Support For Kindergarten Families

Daily Rhythm at Home and its Lifelong Relevance

By Helle Heckmann

As parents of little children, you are often very tired and you get too little sleep, and when you have too little sleep you also have too little energy and then often you give in when you think you should not have done, or you get angry or irritated so you are not present and when you are not present you lose the children and you do not like yourself. To make it easier for you to deal in the daily life with your children there are three important considerations:

• To be flexible
• To set limits (borders) and
• To observe the same routine everyday

To become flexible is the result of objective inward observation. You may train your flexibility through an inner work where you learn about yourself. In relation to limits, you have to find out them for yourself. You have to decide what the limits are for your child in your house: time to go to bed, time to eat, what to eat, what language to use in the family and so on. You have to make up your mind about limits beforehand, so, instead of saying “no, no, no…” and becoming angry, you simply do not allow the children to go beyond the limits. You know this is your decision and do not need to be angry. If you are ahead of the child and you see a certain situation coming, with humor and the right gesture or word, you can move away from the situation, and this will be possible if you train your flexibility. Knowing more about yourself will give you the possibility to also be ahead of yourself. When you catch this tool you can start working with your children in a much freer way, because the limits are set.

The third recommendation, to make a routine which is the same every day, gives the child rhythm. All Waldorf families probably know how the daily life is in the kindergarten. The children go through the day in alternate periods of concentration and expansion, as if in a breathing rhythm where there is inhaling and exhaling.

In the inhaling or breathing-in phase the child directs his attention to an activity that basically relates him to himself. For little children each breathing-in period (drawing, water painting, and knitting, eating…) is very short because little children can only concentrate for short periods of time. In the exhaling or breathing-out period, the child relates mainly to the surrounding world (free play, free running etc.). For each breathing-in period the child needs a breathing-out period and so a pattern is established. This rhythm is something that you can bring into your home. You have to try to find out when the children breathes-in and when they breathe-out. And when the children are in the breathing-in period, you have to make sure you are present, so the child feels ah, here I feel my parents, they are there for me. After that, for very short time, you can do what you have to do at home and you can tell your child you have to wait because I need to do this. And this will be all right because you know you have been present with the child. As an example, look at the situation when parents pick up their children from the kindergarten. At the very moment you are picking up your child: Does the cell phone ring and you answer? Do you greet your friends and engage in intense talk? If yes, then you are not present for the child. In my last visit to Mexico I saw very few parents really greeting their children, the majority were talking to other parents or engaged in school affairs or talking in their cell phones, or arriving late or in a hurry.

But, for your child who has been gone for five hours and who really wants you… you are not there. So the child screams I want an ice cream! I want this or that! or he starts running around, or falling, or getting into little conflict because he is confused, because he has not really met you. On the contrary, if you take the time (and it is five seconds perhaps), you bend down, give him a hug and then smell him (so lovely!) and really you are there, his eyes will tell you more than words, how his day was. He cannot tell you with words because he cannot remember, but his eyes will tell you everything.  And then you take his hand and walk together (of course in a tempo that the child can follow), and this is really lovely because you are making a new nice situation, a “you and I situation.” Now, if you need to greet people you can do it, very shortly, but together with the child because your child will feel I am where I belong, with my parent. This was a breathing-in situation where you were present.

Then you go to the car and go home (breathing-out) and it is probably time for eating which brings again a breathing-in situation. How do you eat? Do you sit down together with the child? Or is the child sitting by himself and you are walking around talking on the telephone? If you give yourself the time and sit down with your child you will teach the child manners at the table by your example. Many of the children today do not sit with their parents and they do not learn to hold utensils appropriately. However, this is important, otherwise when they are seven years old they cannot hold a pencil and to learn it at that age is so difficult compared to when they were one or two years old.

In addition, to sit at the table and to have a beginning, a process and an end, is important because this is how you should live the whole of life. Everything has a beginning, a process and an end. It may take you only fifteen minutes to sit appropriately, to check how the child holds and drinks from cup (children.  from one year onwards do not need a sip cup), to eat with closed mouth, and everything you are given and so on, being, in this way, an example for your child to follow, but more importantly you have taken this short moment to make again a “you and I situation” and at the same time you also help the child to find a social form of how we are when we eat together.

When you finish with the meal you remind the children they need to help with the table so that they also learn that when they are a part of a social environment they also take part in the cleaning up. In this way you have made and create a situation where you have been present and now you can say to the child go and play (breathing-out) because you have been there, and then you can do what you need to do but you have to be visible to your child. This is so, because a little child cannot play by himself if the center is not there and you are the most important person for the child. You are his center, and if you leave the room the little child will follow you.

When you are doing your things, the situation may occur where children will say I am bored. In this case you, of course, don´t turn on the television or music. When you are occupied with other things, you can tell your child now you play by yourself. If you know you have been present you can actually expect them to find something to do themselves. It is very important that you are not afraid of your children not knowing what to do or being bored. It is very important that you feel it is right: I have been there with them now they can be by themselves.

Nowadays, parents often use media or adult-directed activities for their children because they are afraid of their children being bored and assume that they are not able to do anything themselves. This is a tricky situation. If you think you have to entertain your under-seven children all the time, with media (films, TV, videogames, computers and so on), after-school classes, and/or other adult-directed activities, then they do not learn how to play by themselves. They will not have a moment where they can be in a state of not knowing what to do and from there progress into a state of finding images inwardly and thus creating things from inside out. By letting them to be bored you help them, because being bored represents the opportunity the children will have to go into this process of inner creativity. The fact that children are able to be by themselves, to create their own play without adult direction is of great importance because during the first seven years of the child everything is about being able to create.

If all the activities come from outside (electronic screen, video-games, adult direction, etc.), then not much happens in the sphere of inward creation. That is why in Waldorf kindergartens, teachers do not sit down and play with the children but do real work, from which the children draw inspiration to use it in their own play. In these kindergartens you may find teachers sweeping, cooking, sawing, tending the vegetable patch, taking care of farm animals, cutting wood, and whatever the particular setting of each school allows to do. Equally, you, as a parent, in the breathing-out phase, may do your work and the children beside you should be able to do their work (i.e. their own play). This is possible only when the children feel that they have met you in a previous breathing-in phase.

It is the same when children go to bed in the evening. What the child loves to hear are stories from your life. No book, no radio, no music, no film nor cartoon can make the same impact on the child as you. And to find your own story to tell means so much and it is, in addition, a tool with which you can change very stuck situations. It is so difficult for children to let go of you if they have not felt you present. But, if you have hold your child, blown a little in the ear, told her a little story from the heart, so you have really been there, then you can kiss her and put her to bed and feel I can leave because I have been there. And then you can expect that your child is able to sleep by herself, which is healthy for your child.

In Denmark, where I come from, many parents are in a situation where they have to lie down and hold hands with the child, read 20 stories, sing 50 songs, and all this takes one, one and a half, two hours and when finally they go out quietly of the bedroom they hear ‘Mum, water, Mum!’ and then become annoyed. You can avoid this by setting limits and finding a comfortable way to leave because you have been present in different situations during the day. Otherwise the child has not been filled enough with your love and, if in addition, he has not been given opportunities to do his own play, to work from inside out, you cannot expect he will be able to sleep by himself.

There is an additional aspect I would like to draw attention to for the after-kindergarten time you have with your children. If you take your children from class to class or entrust them to the media in its different varieties you have less time with them. Children are small for very short time. At present, you may be thinking it is a long time to go but, in no time you will see it went so fast. By letting your child to engage in his own play while you are around doing your own chores, and being really present in those breathing-in situations, you build trust between your child and you. And this trust will be important when they get a little older and get into pre-puberty and puberty because with this, they will come to you when they have problems and listen to you when you tell them what and what not to do. But they will only do it if they trust you, if you have been there for them. And that is why the first seven years of children are so important, because their whole trust, their believing that the world is good, is the basis of their future lives.

After that first seven years, it is their friends who become the focus. Their choice of friends has a lot to do with the morality you have shown them and built up through the first seven years. In addition, if children were given the opportunity to work inwardly, they will know themselves and then they will be able to say “no” when they meet something they do not like and “yes” to what they want. You can make a choice if you know yourself and a human being who can make a choice has healthy self-esteem.

In this context it is important how the kindergarten and the home relate to each other: there must be a bridge from one world to the other. In a way, it is a little hard for families who choose a Waldorf education for your children as you become different from the mainstream, but this is your choice. You cannot do both. Once you have taken the road of consciousness, you are concerned about the food, their upbringing, everything. To make the bridge from having the children in the Waldorf kindergarten and at your home is, of course, important so the child can see that everything fits. That is why it is incredibly important to build up trust between the kindergarten and the family, through which the kindergarten teacher is able to support the family´s choice but also for the family to respect what is brought in the kindergarten so one thing without the other is nothing. So you need to find a way together.

I have three children who are 29, 26, and 23 and now I can harvest the 25 years of hard dedicated work with my children, and it is so fantastic because I can see how they can go out in life with freedom and also I can move around in the world with freedom and wisdom, because they don´t need me anymore but they like me and they like to be with me and also their friends. And this is, I think, the highest thing we wish as parents, that when our children are adults, they actually, by their own free choice, choose to be with us at certain moments. We can find with our children a new way of building social relationships because we have another consciousness by which we can meet our children better.

Helle Heckmann is a Waldorf kindergarten teacher in Denmark. Books and a dvd about her work at Nokken near Copenhagen are available from WECAN. Helle is also offering courses and workshops worldwide and can be contacted at helleheckmann@yahoo.dk.


Notes taken from a talk in Mexico and published in the Cuernavaca Waldorf School Magazine, 2011. This article was published in Kindling: The Journal for Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Care and Education (UK) Autumn/Winter 2011.

Source: https://www.waldorftoday.com/2011/11/daily-rhythm-at-home-and-its-lifelong-relevance-by-helle-heckmann/

Why are we teaching? What are we teaching?

By Barbara Klocek

When I first began teaching, I thought my main goals were to create a wonderful environment for the children, to create a harmonious breathing in the morning and to give them an opportunity to experience through their head, heart and hands. I still feel these are important elements in our work. However, over the years I have come to see that there are other, more subtle aspects that are equally important.

These lie in the social realm. Many questions come to mind. Is it part of the teacher’s role to enter into the social realm or do we “let the children work it out?” Do the children feel safe in our classroom? Are the children free to play with whomever they want or can they reject other children? Do we step in when the play becomes exclusive or too rough? Is the role of the teacher to create the social mood, or is it set by the children? How do we meet the children who at the age of six are saying, “You are not the boss of me?” What do we do when we are met with outright defiance from a child?

Each year these questions are brought to light with different children. This year I had several situations that needed my attention. One had to do with the question of one child excluding other children, especially the six-year-old children. Over the years I have come to the rule that all children get to play together. If two children are longing for time alone, I suggest a play date with the families so they can enjoy each other’s company in that way. This year a six-year-old girl returned as one of our oldest children as she had a summer birthday. Two other returning girls were her best friends and she loved to be the leader. This year instead of the mellow trio of last year, they started competing for each other’s friendship and were not at all inclusive of the new children. I tried gentle diversions of having one bake bread, etc. but they were like magnets. So, around the middle of October, my colleague and I decided to tell them that they were on vacation from each other in order to make new friends. The first day or two they were at a loss, but soon they were found happily playing with other children. How delighted the new children were to make friends with them.  After a month, we said that we had noticed how many new friends they had and that they could play together if they would include the other children. This worked well for a while, but a few weeks later they were in their intensive trio again. So we give them a week together or a week on vacation depending on the mood and it seems to work well. I had a short phone conversation with the involved parents so they would understand how I was working. I was unsure how these parents would feel about these “vacations.” However, one mother put me at ease as she said how grateful she was and how it was like her sending her two daughters to their own room if they couldn’t play nicely together.

This brings up the question of whether children should be able to exclude other children. Sometimes this will manifest as a trio or as only boys (or girls), or in many other ways. I have struggled with this question over the years and was delighted to come across a book You Can’t Say You Can’t Play by Vivian Paley. She is a kindergarten teacher and storyteller who also struggled with this question and held may discussions with different age children about this question. She also came to the rule, “You can’t say you can’t play,” and found it created a much more harmonious classroom. I try to put a positive slant on it by saying we all play together.

Often preschool is one of the first steps out of the home and into a classroom. One of the main skills children learn is how to get along in a group and this is learned often from the rules of that classroom. The arrows of exclusion and the pain of rejection are hard at any age. We have a unique opportunity to help children develop new skills in our classroom. Even at the age of four and more strongly by the age of six, the children experience sympathies and antipathies towards other children. How can we help them move beyond this reaction and begin to play/work together at another level? I personally have come to see this as an important part of my work toward peace in the world, in this tiny kingdom called the Red Rose Kindergarten. It doesn’t happen magically that the children get along and include everyone, but over time, they open up their play to everyone and indeed become new friends. I am fairly active initially, supporting a child to be included if someone has just said they cannot play by helping them extend the house, dress up or bring some wooden “cookies” as an entrance into the other children’s play.

Do the children feel safe in our classroom? This for me is an important gauge as to whether I am disciplining in the right way. If we as the teacher are not in charge, usually one of the older, choleric children will be in charge, directing the play, etc. These children are often the leaders of the class and it is our responsibility to see that they are kind and benevolent kings and queens and not tyrants. So one of my main tasks is to listen with sensitive ears as to when the play is too rough or chaotic. Listening from the periphery, I am always sensing the tone in the classroom. If it is not harmonious but has a tinge of pain, anger or fear, quietly and rather quickly I move into that space, sometimes just sitting with my work or entering in if it seems appropriate. This provides an opportunity to work with the six-year-olds directly for their feeling life is becoming stronger and often they find themselves nearly overwhelmed by the inner storm themselves. Here we can help soothe the storm and create a space in which each child can speak and be heard. I can help find a middle path if necessary. I see the feelings of relief on the children’s faces and things settle down. Everyone is safe in this kingdom.

This is usually the case every year if there are several choleric boys. They each want to “be the boss” of the game and voices begin to rise in anger. I waited too long one year to help temper the power struggle and a pattern had become established outside of arguing. In this case, I bought a bag of six penny nails and they were both delighted to be allowed to hammer them into the fence for the first part of recess. Then they were able to settle into play.

I had an opportunity this fall to deal with a child who was defiant outright. Usually I find this attitude begins later in the year, in early spring with the six-year-old children moving out of imitation and beginning to find their relation to the world in terms of who is in charge. Rudolf Steiner speaks of the seven-year-old child learning out of respect for authority rather than as a young child, out of imitation. So we as teachers of sixyear-olds are being met with this transition every year. It is not an easy transition for either the child or the teacher and it influences the mood of the whole class. I find that by living and breathing our rhythms and stories so deeply together, the class becomes a living organism around the beginning of December. If then, in early spring, the six-year-olds are resisting clean up or circle, the class already is a cohesive whole and a firm but gentle hand will bring a new respect to these children of the teacher as an authority.

However, this child came in with a defiant attitude. Only with much coaxing would he participate in circle. He was rude to the other children in his play as he insisted on doing things his way. He did not respect the quiet times and would be disruptive. I have in my classroom a “watching chair.” This is any convenient chair where a child can sit and watch how other children are doing it correctly. I find this very helpful early in the year if the children are in line and one is pushing or at clean up time when all the children are helping except for one who is spinning around. These children often need to come out of movement into stillness (sitting), to even notice what is going on. I often will sit down beside the child in the watching chair and point out what the other children are doing and then invite them to participate in that way. I do not see it as punitive as much as instructive. The children who are being gentle meanwhile are being noticed for their kind behavior.

I had this boy the year before. His birthday was in June so he was already five for his first year with us. He had some challenges in sensory integration and many social patterns from previous day care situations that were difficult. His parents were aware of the problems and followed through on suggestions to give him some extra help through sensory integration, etc. We saw improvement at the end of the year. However, when he returned the following September, he was even more defiant. The first year it was difficult for him because sometimes he couldn’t do what was asked. This year I felt it was because he wouldn’t. This is a difficult distinction to perceive, but over time, with observation, it usually becomes clear.

His defiance began to spread throughout the day, with his friends as well as the teacher. Other children did not like him or began to imitate him, and I felt the mood of the class was being shaped by his attitude. We had a conference with his parents and I was clear about how serious this problem was. I told them I could not see him in a larger class in first grade with this defiant attitude. I asked the parents to be stricter in response to his defiance. I felt he needed a wake up call as to the effects of his behavior. We arranged that when he was defiant in school, his parents would be called to come and get him. When he was taken home, it was not to be a time of fun but of time out.

When he returned from a weekend of his parents being more consequent, he was better. However, before long he was refusing to come down from a tree when it was time to go in. I told him I was calling his father. He was shocked and asked me not to. I said I needed to because he was not listening. He sat contritely until his father came and I, in front of him, said to the father that I was very sad that he would not listen, and tomorrow we would give him another chance.

What a change this brought about. He became much more responsive and began new patterns of cooperation with the teachers. He played much better with the children, although is still working out issues of “who is the boss.” This was the first time in over fifteen years of teaching that I have sent a child home in this way. However, I am finding that parents have increasing more difficulties in setting and following through with boundaries with their lively children. I have two copies of John Rosemond’s book, Six Steps for Raising Healthy, Happy Children in my parent library. This is a wonderful resource for parents, as a mainstream book, which supports their relationship with each other, their role as authorities within the family and the importance of no media for the children.

Our involvement as teachers in the social realm can create an opportunity for many social skills to be learned, for many rough edges to be smoothed and for many friendships to bloom. The children can relax because they feel safe and can experience harmony as a reality in our classroom.

Barbara Klocek is a long-time kindergarten teacher at the Sacramento Waldorf School in Fair Oaks, California.

Source: https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/GW50klocek.pdf

The Kindergarten Child

By Peter Lang

The kindergarten has come into the public arena. In the political debate about the consequences of the conclusions of the PISA study, the kindergarten is, in many cases, not understood as a place of development in which children acquire the essential, vital, basic skills needed as a foundation for future school learning. Time spent in kindergarten is often characterized as “cuddly education” and “wasted time.” According to a series of articles about the new education catastrophe in Germany in Der Spiegel (a German weekly news magazine), the dogma remains that kindergarten involves only playing and no learning, and, that as a result, a kind of cultural malnutrition takes place. The call for beginning school earlier is becoming louder, and, at first glance, may even appear logical. However, logical does not always mean appropriate or just. For this reason, it is more urgent than ever that, in the immediate future, the developmental needs of young children be highlighted and examined in order to see what requisites for kindergarten education emerge. At the same time, it can be shown that in Waldorf education, kindergarten is a time of thorough preparation for future learning in school and in life. Children are individuals who develop and who, with their talents, inclinations, interests, and also handicaps, want to go their own ways.

In order to facilitate this process in the best possible way, they need competent adult role models, loving and secure relationships, and their own rate of development. Children do not fit into the timetables of the adult world, nor do they fit into purposeful political or economic agendas. Children are capable of learning, joyful at learning, and ready to learn. Their developmental windows are wide open, especially in the preschool and first school years. That is where the responsibility arises for adults to shape the child’s world in such a way that at least these three main components permeate their upbringing:

1. Comprehension: Children should and want to know and learn to understand the world in its interconnectedness; therefore, the methodology here should consist of simple and easily grasped that lead into the ever more complex.
2. Application: Children gain trust in their own growing powers and abilities primarily when they get many opportunities to do things themselves and master tasks themselves. When help is needed, it should, of course, be forthcoming.
3. Meaningfulness: Children should develop a sense of meaning in their own actions, feelings, and thoughts, step by step. That requires qualified role models in childhood and youth as an orientation and accompaniment on their path.

School-readiness should be determined by the actual physical and mental development of the child, and this is not necessarily in step with legal regulations or economic considerations. Before school readiness, it is not specific, testable knowledge that the child needs. Quite the opposite is true! The time before school, free from formal learning, allows for the development of basic skills on which later formal education and training can build. These skills make it possible for the future youth and adult to arrive at a position where he or she can master the demands of daily life in the best possible way. They are the requisite foundations for further specialization. Before school readiness, children neither need nor do they tolerate one-sided intellectualization. The same applies to so-called “cuddly education.” Children need the mindful attention of parents and of well-trained educators to give them orientation. Only in this way can they find their own paths.

Waldorf Kindergartens as Skills Centers

Waldorf kindergartens have always been understood to be not just safe havens: They are intended to better the developmental conditions of each child and afford him or her a happy and learning-intensive childhood. In Waldorf pedagogy, there are seven skills areas that are highlighted for children up to age six or seven:

1. Body and Movement

Scientists and teachers have established that more than half of all first-graders have problems with posture or balance, or are overweight. Many children suffer from lack of movement; their large motor and fine motor skills are insufficiently developed. But the human being’s mental and spiritual orientation and balance correspond to his or her physical flexibility and mobility; those who cannot maintain physical balance usually have problems with mental balance. Also, the ability to move definitely influences the acquisition of speech. The ability to comprehend something and then go towards it permeates perception, widens the horizon of a child’s experience, and activates the speech development process. Children who learn active, versatile movement are also preparing the way to more skillful thinking. That is why special attention is paid in Waldorf education to ensure that children get much varied physical movement. Regular walks, games, or gardening also belong in this domain of movement as do finger games and handwork (such as sewing or embroidery).

Tips on method: Perception of the body, development of bodily sense of self, and the motor and fine motor skills come about, for example, by walking, climbing, and jumping rope, gardening and kitchen work, by playing simple musical instruments, and doing simple woodwork such as building a birdhouse.

2. The Senses and Perception

Virtual worlds are becoming epidemic. They present us with qualities that never occur in reality. In order not to fall for these deceptive images, we must depend on our senses more than ever. We need an enhanced perception skill. Our children require an alert consciousness for all that happens around them and to them. What develops is the trust in one’s own power of perception. That is why dependable, unadulterated impressions are especially important in current times. Even media skills, which are desirable later, must be developed through a pedagogical foundation. “Media skill,” according to Joseph Weizenbaum, an American computer expert from M.I.T., “means the ability to think critically. One learns critical thinking solely through critically processed reading and that is conditional on a high level of speech competence.”

In the Waldorf kindergarten, children first discover and explore the real world with their senses and thereby get to know and learn to understand simple, perceptible connections. In this way, along with their own joy of discovery, they also gradually experience elementary laws of nature. Such fundamental requisites as these should be present, at the least, before children enter into more complicated, abstract connections. Therefore, computers or television in kindergarten can in no way promote media skills needed later.

Tips on method: Nurture the human senses by creating harmonious surroundings, among other things, with soothing blends of colors and materials, and by utilizing healthy, organic foods and natural materials.

3. Speech

Thinking and speaking are closely connected. We can express what we are thinking through speech. With speech we can express our feelings, give names to all things in the world, and enter into discussions with one another. However, this instrument requires early, active, and careful nurturing. Children learn to speak in a speaking environment. This depends, first of all, upon the personal relationship between those speaking and those listening. If a child perceives warmth of soul and language from the adults, then this enables the child to also develop good, clear speech. When a child begins to speak varies according to the individual. But all children need good speech role models in order to grow in their language.

Songs, stories, verses, finger games, and rhymes have an important place in a Waldorf kindergarten. The children playfully learn the language and become at home in it. The speech of the educator should, therefore, be loving, clear, imaginative, and age appropriate. Baby talk does not have a place here, nor does the use of abstract explanations.

Tips on method: Good speech role models, clear, vocabulary-rich and imaginative speech, songs, verses, finger games, rhymes, correct naming of things such as plants and animals, daily storytelling or reading from meaningful stories, fairytales, and so forth, allow the children to develop their language skills.

Take time to listen to them and do not correct their speech. From these activities, joy for reading and reading ability will emerge.

4. Imagination and Creativity&

The paradox is omnipresent. All around us, more and more aspects of life are being standardized, prefabricated, and defined. On the other hand, human social development is unthinkable without imagination and creativity. Will we soon even still be capable of these two capacities? How do we acquire and maintain them? A wealth of ideas, mental/spiritual flexibility, and imagination are required of adults (and rightly so) to enable them to shape their lives and work, and kindergarten is the time to invest in the development of these faculties. Everything imaginative, everything artistic, vitalizes and expands the soul and consciousness of human beings.

Development and care of childhood imagination takes on concrete form in the Waldorf kindergarten. There are many non-standardized and “barely finished” toys that stimulate children’s creative powers. Stories animate the children to translate what they hear into play. Daily playtime is ample enough for the children to be concentrated and spur each other on to finding joy in activities.

Tips on method: Use toys and play materials that stimulate the imagination, such as rocks, boards, pieces of wood, large pieces of cloth, and scarves. Have regular playtimes in the forest or garden, with variations in games such as role playing and puppet plays. Tell inspiring and motivating stories that can then be translated into the children’s play. The archetypal trade stories should be told and a relationship developed to them through play. Provide opportunities for pretending to be shoemakers, carpenters or tailors (the archetypal trades).

5. Social Ability

Social cohesiveness must be learned. Without social competence, the healthy life of an individual person and a society is inconceivable.

Children are social beings from birth and will studiously acclimate themselves to social relationships. These learning processes begin in the family and continue in the kindergarten. As more and more children are growing up in one-child families, often with only one parent, with the result that their social field of practice is limited, the kindergarten must thus now, more than ever, become the basis for social experience. Social interaction is always a matter of bringing the interests, desires, and needs of the individual into a relationship with the group or community. On the one hand, individuals must be able to bring their own abilities and intentions, and, on the other hand, the needs of everyone else should have a place. For this, rules, agreements, and trust are necessary. Children need communities in which they can orient themselves and learn as many of these social rules of life as possible.

A Waldorf kindergarten is such an environment. The children learn that there are rules as well as a structure-creating rhythm to the day and week that lead to single children or groups taking over certain tasks (such as tidying up or setting the table). The children orient themselves by imitating the teacher. Through this process, they also learn to take responsibility and to use their own creative space that has resulted and, at the same time, they get practice in useful activities.

Tips on method: Mixed-age groups offer opportunities for chlidren to help each other. Help children to take over tasks such as rinsing the dishes, tidying the room, watering the plants. Foster social orientation by telling meaningful stories and through encouraging role playing father-mother-child, firefighting, hospital, store. Help children learn to give, receive, and share. Have children experience parents helping in the kindergarten, for example, repairing toys, organizing festivals, or doing renovation work. Practice solving conflict, for example, by apologizing when it is called for.

6. Motivation and Concentration

Today many children, youth, and adults suffer from nervousness, hyperactivity, and a lack of concentration. Their enthusiasm has been limited as well as their ability to connect themselves with certain activities for a given period of time. In science and education, the causative factors (pathogenesis) have long been sought and researched. At the same time, there has been an effort to get to know and strengthen the healthy and stabilizing factors (salutogenesis).

The Waldorf teachers’ tasks are to identify habits and impressions that are harmful to the development of the small child and to keep them away from the child (for example, television at an early age). At the same time, their educational efforts are directed toward health-promoting factors. For instance, they recognize the young child’s desire for learning and activity and stimulate that desire and the child’s natural tendency to imitate through role modeling. Interesting and stimulating possibilities for activity have a motivating effect on the children. Regular repetition and rhythmic, creative elements in the daily kindergarten routine, as well as regular attention to seasonal changes highlighted with festivals, all, therefore, help the child to develop the ability to concentrate.

Tips on method: Encourage self-created play and have toys that stimulate initiative and offer manifold possibilities for play. Help children get to know processes from beginning to end and participate in them themselves (for example, in baking, laundry, and gardening). Help children experience appropriate activities having to do with adult daily life instead of unplanned, senseless, or unhealthy activities.

7. Ethics and Moral Values

In order to shape their own lives, children, like adults, need mental/spiritual orientation, values, and tasks with which they can internally connect. Children need rules, rituals, clarity, and truthfulness. They want to experience adults who are engaged and involved and can give them moral orientation without preaching. However, today many children find only the standards of a fun-and-recreation- oriented society in their surroundings without any supporting commitment.

Waldorf pedagogy consciously incorporates ethics and morals into its educational approach. It recognizes that children need a supportive environment to absorb the good, beautiful, and true, just as they need respect for other people, other cultures, and nature. Children must also learn that the experience of respect, beauty, and truth is linked to personal engagement and involvement.

Tips on method: Prepare and celebrate festivals. Provide opportunities for loving contact with nature. Provide opportunities for practicing charity and “loving thy neighbor,” gratitude (verse before meals), and helpfulness. Enable children to experience their parents’ involvement in the community and in the kindergarten. Help them to learn respect for differences. Provide opportunities for hearing and singing songs and saying verses from other cultures.

Peter Lang is the head of the Waldorf Kindergarten Seminar in Stuttgart. 


Source: http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAKindChildLang.pdf

Helping Children in a Time of Trouble – A Few Thoughts

By Nancy Foster

In a time of trouble, such as the death of a family member or friend, parents are faced with the question of how to help the children through this time. In a sense, the question will have many as answers as there are particular children and since children respond so differently to a situation, according to their age and nature. Parents are frequently brought up short by the realization that they must first face their own feelings and questions. Next comes the necessity of dealing with a child’s questions.

A generally-accepted “rule of thumb” in responding to children’s questions is to give only as much information as the child is actually requesting. As adults, our thoughts on a topic tend to be quite far-ranging, while the child’s question is likely to be on a much more direct level. It is better to err on the side of simplicity; if a child needs to know more, another question will surely follow. Your answer to “what happens to someone who has died” will, of course, depend on your own view of this; in any case, a simple picture is usually best for a child. Your honest expression of sorrow and sympathy is very beneficial in helping a child to experience and cope with loss, but uncontrolled emotions are usually troubling or even frightening for the young child. The adult’s efforts to recognize and accept grief without being overwhelmed by it can be a profound example to a child.

Some children may appear to become obsessed by the death, asking question after question and seeming unsatisfied by any number of answers. The sensitive parent will soon realize that this child is seeking for something other than words to quiet his or her anxieties. Often the best answer is a warm hug and words such as, “That’s enough talk for now: come, it’s time to pick some flowers for the supper table” (or some other such homely task). This child needs most of all an expression of love from the parent and the reassurance that life will go on, in the form of normal activities, even in the midst of grief. This is not to deny the grief, but to help the child work through it in the way most natural to children — through activity. If it seems appropriate, the child can be encouraged to help bake a loaf of bread for the bereaved family, or perhaps to make a card to send.

The place of ritual in helping the children and adults to cope with loss should not be overlooked. Rituals are “special times for special happenings,” in the words of Julius Segal, a psychologist writing in the Washington Post some years ago. Such rituals, which may be religious, secular, or familial in origin, “can provide a strengthening sense of order and meaning in times of trouble. They can help maintain the form and rhythm of lives shaken by trauma and grief…” Mr. Segal’s theme was the role of ritual in creating a stable, fulfilling family life, but it can also be applied to times of trouble. For a child who shows a continuing, deep concern about a death, establishing a simple ritual can be very comforting. For example, the child may help to create a special setting with perhaps a candle, a small vase of flowers, some beautiful autumn leaves, some acorns or crystals… and at a particular time each day (just before or after dinner, possibly, or before the bedtime story) the candle may be lighted and a song sung, or a verse recited, “to send our thoughts” or “to send our love” to the one who has died or to the family. Such a ritual may serve as a kind of anchor in a sea of grief or anxiety, as well as diminishing the sense of helplessness in the face of another’s loss.

Finally, a story which contains a simple but meaningful picture of the spiritual origins of life and its destinies can be of great help to a child. From such a story — as from all true stories — the child can take the image or images which will be of most help to him or her.

Source: https://www.waldorflibrary.org/images/stories/Journal_Articles/GW2909.pdf