Early Childhood
curriculum
The Early Childhood Program is play-based and uses various gateways to invite the child into their natural development, encouraging curiosity, self-awareness, and social responsibility. The curriculum is created to inspire wonder. It is a world of lively experiences and joyful interaction in a beautiful, natural, and wholesome environment. Each child is met with respect, warmth, and loving care.
EWS serves children three years of age by the time they begin school. For the youngest children, the program provides a gentle first-school experience. It is designed to meet them in a warm, home-like environment where children’s senses can open to the beauty of the world around them through relationship-based care, imitation, self-initiated movement, and play. The program supports a child’s beginning interest in other children and social experiences as they transition from parallel play into emerging social play.
Children learn the foundational skills for future learning through play, story, artistic and practical activities, and outdoor exploration. Early Childhood teachers lead by example and imitation, enabling each child to become a self-actualized, aware, and compassionate human being. We aim to help children develop healthy bodies and learn to direct themselves socially, emotionally, and in their thinking. Our classrooms are a vibrant community of young learners. In our mixed-age classes, children learn from one another. Older students learn to help care for younger students and are given extra developmentally based practical tasks and responsibilities. Younger students observe and experience the older children's various activities and projects and eventually become class leaders. Our program provides three to four-year-old children opportunities for emerging and growing capacities. The five-year-old child begins to develop capabilities, and the six-year-old child demonstrates abilities.
The Child in our Early Childhood Program:
• Learns through imitation, repetition, and rhythm
• Learns through integrating experiences in play
• Experiences the environment as an open sensory being
• Develops the foundation of the physical body and organs through healthy
movement
• Experiences wonder and reverence through devotion to the natural world
EARLY CHILDHOOD RHYTHM
Rhythm is a foundation of the Waldorf curriculum and helps hold the children in a secure balance. Each class has a rhythm of structured and unstructured times throughout the day. This gives a breathing element to the day, week, and year. Snacks and activities help mark the day of the week, and birthdays and festival celebrations help orient the year. Verse and song bring continuity to the day and make transitions more fluid. This rhythmical environment gives a sense of security and well-being to the child.
Creative Play
Our play curriculum is the central activity of our Early Childhood education. Through play, children learn to grow in their imagination. Children develop tolerance and social skills, fine and large motor skills, and the use of language. We consider imagination one of the essential foundations of creative thinking in later life. Our simple toys allow open-ended use that encourages children to exercise their imagination in many ways. This helps develop divergent thinking, the basis for problem-solving. Our toys are wood, silk, wool, cotton, and other natural materials. Children are free to create their world, imitating life. The children digest the experience of the world, recapture it in play, and later years transform it into focused creative and academic work. Play is the work of the young child. In the Woodland Classroom, we enjoy extensive daily outdoor play and weekly walks in the surrounding natural spaces. The outdoor environment fully engages the senses. The young child learns about nature through first-hand experiences and discovery. These outdoor experiences offer time and space to observe and connect with the natural world, and a reverence for the wonders of the world is developed.
Playground Time
Plenty of opportunities exist for running, jumping, skipping, climbing, tumbling, and swinging. Formed games occur, and imaginative play is active. Circle Time Circle time is a joyful movement journey for the Early Childhood class and is a cornerstone of our program. Imaginative gestures are guided by the teacher through song, verse, games, and poems, developing gross and fine motor skills and giving children the experience of expansive and contractive movement and spatial awareness. The teacher strives to model archetypal gestures worthy of imitation that bring about healthy physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development for the young child.
Story Time
Children hear stories daily. Storytelling builds up creative thinking, pictorial imagination, language development, and vocabulary acquisition. Stories help us learn about the world and ourselves and are vital to children's social and emotional development. Stories can be told “by heart" for several consecutive days or weeks to allow the children to live more deeply in the pictorial language and imagination of the shared story. Repetitive storytelling also helps myelination of the neural pathways, fostering healthy memory development. A rich living language is the best preparation for learning to read and write in grade school. We also act out our stories through puppet shows and small plays to help inspire creative play and support healthy development. Stories include fairy tales from around the world, pedagogical stories, nature tales, home and hearth tales, and stories with elements of repetition for the youngest children.
Artistic Activities
Children enjoy wet-on-wet watercolor painting, beeswax modeling, crayon drawing, soup, and bread making. Activities become more challenging as skills develop. Children will also do handwork projects that require more time and patience in their last year of our early childhood program. These activities develop fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, a lengthening attention span and focus.
Real-Life Activities
There is much to do in caring for the classrooms. Our daily activities include cooking, cleaning, and gardening. The teachers create an environment that allows the children to engage in real-life activities in a healthy and meaningful way. Through imitation, the children learn to be active participants and develop the will to work. Social responsibility starts with caring for each other and our environment.
Festivals
In Early Childhood, in relationship with the whole school, we celebrate many festivals of the year, including the organically occurring changes in nature, the nodal points of the year, and world cultures. Festival preparation may include a craft, special food, songs, poems, and a story or puppet show. As we journey through the changing seasons, festivals help the children participate in the rhythm of the year. This introduction to our school’s festival life helps the children orient themselves to the natural flow of the year, builds community, and celebrates our rich diversity.
EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAM OFFERINGS
PARENT-CHILD Morning Garden Program
• For children under three years of age and one parent
• Offered one morning per week for two hours in blocks throughout the year
HONEY BEE CLASS
• For children 3 - 4 years of age
• Five days per week, Half-Day, Full-Day, and After School Care
• 11 students
• 1 Lead Teacher and 1 Assistant
CHICKADEE CLASS
• For Children 4 - 5 years of age
• Five days per week, Half-Day, Full-Day, and After School Care
• 11 students
• 1 Teacher and 1 Assistant
BLUEBIRD, GOLDFINCH, AND HUMMINGBIRD CLASSES
• For Children 4 - 6 years of age
• Five days per week, Half-Day, Full-Day, and After School Care
• 14 students per class
• 1 Teacher and 1 Assistant in each class