The Kindergarten day begins with the teacher’s warm and loving welcome. Then it’s on to free play! This creative play is taken very seriously in a Waldorf Kindergarten classroom. It is a time when the child’s imagination can flourish and when social activity, initiated by the children, can take place. The materials for this creative play are varied and beautiful: large cloths, stones, pine cones, shells, logs, capes, and crowns. Because these materials are unformed and non-specific, they offer the children an unlimited canvas for play. One day the children may set sail on a ship, the next day the same toys become a castle or a restaurant. In their simplicity, the materials serve the free flow of a child’s mind so that the child’s imaginative qualities flourish and create a strong foundation for creative thinking in later life.

After free play comes the daily circle of poems, songs and finger plays drawn from the rhythmical elements of the year. From the abundant autumn harvest to the winter’s darkness and anticipation of the light through the spring’s bright new birth of green and summer’s ripening fruits, the children reflect and celebrate the seasonal cycle around them. As the children move to meaningful poems and songs, the beautiful words both strengthen their language skills and enter into their very being.

Many of the activities are extensions of home life. Depending on the day of the week, the children may grind grain for the bread they bake for snack, do simple finger knitting, gardening, mending or housekeeping. They learn to love and care for their things in their kindergarten home. Activities such as listening to the telling and retelling of fairy tales, painting with watercolors, and forming colorful beeswax into delightful shapes, guide the flow of the day.

After a healthy snack, provided by the school and prepared by the children, is outside play. Every day, rain or shine, the children go outside for vigorous and energetic play in the kindergarten yard. Here they stretch and build their muscles and gross motor skills, develop social skills, and learn through creative play the varied skills they will need for later academic success. A large sandbox becomes a town with bridges and caves and a railroad track; tree branches become a fort; flowers and vegetables are planted and tended in our small garden.

The children come back inside for lunch, and then the morning closes at 12:30 with a verse and a warm, loving farewell from teacher to each child. Through love and warmth, beauty and play, the teacher and children together create a family—a small world of wonder within the larger universe.

• For 4 to 6 year olds
• Hours: 8:30 - 12:30
• Days: Monday – Friday