtered through anything resembling analysis or conceptual or even associative thinking in most cases.
Even likes and dislikes are relatively spontaneous and unconditional. This is why a child may be fascinated and amused by something which a grown-up finds repulsive, and, conversely, frightened by something which the adult finds entertaining.
The Age of Imitation
Since all of the young child’s experiences enter so directly and forcefully, and because the child will recreate his experiences in his limbs through play and imitation, registering them deep within his subconscious, it is essential that he experience an adult world truly worthy of such imitation.
The child must experience a world that embodies qualities that will contribute to his becoming a strong, healthy and well-balanced individual in later life. The Waldorf Kindergarten aims to provide such a setting.
The time to find out that the world is sometimes a cruel and dangerous place is when a person has the ability to reason and to relate cause and effect, purpose and chance. This ability does not truly begin to develop until puberty or a little before.
School REadiness
The time to experience the world of opposites, such as beauty and ugliness, goodness and wickedness, truth and falsehood, is during the years when the individual awakens to his inner world of feeling, beginning around seven with the change of teeth.
And the time to experience the world as the source of security, harmony and joy, in which one eats and sleeps, plays and works with a deep confidence that the adults have life well in hand, is in the early, sensitive years.
waldorf kindergarten Aims
What, then, may one expect from a child in these years? What demands are actually beneficial for a young child to experience?
For the youngest child, it is vitally important to foster a sense of gratitude. This quality of gratitude should arise naturally out of the love which the child sees his parents and other adults bestowing on himself, the daily bread, each other, the worlds of animals and plants and the Earth herself.
“It would be very incorrect to remind children constantly to be thankful for whatever comes from their surroundings. On the contrary, an atmosphere of gratitude should grow naturally in children through merely witnessing the gratitude that their elders feel as they receive what is freely given by their fellow human beings, and in how they express their gratitude. In this situation, one would also cultivate the habit of feeling grateful by allowing the child to imitate what is done in the surroundings. If a child says ‘thank you’ very naturally – not in response to the urging of others, but simply by imitation – something has been done that will greatly benefit the child’s whole life. Out of this an all-embracing gratitude will develop toward the whole world.”
Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness and Waldorf Education GA 306 Lecture VI
If the child, through imitation, learns to receive the gifts he is given daily with a profound and genuine sense of gratitude, his feeling life will begin to blossom during the second seven years, radiating the warmth of love.
Then, if this love for people, animals, plants, stars, stones, neighbor and self is truly and artistically cultivated during the middle years of childhood, the light of reason will begin to shine forth during adolescence.
This light will reveal to the young individuals the necessity of taking responsibility toward the people and the world that has given them so much.
waldorf kindergarten life
The Waldorf Kindergarten exists to fill a need. A need which once was fulfilled by the child remaining in the home where he could play freely and work constructively, all the while observing adults engaged in meaningful tasks.
In a village, city or on a farm, there were many opportunities to watch grown-ups doing important and meaningful work. Nowadays, this is replicated in the Waldorf Kindergarten setting.
School entered the child’s life when he was ready for the structure of learning to read and to do math. Although it may seem simply arbitrary, it is interesting to note that this has always been scheduled to coincide with the change of teeth at six or seven years old.
The Kindergarten was first created around the beginning of the 20th century to help free the mother to work, as an economic necessity. Then, as time went on, for her personal fulfillment as well.
But society has since grown so abstract that the Kindergarten’s task has grown to enormous significance.
In many cases, it attempts to offer not only an extension of what was once a home reality but, in quite a few instances, a primary experience of that lost reality.
Fortunately, recent decades have shown that many people have realized that this kind of experience has been lost along the way and are seeking to recreate family and community life in a conscious way.
However, in the last hundred years or so, since the age of industrialization, the work life of the adult has gradually disconnected itself from the daily life of the family.
Cloth is woven in a textile mill and clothes are purchased ready-made. Food is produced far from the home and awaits our selection on the supermarket shelves. Anonymous workers build our houses, schools and shops.
Mother and Father most commonly ‘work’ with papers, computers and telephones. The life of our workforce is an abstract process foreign to the young child’s level of direct, physical experience.
Therefore, the task of the Waldorf Kindergarten and others in today’s society is threefold:
- to provide the children with the opportunity for direct physical and social development
- to provide parents with a forum for discussion of contemporary problems of child-raising
- to bring together families who share these needs and concerns and want to experience themselves as a community
Once it was the community that provided a school for its children. Now we may see schools becoming the orbital focus for the development of future communities.
It is natural for a healthy school to do this, because the care, development and future of children must be the greatest uniting question of every generation.
Waldorf Kindergarten Rhythms
Bringing a group of small children together and expecting them to relate as a community is being a bit too idealistic. Even two children rarely play or work together amicably for a long period of time.
Nevertheless, the child must learn to live with other people, to give and take, work and play, fight and reconcile, and so the teacher becomes a focal point and a living example of an adult striving to live in a community way.
The key word here is example, for the young child learns entirely through imitation.
In the Waldorf Kindergarten, no abstract ideals such as community or brotherhood are discussed, but the opportunity is provided, and gently guided, that these ideals may become a living reality.
The Beginning
The morning in the Waldorf Kindergarten starts with activity time. After being greeted with a handshake and help with coat, lunch basket etc., the child finds an activity being prepared or already in progress.
Some children jump in right away. Others must first make sure that their ‘baby’ is all right, or that their tower is still standing, or see what their friend has in his pocket.
Then they are usually drawn in to the bread-baking, handcrafts, gardening, drama or watercolor painting.
(All images: Christine Natale 1982)
the Morning Circle
After some energy has been expended kneading dough or planting petunias, all are brought together for the Morning Circle.
The first half involves songs, nursery rhymes, finger plays and games.
The second part is the most concentrated point of the day: lighting a special candle with a morning verse and seasonal song and poem relating to the nature garden in the room.
Sharing a meal
Snacktime follows, a busy time of going to the bathroom, washing hands, preparing the snack, setting the table, usually with a tablecloth and fresh flowers, then grace and refreshments.
Clean-up work is also important, after which the children go outside or play freely indoors.
FREE PLAY
Imaginative play is not as easy or automatic for children today as it used to be, so the teachers may find themselves called upon to start a ‘market’ or a ‘farm’ more often than should be ideal.
But with simple, imagination-provoking toys, puppets, a big sandbox and lots of material and logs, even children who have been over-exposed to television have been known to take those important steps into make-believe.
When playtime goes well, it provides Waldorf Kindergarten teachers with a chance to do meaningful work around the children. This they in turn take in as material for play, or which they may even ask to help with: dusting and sweeping, weeding the garden, pulling wool for a craft project, or even spinning on a wheel.
Storytime
At the end of the morning, the children are called by recorder music to chairs arranged in a semi-circle (called a Moon Boat) to hear the Mother of the Fairy Tale tell a story.
Each story is usually repeated for several days, until the children know it well and can act it out.
Free Drawing
After the story, paper and beeswax crayons are waiting on the tables and the children are free to express themselves.
Their pictures are gathered up and dated and collected into a book for the parents and teachers to discuss.
In the course of a few months, definitive changes in the child’s development, physically and emotionally, can readily be seen through these drawings.
Lunch
Now it is time for lunch and a nap. Some children go home, but most stay. Still, there is a short ‘Good-Bye Circle’ which serves to mark the end of the concentrated part of the day.
Lunch is arranged like snacktime. In some schools each child brings a lunch from home, in others a healthy lunch is provided.
Rest
Naptime follows, with each child’s own sleeping spot, reading aloud and lullabies.
After their nap, the children go home where possible, or stay for an after-school program of free play and activities.
A Healthy Rhythm
In every Waldorf Kindergarten, seasonal changes and festival times are celebrated fully and deeply. But it is the regular daily rhythm which helps the child’s will and senses develop in a healthy way.
Indecision, arbitrary changes and irregularity break down the will forces and damage the child’s ability to carry through resolves in later life.
Regional Differences
Every Waldorf Kindergarten is a little different from the next; every Waldorf teacher is different from his or her colleagues. And every Waldorf school has a special character and rhythm, because it bases its working upon the area in which it is located, the parents’ interest and enthusiasm and the children’s particular needs.
A city school is not quite like a country school. Yet at its heart, in its ideals, love of life and hope for the future, each is united with the other. Each carries a bright picture of the human being – not evolving from the mud, but descending from the stars.
Waldorf Education is the art of helping each descending individual unfold his or her true potential in the community of humankind.
Note: Waldorf Schools are non-profit private educational facilities which do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex or national origin in determining the admission, placement or financial aid of any student. The first Waldorf School opened in 1919 at the Waldorf Astoria cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany, at the request of its director Emil Molt. It was established under the guidance of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the Austrian philosopher and scientist, who trained the teachers and gave indications for every aspect of this healing art of education.
Christine Natale is a trained and experienced Waldorf Teacher who has worked primarily in Early Childhood Education. Over the past decade, she has been bringing her writing out into the world. She has produced an extensive collection of children’s stories and articles on Waldorf Education, and several more volumes of story collections are in development. Christine is a contributor to the online magazine The Wonder of Childhood and has published guest posts in the Parenting Passageway blog.
Six books of her fairy tales and stories, beautifully illustrated by the Ukrainian artist Natalya Yeshchenko, are available on Amazon and from Lulu.com
Comments are welcome, so don’t hesitate to share experiences, questions and feedback below.
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