In the mother’s arms, the infant seems helpless, vulnerable, and incapable of learning. However, the Whole Child is like one sense organ, at the most absorptive stage and totally open to external influences. After birth, the child learns to stand upright, to speak and to think - remarkable achievements in a period of three to four years. The young child does this without teaching or formal instruction, but through instinct and mostly through imitation. Imitation is the special quality that characterizes the period up to the age of seven. The young child mimics everything in the environment uncritically, not only the sounds of speech, the gestures of people, but also the attitudes and values of parents and peers.
The early childhood teacher in a Waldorf School works with the young child by creating a warm, beautiful, and loving home-like environment, which is protective and secure and where things happen in a predictable, rhythmical manner. The teacher engages in domestic, practical, and artistic activities that the children can readily imitate (for example cooking, painting, gardening, and handicrafts)adapting the work to the changing seasons and festivals of the year. Also, the teacher nurtures the children’s power of imagination particular to the age. She does so by telling carefully selected stories, finger play and by facilitating free play. This free or self-directed play in which children act out scenarios reflecting the environment they live in and play, is an expression of a child’s sensory impressions. Simple toys, without specific forms or shapes are often used in a Waldorf Kindergarten. The play items are made of natural materials - wood, cotton – and may consist of shells, stones, twigs and branches and other objects from nature that the children themselves have collected.
Sequencing, rhythmical memory building, speech, movement, sensory integration, eye-hand coordination, tracking, appreciating the beauty of language and other basic skills necessary for the foundation of academic excellence are fostered in the Kindergarten. In this truly natural, loving and creative environment, the children are given a range of activities and boundaries that help them prepare for the next phase of school life.
Towards the end of the child’s first seven years, various changes take place, the most prominent physical change being the loss of the milk teeth. This is manifested as the child develops on the one hand a new and vivid life of imagination and feeling and, on the other a readiness for more formal learning. When the child is ready for first grade, it is appropriate to use the formative forces for more abstract matters, including writing and reading. But, for the well-being of the child, it is not simply the acquisition of knowledge that is important. The process by which this knowledge is acquired is equally important. The creativity and passion of the teachers delivering the curriculum, helps meet the inner need in the child for true authority and provides a secure basis for the child to reach out in the world.
Ideally, the class teacher, though by no means the only teacher of the class, accompanies the children through all seven grades of elementary school. The class teacher’s task is to guide the group of children during these important and impressionable years and to teach the class many of the curriculum subjects. During these years – grades one through seven – the basic skills of literacy and numeracy are acquired in a two-hour main lesson period followed by other – languages, handwork, eurythmy, gymnastics etc. The children engage in a variety of cultural activities that cultivate the imaginative faculties – drawing, painting, poetry, recitation, drama, singing and playing a recorder. During both the practical and cultural activities, however, the essence of the teacher’s task is to work with her pupils with the imagination of an artist.
The children should not simply be taught to do artistic activities and manual skills, but they should be taught so called “ non-artistic” subjects imaginatively and artistically as well. This is true though in widely different ways, in mathematics and grammar , carpentry and knitting, sports and languages, all of which are part of the Waldorf curriculum. These cultural activities help the children build academic skills fortified with deep comprehension and understanding.
This sense of awe and wonder will develop into feeling of reverence, laying a firm foundation for a respectful treatment of the natural and school environment, which is both functional and beautiful and produces a stimulating effect on all the child’s inner and outer senses.
In the mother’s arms, the infant seems helpless, vulnerable, and incapable of learning. However, the Whole Child is like one sense organ, at the most absorptive stage and totally open to external influences. After birth, the child learns to stand upright, to speak and to think - remarkable achievements in a period of three to four years. The young child does this without teaching or formal instruction, but through instinct and mostly through imitation. Imitation is the special quality that characterizes the period up to the age of seven. The young child mimics everything in the environment uncritically, not only the sounds of speech, the gestures of people, but also the attitudes and values of parents and peers.
The early childhood teacher in a Waldorf School works with the young child by creating a warm, beautiful, and loving home-like environment, which is protective and secure and where things happen in a predictable, rhythmical manner. The teacher engages in domestic, practical, and artistic activities that the children can readily imitate (for example cooking, painting, gardening, and handicrafts)adapting the work to the changing seasons and festivals of the year. Also, the teacher nurtures the children’s power of imagination particular to the age. She does so by telling carefully selected stories, finger play and by facilitating free play. This free or self-directed play in which children act out scenarios reflecting the environment they live in and play, is an expression of a child’s sensory impressions. Simple toys, without specific forms or shapes are often used in a Waldorf Kindergarten. The play items are made of natural materials - wood, cotton – and may consist of shells, stones, twigs and branches and other objects from nature that the children themselves have collected.
Sequencing, rhythmical memory building, speech, movement, sensory integration, eye-hand coordination, tracking, appreciating the beauty of language and other basic skills necessary for the foundation of academic excellence are fostered in the Kindergarten. In this truly natural, loving and creative environment, the children are given a range of activities and boundaries that help them prepare for the next phase of school life.
- Rudolf Steiner
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