“Plant a seed of peace Water it with love Scare away the birds of prey And Harvest flowers of joy”

I would like to share a few ideas about a Waldorf Kindergarten, about a child’s journey of life in those first seven years; between birth and change of teeth - both being important developmental milestones. We all know that the organs of a newborn baby are still developing in a fluid and jelly-like state. Then, they slowly begin to form, mature and solidify until the tender milk teeth change to more permanent, solidified teeth at around seven years of age, completing the formation of the physical body, which can then become a useful tool to us. Therefore, during the first seven years, the child learns to be at home in his or her physical body, through the three spiritual milestones - WALKING (uprightness), TALKING (social awareness) and THINKING (self-awareness). Our kindergarten children learn through experience, through creative play and through social interaction in an environment that inspires human will and the faculty of imagination through providing activities which occur in our daily life, in a practical living way. Therefore, the children can find the meaning to life itself. 

A kindergarten child mostly learns through IMITATION. Imitation is the key tool for natural learning in these early phases. Adults worthy of imitation imprint their gestures, their accents and even their thinking patterns onto the child’s will. Mr. Martyn Rawson in his book, “The educational tasks and contents of the Steiner Waldorf curriculum” says that ‘learning is caught rather than taught.’ Imitation is quite underestimated in conventional schooling, which has mostly replaced it by instruction for children as early as two years. Rote memory, dry learning and the typical ‘by-heart and vomit’ model of assessment has left many a human soul dry and infertile. This manifests in the later years, in the form of the child’s lack of motivation and even resistance to study or prepare for an examination; or to even simply read and write.

Imagine a young child lying down, with an adult present in the same environment. A danger lurks – let us say a firecracker comes at both. The adult can ward off or filter out such a sensory impression by closing his ears or moving away, but the infant has no such tools at his disposal because he completely trusts the world and lies there, smiling at the sparks until the cracker bursts and the whole body of the child shudders or freezes in this painful, traumatic experience. Yes! The whole body of the child acts like a sense organ. Therefore, the most important aspect of a child’s development lies in its ENVIRONMENT. While a beautiful physical environment may not always be possible in a home or a school, what the child needs most importantly is an environment that is full of rich sensory experiences that are nurturing and healing. This is for the adults in the child’s life (teachers, parents, grandparents, uncles/aunts etc.) to create.

Now listen to a song like this and see how step by step, it builds up rhythmical and sequential MEMORY on the one hand, while on the other, brings in good, grammatically beautiful sentence structures and builds good VOCABULARY. Apart from being fun, this activates the human will. Here it goes…

This is the house that Jack built

This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

This is the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat………………………….

This is the maiden all forlorn who milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed ………………….

This is the man all shaven and shorn who kissed the maiden all forlorn who milked …………………….

This is the priest all dressed in a robe who married the man all shaven and shorn, to the maiden all forlorn who……………

This is the cock that crowed all morn that woke up the priest all dressed in a robe who married the …………….