Blog Post

Becoming - A Lifelong Task

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 05:41:44 GMT

Becoming - A Lifelong Task

By Vanessa Fountain

In Rose Kindergarten, I begin the year with the story of Little Boy Blue. It is a story about a child who loves being with his parents, but one day asks to go on an adventure. “Oh, I love adventures’ says his mother. ‘But mummy, I meant by myself’ says the boy”. ‘Oh, says mummy.’

The story suggests the need for the child to step into the next developmental stage.

His wise mother ensures he has his backpack, hat, shoes, lunch, water bottle, cuddly and for him to know that she will be there with open arms should he need her. And then with much hugging and kissing the little boy sails off on his adventure. And what a wonderful adventure it is, trying new things, meeting new people. When he finally sails home, he sees his mummy jumping up and down on the shore, crying ‘woo-hoo, woo-hoo, it’s me, mummy’.

The children recognising the picture are at this point squealing with laughter!

The boy then pulls his boat ashore and is swept into his mummy’s arms with squeezes and kisses. More giggles. The mummy then asks the boy the usual questions asked by a loved one, ‘did you have a good day, did you make a new friend, did you enjoy yourself, did you have enough to eat?’ To each question the boy shrugs his shoulders and makes an ‘I don’t know’ sound. At the end of the questions as they turn to go home, the boy says, ‘mummy’, ‘yes, dear’. ‘Mummy, can I go back tomorrow?’ to which the mummy with a cheeky grin on her face shrugs her shoulders and makes the same sound the little boy has made to her questions. Now the children are rolling on the floor in hysterics, because we all know that it means yes.

My experience is that sometimes our children are not yet conscious of their experiences or able to verbalise the effects of experiences when they meet them so deeply and developmentally appropriately.

It takes time to integrate, to form words, and to make pictures of what the rhythm, the circle, the painting, the play, the story awakens in them. If there are no external influences in the child’s world, such as television, dysregulated life rhythms, materialism etc., then the process is gentler, dreamier, less conscious. If these influences are present, then the child needs to process them. The fast paced ‘children’s show’ geared at poor attention spans needs to adapt to a slower rhythm of a simple story told over three weeks.

It takes time to adapt, to let go of the need for instant entertainment, and to drop into the dream, the magic and the mystery of the story.

In week one there was the excitement of the story and humour they could relate to. In week two, there were fidgets, ‘I’ve heard this’, ‘this story again’, ‘can I go to the toilet’. Week three brought stillness, wide eyes and open mouths. In the repetition they had found something new, something that met them deeply.

Along with our Steiner Curriculum, our Early Childhood educators work with The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) Principles.

These principles focus upon children’s Belonging, Being and Becoming. As adults we intuitively understand what this means.

But I sometimes think that as parents we can forget that becoming is about change.

To become, we need to explore, try, fail, succeed, make mistakes, repair the damage, be disappointed, disappoint, find things we love and find things that we don’t love etc. This is especially relatable to those of us who currently have or have been through the teenage years with our children.

Becoming requires a safe place and safe holding, clear boundaries and developmental knowledge, where it is understood that we will make mistakes, life will be messy, we will show those around us our humanity, our striving, our gifts and our challenges.

And we will hopefully learn, grow and become. Who you saw in front of you yesterday may not be who you see in front of you tomorrow. It’s almost like they are asking us, please see me, support me as I move between one stage and another, show me your love is unconditional, and that I can be who I am right now in this ever-evolving adventure we call life.

One activity that I sometimes offer to parents is the ‘dream rattle’. Parents are invited to form a ball out of two pinch pots of clay. This ball is a reminder of everything we hope for and dream of for our children. Inside we wrap a small ball of clay in paper. The paper will burn off in the firing process to leave the ball unattached, making a ringer inside the sphere. We are then invited to decorate the outside with carvings and pictures of all we hope and dream of for our children. At this point I let the parents know that the ball inside is a seed, the seed that the child has brought with them.

A blueprint for their life, the experiences, the adventures that they would like to have.

Our clay spheres are the protection of that seed. In a way our hopes and dreams don’t belong on the sphere, except to provide an environment, a boundary, that protects, nurtures and holds childhood as sacred. A space that will allow the child the best chances of living the life they have come to live. This is incredibly important in childhood, but the process of evolving is, we hope, lifelong.

Making time to become – my long service leave

For my long service leave I didn’t journey overseas, climb high mountains or abseil down into caves. I did spend a lot of time swimming in our gorgeous ocean and began to learn about the seaweed that calls our coast home. I read some amazing books on seaweed around the world, the impact of overharvesting and the flow on effects to the habitat of other marine creatures. I learnt of the many species impacted by overfishing that then in turn impact the seaweed with catastrophic outcomes.

But my long service was more about stopping, resting and working on my life work – me.

It seems such a luxury to stop, put everything down, allowing the soft voice of the heart to speak and to ‘perhaps’, listen.

It always seemed so impossible while raising children and holding a class, to even contemplate stopping. However, with grown children, a stable class and fabulous parents, the soft voice of my heart was, well, more like a screaming, hysterical banshee. I was well past contemplating the whisperings of my heart and chanting a few ‘ohms’ – mutiny was afoot and my heart the harbinger I had been too ‘everything’ to hear.

It took time to slowly put things down. Mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

It reminded me of the jettisoning of my extraneous possessions after the first full day of walking the Camino De Santiago, only it was a slower process. The habit body held on tight to all the stories of should, would and could. I needed to move to think, so I renovated, I stripped decks, painted verandahs, removed rust from recycled gates (with an angle grinder - very satisfying), treated and painted the gates and installed them. And all the while I listened.

I listened, holding space for that part of me that needed to be heard.

I realise now that I went through an experience somewhat like the stages of grief. Denial, anger (the angle grinder), bargaining, depression and acceptance. (It makes you want to take long service leave doesn’t it!).

But why was I experiencing grief? In yoga we use ‘savasana’ (or corpse pose) to allow the body to integrate what it has learnt from our yoga practice. To let go of what it needs to let go of and to allow space for what needs to be. We can do all the right things, but our body, mind and soul need time and space to integrate the new and to, with gratitude, let go of that which now belongs to the past.

Rudolf Steiner said that it is not what you know but who you are that is important.

But the ‘who’ you are, is not a fixed point. We are forever striving and growing. Making mistakes and doing our best to make good our learning as spiritual and human beings. Sometimes the growth, the learning is slow and in small increments but equally it can be so fast and so profound that it takes your breath away.

If I can give you the “Cliff Notes” of my long service leave, it is this. It is not a luxury to stop, to take time for yourself, to integrate the latest living/learning and loving. You will not be a lesser (fill in the blank). It’s ok to make changes and be an evolving version of you.

It’s your life, don’t live it for an idea, a someone or something else, be authentically you.

Authenticity is encoded in our being and when we deviate from the truth of who we are (consciously or unconsciously), our spirit, our body and our mind will let us know. By taking the time to listen to our hearts, to integrate our learning, we will be our most authentic selves, making course changes by smooth conscious, imperceptible degrees that lead us back to ourselves. Or you can do what I did. I am lucky to have a family where I could say, this is no longer me, I’m still working out who I am and where I want to be and they supported me every step of the way.

Did I enjoy my long service holidays. Yes, I did. Do I feel refreshed? I’d say renewed. It was at times a long journey through some foreign lands. I climbed more than a few metaphoric mountains and certainly spent some time in the caves of the dark night of the soul, but I feel renewed, centered and excited to be back.

I did wonder how I came to be so out of touch with who I currently am. Why I had not integrated my learnings and changes in compass settings in real time. Maybe we can’t, maybe like our little ones, it needs to percolate in the background, to emerge later as a strengthened will, an imagination or an intuition that aligns with this new version of the self. Perhaps as adults we need a block of intentioned time (think meditation retreat -angle grinder optional) or perhaps as adults we need something less subtle, that jolts us awake and makes us question our choices. (In my case, a good case of burnout and the exasperated inner voice turned banshee). I think we can get caught up in what we think our different roles or the parts of our life should look like and the enticement of the stability of who we think we are. Spirit/energy is not static and nor are we. I am excited to see where my journey takes me and who I am yet to become. Today I try to remind myself that I am liminal, beyond the labels, beyond the roles, where I rest in an ocean of possibility, between states, the long outbreath, following the whisper of my heart.

Play then, play now and the future of childhood

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:06:48 GMT

Play then, play now, and the future of childhood

By Vanessa Fountain

Recently I had the opportunity to join with other educators from across the community to celebrate the second International Day of Play . Hosted by the Play Matters Collective, supported by Early Childhood Australia WA, Valuing Children Initiative, The Commissioner for Children and Young People WA, The Department of Communities, The Department of Education, The Minderoo Foundation, Educated by Nature and The Town of Cambridge.

The gathering sought to celebrate the importance of play and the continuing need for “advocating for play at every level..."

The gathering sought to celebrate the importance of play and the continuing need for “advocating for play at every level – whether through policy development, curriculum design, community programs, media and public awareness.”(A report on the State of Play in WA – Play Matters Collective). The Play Matters Collective and its supporters spoke of the continued call on the WA government to take the lead in ensuring that play remains a priority in the lives of all children and young people through a WA Play Strategy. This strategy would ensure that the right to play is supported and owned by all stakeholders across the WA community and that this support be reflected in the WA Play Strategy and upheld and championed by the WA government.

This strategy would ensure that the right to play is supported and owned by all stakeholders across the WA community.

Article 31 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child includes the right of the child to play. In their mission to uphold this, The Play Matters Collective held a Play Summit in 2024. “The summit discussed how we play, why we play and why we must protect these vital experiences founded on academic research, sharing program showcases, and listening to children and youths’ personal stories on why play matters. The conclusion was that play is fundamental” (A report on the State of Play in WA – Play Matters Collective).

"The conclusion was that play is fundamental."

It was clearly a day of celebration. The conveners acknowledged the hard work and dedication of the many people who sought to bring the importance of play to this point, on this day, The International Day of Play . It was also on this day that the Government had announced they would be spending $33.8 million to introduce free, full-time school-based kindergarten for four-year-olds in a pilot program across 10 locations. At this announcement I must admit to a sinking feeling in my being. However, that commitment also came with the announcement that The Office of Early Childhood will lead the development of a WA Play Strategy, emphasising the importance of play in cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and language development. There were cheers and calls for the abolishment of the current curriculums for early childhood and the move towards a play informed curriculum. There was laughter and then the response from the speaker at the time, “One step at a time”.

The Office of Early Childhood will lead the development of a WA Play Strategy, emphasising the importance of play in cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and language development.

I felt the battle, the frustration, the exhaustion but also the hope, the tenacity and the commitment to bring what educators intuitively know and what is so obvious when sitting with our 3-, 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. Something that is now backed by modern research and lies at the heart of a healthy childhood and if it needs to be labelled, then, a healthy childhood “education”.

It was a surreal moment for me.

I knew from my teaching studies that Froebel, Steiner, Piaget, and Malaguzzi held play central to their educational philosophies. But here, now in 2025, backed by rigorous studies, my colleagues are fighting for what we in Steiner education have, a curriculum and policies that hold, protect and place play as central to the healthy development of the child. The Steiner Early Childhood curriculum does understand the importance of free imaginative play and places it centrally in its pedagogy. That is not all, however, that for the healthy development of the child, Waldorf education upholds.

The Steiner Early Childhood curriculum does understand the importance of free imaginative play and places it centrally in its pedagogy.

It would have been easy to smugly muse for a moment whether I would one day find myself sitting at a similar event for not just the right of the child to free imaginative play as I found myself on this occasion but for similar events on other core concepts at the heart of Steiner Early Childhood education.

• The care and nourishment of the senses

• Love and warmth as a child’s environment and the attitude in which the child experiences the world and is received by their caregivers.

• Caregivers/educators who live and model care for the environment, our world and its inhabitants in all its forms – mineral, plant, animal and all of humanity

• Creative artistic experiences

• Having an environment and caregivers/educators that model gratitude, wonder, reverence and awe

• Meaningful adult activity that is worthy of the child’s imitation

• Cultivating an atmosphere of joy, humour and happiness

• An education that upholds the tenants of truth, beauty and goodness, and the depth of understanding that this entails

• Fostering the development of the will

• And of course, the protection of childhood.

However, the attack on childhood is so pervasive and relentless that there is no space for complacency.

However, the attack on childhood is so pervasive and relentless that there is no space for complacency or for placing ourselves as superior to others who also fight for our children’s rights. The gift of Steiner’s indications and our Waldorf Curriculum place us in a position to lend our voice and experience to this shared human imperative for free (in the broadest sense) human beings.

It takes a conscious, willed effort to ensure that childhood is protected.

It takes a conscious, willed effort to ensure that childhood is protected. It takes moving against a tide of consumerism; adults who are on a path of inner development and healing – not perfect, but adults who are striving to be worthy of imitation. It means saying no to media and technology in the form and timings that are indicated by Steiner pedagogy. It asks us to choose a slower, simpler lifestyle where there is time for childhood and time to be present, truly present with our children and ourselves. It asks us to care for our environment and the fate of our neighbours.

If enrolling in a Steiner school was all that was required, how easy would it be. One click, and childhood is protected

The forum hosted a panel of young people that had been followed from early childhood through to the end of high school. The youths were not from a Steiner school and yet they spoke of the longing for unstructured, messy, quiet and loud free play. For trees to climb (this was reiterated over and again as the longing to connect with nature) and the understanding that there should be risk in play. Interestingly, there was a call for adults to play. Not only to play with the children but to be seen by them to be playing. My initial thought was, ‘we teach that we have our meaningful work and that the children have theirs, which is to play.’ One of the youths explained further and I paraphrase “when all we see is sad unhappy parents who are tired, stressed, don’t have any free time, are always on their phones or tablets and don’t like their jobs, it’s not very inspiring. We’d like to see their enjoyment in play, in life, their hobbies”.

They further clarified that play opportunities could involve but were not limited to the library, clubs, board games, craft, arts, instruments, sport and drama, not just playgrounds. To be given resources, perhaps some direction, perhaps not, and to let children go and see what they can discover, create, and learn.

Of course we know this, but it made me think of our new school buildings and the necessary impact that the building process will have on our children’s play spaces. It made me wonder whether our parents could bring activities and skills into the school to host ‘play’ opportunities at recess and lunchtime. To enlist the interests and expertise of our parent body to build opportunities for our children to play, whilst simultaneously sharing within our community alternatives to the television, tablets, to movies.

The call to protect play also spoke of the barriers to playing in the places where our children live and go to school.

The call to protect play also spoke of the barriers to playing in the places where our children live and go to school. The youth panel spoke of feeling unsafe to play on the streets, even if the streets were quiet ones and needing places that they could be messy. Examples of bringing play beyond the school gate and into the community involved simple things like permanent hopscotch on the footpath, road safe games on the fences (noughts and crosses), clapping and string games taught whilst waiting to be collected, sensory gardens along the verge. The forum encouraged communities to get to know their neighbours, have times when the street (where appropriate) became an extension of the children’s play space.

We, as a Steiner community, have so much to share with the world and to feel proud of.

We, as a Steiner community, have so much to share with the world and to feel proud of. There is also an opportunity, an invitation, to reflect at this time on what brought us to Steiner Education. The paths will be many and varied but no matter how we come to be here, to ask ourselves how we as a community that is committed to the protection of childhood are supporting the ethos of the school. You see the protection of play is important, but as important is the quality of the play, what the children bring into the play, similar in a way to how we understand that it is not just sleep that is important to the health of the human being, but the quality of the sleep we experience. What images, what content is the child bringing into play? Are these images created from a free healthy organism, or are they images and content that will now burden the child, need processing and remediation? Are they created by the child as it experiences a child appropriate, wholesome, the world is good, people are good, violence free childhood?

How are we supporting our teachers and each other to uphold the agreements we have all made by enrolling at our school, West Coast Steiner School?

How are we supporting our teachers and each other to uphold the agreements we have all made by enrolling at our school, West Coast Steiner School? How are we supporting the protection of childhood around technology, around viewing, device use and screen time? Are we following the recommendations for the ages when technology, movies and screens should not be used at all? Do we know at what age and how they should be introduced and the role of the parent as protector, boundary maker, filter, co-processor and guide? Have we given this gift to our children to help build capacities of critical, flexible and creative thinking and discernment? Have we allowed our children’s organs, their bodies to be built on warmth, have we created an environment that supports a free and beautiful imagination capable of solving the problems that our children will have to face in their youth and adulthood? Do they have the will to follow through, the inner strength to do what needs to be done with warmth, with discernment, with compassion and with love? We have a pedagogy that is so much more than ahead of its time and yet labelling it so, labelling ourselves so, will not do the work. That is our task as parents, educators and caregivers.

If you are unsure of any of these questions, please ask your teachers; they would be pleased to share their thoughts and understanding with you. If you have creative ideas on how we can bring more play opportunities into our school during the building of our new classrooms, then please let us know. We cannot do this without you.

Together we can help each other to be the strength, to be the wisdom, to be the love that encircles and protects our precious children and their future.

Vanessa Fountain is West Coast Steiner School's Rose Kindergarten Teacher and has worked extensively in the early childhood years and as a primary class teacher.

Morning Circle in Kindergarten

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 04:20:24 GMT

Morning Circle in Kindergarten

By Julia Noronha

In Steiner education, the Morning Circle is a foundational and structured part of the day, rather than mere entertainment. It is the first thing we do in the morning and consists of three key components: an introduction, the seasonal circle, and a conclusion.

The Morning Circle is designed to establish a rhythm and incorporate repetition.

Over a period of 3 to 4 weeks, these repeated activities help children develop habits and muscle memory. This repetition not only enhances memory but also provides a sense of security.

When children experience the same images, movements, and gestures repeatedly, they gain a deep sense of satisfaction and mastery.

A typical Morning Circle involves storytelling and accompanying movements. These stories can be drawn from daily life or be more imaginative and fantastical. The use of images in learning and play is encouraged, inspiring children to create their own imaginative worlds. For example, a piece of yellow chalk can become gold, coloured bark can transform into gemstones, and a plank becomes a saw for cutting trees. Singing and movement are integral parts of the circle, often drawing on nature, seasons, fairy tales, festivals, traditional songs, and poems.

The Morning Circle fosters a sense of community and belonging among the children.

Moving together as one, it enhances spatial and social awareness, helping children accommodate themselves in space and to respect the space of others.

This practice is crucial for the development of self-control, as well as physical awareness, helping children come into their bodies.

Participation in the Morning Circle supports the development of foundational senses such as movement, balance, life, and touch. It helps children bring their senses under control and find a balance between different types of movements, such as stomping and tiptoeing.

Recognising that young children are beings of movement, the Morning Circle is designed to be joyful and engaging.

Speech development is another important aspect of the Morning Circle. Through clear words, poems, songs, and music, children learn new vocabulary and language skills. The emphasis is on learning through imitation rather than direct instruction. By watching and imitating the teacher, children naturally follow along without the need to consciously think about the process.

By watching and imitating the teacher, children naturally follow along without the need to consciously think about the process.

The goal is to keep children in a dreamy space, supporting their dream-consciousness and allowing them to live fully in the moment with an unselfconscious, participatory mood. By bringing a sense of reverence and connection to nature and the world around them, we aim to bring the world to the spiritual child. This approach creates vivid pictures of the outer world that deepen the child’s experience, helping them to be something rather than merely describe it. Through movement and gesture, children experience these elements as living realities.

The Morning Circle in Steiner education is thus a holistic and enriching experience, supporting the overall development of the child in a joyful and meaningful way.

As Nancy Foster beautifully describes, it is “the heart of the early childhood group’s morning”.

Holding the Question - What is "Steiner" enough?

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 02:31:50 GMT

Holding the Question

By Vanessa Fountain

Recently I was asked if I could speak to the topic of ‘what it is to be Steiner’ as we often hear ‘that’s not Steiner ‘or ‘they are not Steiner enough’ and it can be confusing to parents and teachers alike. But first some key thoughts.

So, what is Steiner School?

• It is a school that works from the impulses and curriculum given by Rudolf Steiner.

• It has a spiritual, pedagogical, and social aspect which is held by the College of Teachers.

• It is informed by distinct developmental phases and an in-depth understanding of child development.

• It is staffed by teachers who are on a path of personal development, working with the indications of Rudolf Steiner, who are striving in their personal and professional lives to be the best they can be.

• A Steiner school is a sacred place of childhood where we do everything we can to

o Protect our students from adult content

o Protect our students from adult disputes

o Protect our students from politics

o Protect our students from consumerism

o Protect our students from social media and media generally

We work to

o Allow goodness, beauty and truth to permeate all we do.

o To foster a love and connection to the natural world.

o To foster the highest ideals of what it means to be human. A classical education in the truest sense.

What is the difference between studying Anthroposophy and teaching in a Steiner School?

• We teach the child in freedom. We teach over the twelve years the major faiths of the world and epochs of humanity – we do not teach Anthroposophy.

• We understand child development and the development of humankind in light of Anthroposophy. We let this inform us, but it is not taught to the children.

• Anthroposophy can be a spiritual/self-development path for the adult.

• Recently a parent said to me, ‘I love that you are able to connect with the imaginative world of the child’. I am clear about my role and the context. As a free adult I am aware of the world, its complexities, injustices and perils and I am an active participant in meeting that world, but when I am with the children I meet them where they are and I am tasked to guide them on their developmental journey to adulthood, free from the fetters of the thinking that has created the world in which we find ourselves. I hold both pictures but do not confuse them.

How can I support the school?

• Join in, become involved in positive and practical ways.

• Understand that we are not a community school, we are a Steiner school led by a College of Teachers.

• Support the teachers – model holding your teachers with awe and reverence. It is so confusing/damaging for children to hear disparaging comments about their school or teachers from their parents. Keep adult conversations away from the children.

• Do your spiritual work – have a daily spiritual practice. Work on your own personal development. The greatest gift we can give our children is as role models who are striving to become the best that they can be. Show them we are willing to work on ourselves.

If you want to study Anthroposophy:

• We highly encourage it – the school has a study group that meets weekly.

• Join the Anthroposophical Society if you are called to do so. The society here in Perth is very active, offering talks and courses throughout the year.

• Read, study, and immerse yourself in Steiner education. There are courses offered in Perth and online.

The Journey of the Teacher:

• We understand the coming together of the children and Class Teacher is not an accident but rather a sacred agreement. We trust that the teacher brings qualities that the children will need on their journey and vice versa.

• In our teacher training we study the story of Parzival written by Wolfram von Eschenbach in the early 1200s. It is a work that emphasises the importance of humility, compassion, sympathy, and the quest for spirituality. Within the story, Parzival fails to ask the wounded Fisher King ‘What ails thee?’ His failure to ask means that his quest is not over, and it won’t be until he does. We all have wounds that we fear will not heal. We all have that which we struggle to understand. Parzival teaches us to ask the question and to hold as a gesture of being, an openness to there being a question.

And so, to our quest or question, what is Steiner enough?

Well, every hero’s journey begins with a first step.

• Are you Steiner enough on that first magical day (as a parent or teacher) that you encounter the work of Rudolf Steiner and its implications to, everything. Or is it after one book, two books or three books? Is it your first reading of one of Steiner’s works or the twentieth? What is the magic number? Is that a secret? Is it your reading or your understanding? Your understanding or somebody else’s understanding? Is it when you’ve read it, or when you’ve lived it? Or do you need to have read it, lived it, and understood it in the same way that someone that lots of people admire understands it? And how many times?

• Are you Steiner enough in your teacher training, where your world is turned upside down and you see everything with new eyes. When you feel the weight of the spiritual undertaking and responsibility that you are embarking on?

• Or are you Steiner enough in your first year of teaching when you live, breathe, and give every second of your life to your class, forsaking sleep, your own health, and family life?

• Or are your Steiner enough after two years, five years, ten years, or thirty years of teaching?

At what point do you become Steiner enough?

One of the great joys of being a Steiner teacher is to create the sacred space in which to hold with reverence and awe, the unfolding of a young human being. We as parents and educators are tasked with removing hindrances but also to trust the sacred journey of each individual and their life purpose.

One of the great tragedies of being a Steiner teacher, and we hear it in every school, is the phrase - Such and such, or this or that person/parent/teacher is not Steiner. What does that mean? So many times, over my career I have seen talented, enthusiastic, dharma called teachers damaged by this. I have seen them in tears, and I have seen them leave. Some leave forever and some come back, years later, tougher, stronger, hardened by the experience but knowing deep down this is their calling.

How lovely it would be if we could hold with the same reverence and awe that we do the child, the unfolding of the teacher and their calling with their class.

In College, when we see or hear something in the school that invokes a question, you will never hear us say “that’s not Steiner”. Rather, you will hear us say "how can we help?"

• One member of College will speak to the person to better understand the situation, the impulse that the person carries and what stands behind it. The why – the question.

• We ask how and in what way can we support the person? Perhaps it is by supporting the impulse. Perhaps by mentoring. Or perhaps the person can mentor us on this wonderful initiative.

• What do they need?

• What do the parents need to support the teacher with this impulse?

I remember in my first year of class teaching, my mentor, a very experienced Waldorf teacher asked me about my Class 1 play. My first degree was in Jacobean Literature and Theatre Studies, so I was dying to bring my background into good use. I had grown accustomed to being asked ‘why’ about everything I did. My mentor wanted me to demonstrate my understanding of child development, the Waldorf curriculum, the specific needs of the children in front of me and what I brought to the picture, how it would serve the class and not my ego. I told my mentor how I wanted to use stage lights and how this would bring the magic that the children experienced with their introduction to letters and sounds to life for the audience. My mentor questioned the need. I must have convinced him or maybe it was my enthusiasm and determination - he let me run with it. He supported me in faculty. The play was good, the children wonderful. The stage lights - a distraction, a crutch for a new teacher. And the energy they brought; I will never forget that. My mentor let me learn in a framework of safety that fast tracked me to being an even better teacher for the children. If he had just said no, what was the learning…. especially for a choleric. I learnt so much from that experience.

I learnt in Class 1 to let my ego go. To trust the journey of the children and my role in it. I learnt to do the work, surrendering the efforts to the spiritual beings tasked with the care of my children and to step aside to let grace flow into the vessel I had helped to prepare. This experience planted a seed for a continuing life journey of simplifying and coming back to what really matters. A journey of identifying core values and how they are expressed in our lives. Our children need guides with lived experience who can say I’ve been there, maybe I can help.

On another occasion earlier in my career we had an Open Day, and many staff were unwell. I was a very green Early Childhood teacher at the time and one of the senior teachers approached me and asked if I would give the Early Childhood talk, right now. I was beside myself with nerves, but I did it, unprepared. Unfortunately, I reversed two key concepts in my anxiety. After, when I realised, I wanted to find a big rock and crawl under it. My mentor congratulated me on stepping up in a time of need, on my clarity of speech and projection and my striving as a teacher. ‘Perhaps in this week’s mentor session we could talk about’ ……yep! It took a couple of years before I felt like I could stand up and talk in front of parents again but when I did, I was well prepared. A few years on from that, I learnt to do the preparation, but then put it aside and speak from my heart to the hearts of those in front of me.

At what point was I Steiner enough? At the point where I stepped up to the task.

At the point where I accepted the responsibility for those in my care. At the point where I did the work. At the point where I let my mistakes inform but not define me. When you recognise your path and you are actively striving, I think you are Steiner enough. Ask a thirty-year teaching veteran, they will have more questions than answers and so much compassion for those on the journey.

Oh, but this is a Steiner School and, this or that school is ‘more’ Steiner.

• Just as every individual has a journey so does the being of a school.

• Just as everyone is at a different place on their journey, so are schools. There are developmental phases for schools – pioneering, establishment, maintenance and all the stages in-between. Each phase has its benefits and challenges, neither better than the other, just different.

• The history of the land and its people, the importance of place has an impact on the school.

• The demographics of the school inform its being.

• The country, politics and history all affect the expression of the school.

• The size of the school, the resources available

• The College, the parent body, the administration all informs the being of the school.

And yet, they are ALL Steiner schools. Probably a better question is what gifts do you bring? Do you bring the pioneering spirit, the gift of bringing form and roots, or the skills and vision of expansion, or would a more established school support you and your child better? What is the best expression of a Steiner school for you?

So, what is it to be Steiner?

• Working from the indications of Rudolf Steiner. Taking them, working with them, living them, making them personally relevant to the context, place and time, at whatever point in your journey with Steiner education or Anthroposophy that you are at.

• Working on yourself. Having a regular, disciplined spiritual/ meditative practice. Striving to be the best version of you – In your personal and professional life.

• Engaging with nature and the arts.

• Trusting that you are in the right place. Your journey thus far has prepared you for where you are now. It is less important what you do and more important who you are as a human being. What values, integrity, wisdom, and compassion have you garnered. How can you bring your experiences, positive and negative, to the service of humankind?

• Being reflective, flexible, and open to learning. Holding the question.

• Looking to your own path with integrity. Lifting others up wherever you can.

If I had to choose one answer for, what is it to be Steiner? I’d say, when we live out of the understanding that every member of humanity and our planet are sacred, interconnected spiritual beings. That through our spiritual practice and striving in our personal, local, and global healing initiatives, we invite into being the highest expression of self, humanity, and the earth. And finally, that we strive to hold each other with compassion, asking the question and being willing to be a part of the answer as we undertake our interconnected, but unique journeys.

And when are you Steiner enough? – when you decide to walk the path.

Why Do We Have Circle Time Throughout The Grades?

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 07:22:21 GMT

Why do we have Circle Time throughout the Grades?

By Kolea Quincey

Whenever I am asked this question, I enjoy taking the opportunity to relate the elements of an effective circle and to shed light on the reasons for preparing the most thorough and enlivening series of exercises, speech, song and dance that one can possibly create for their students.

The elements of an effective circle hold true for all age groups and the differences lie in the graduated degree of challenge and age appropriate material that one incorporates. I have come to these particulars through decades of teaching.

Many of the teachers that I have observed and evaluated through the years have chosen to do movement at their student’s desks. Those teachers felt that the location of the movements and activities did not detract from their effectiveness and caused less disruption to the day.

Let’s look at a circle; first of all, throughout history and in almost every culture in the world, the circle is considered to be a sacred form.

When a child, or anyone for that matter, becomes part of a circle there is instant equality. There is no one ahead of you or behind you. Most importantly there is no one’s back facing you.

The circle is considered to be a harmonious configuration. A person is instantly embraced and held as an individual that is part of a whole. The appreciation of the circle is a glimpse into wholeness, unity, and the divine order of the universe.

Because the circle is such an economic and kinesthetic way to insure that the following aspects, which are vital for healthy development and lifelong learning, are part of each and every day, it should not be skipped. Indeed it has become increasingly important as our society moves more toward technology and away from traditional methods of social interaction and kinesthetic learning.

Elements of an Effective Circle:

~Cooperation

~Concentration

~Spatial Awareness

~Balance

~Body Geography

~Right/Left Brain Integration

~Rhythmic activity

~Expansion and Contraction

~Social Skill building

~Retained Reflex Integration

~Mathematical sense/skills

~Fun

~Stamina

~Physical Education

~Memory capacity enhancement

Before elaborating on each of the elements, I acknowledge that there are many more aspects that we could add to the list. In addition to the aforementioned physical benefits of circle activities, it also serves as a way to enhance whatever block of academic study the class is immersed in by allowing the children to experience something of the culture, mythology, or period of history currently being taught. For example, marching as Roman soldiers or stomping around like an angry Thor! Learning a Square dance or a medieval waltz brings a time period alive.

The Elements of an Effective Circle

Cooperation is the first and foremost aspect to be considered. If we are guiding the children in our care toward a successful and fulfilling life, then cooperation with our peers and the adults in our environment is crucial. Each person must do their best to have a circle flow properly.

Indeed, as the exercises increase in difficulty, one person’s antics can stop the flow of a complicated beanbag exercise. If the exercises are carefully geared toward proper child development the students will want to experience the joy that accomplishing a challenging, harmonious exercise brings.

Coordination

The development of small and large muscle control is an important aspect of a healthy physical body.

Concentration

The ability to deliberately apply oneself to a physical or mental task is vital to healthy development. This creates an opportunity to develop impulse control, also a crucial aspect of a healthy life.

Spatial Awareness

Healthy boundaries are learned from the repeated task of orienting oneself in space. All directions of space can be explored through walking forward, backward, right to left, and left to right. By adding sticks, rods, and/or bean bags, above and below can also be explored.

Balance

According to Rudolf Steiner, it is the etheric body that empowers us with the strength to stand upright. The process of integrating all of the bodies becomes easier if each is strong. Finding and holding our center of gravity has a strengthening effect on the whole organism. Finding our ‘center’ helps us to feel grounded. Balance gives us our orientation to the earth.

Body Geography

When a child is born, they have no orientation as to where they are in space. As their senses develop, especially the four foundational senses, a child discovers their hands, feet, and eventually the whole map of themselves. Then they are ready to discover the rest of the world! If we haven’t internalized this ‘map’ of our own bodies, we can’t learn to easily move through space. By utilizing circle exercises we can gradually increase the awareness to right knee, left hand, etc.

Right/Left Brain integration

Whenever children, and/or adults perform exercises that strengthen the bridge between the right and left hemispheres of the brain, it has the effect of allowing electrical impulses and information to pass freely between the two. This helps with physical coordination as well as thinking-based activities like reading, learning new skills, and focusing.

Rhythmic activity

Rhythmic activities are the physical manifestations of the mental and emotional response of the individual to rhythm. They are activities which a human responds to physically, socially, and mentally to regular patterns of sound. They are a source of joy for most people of all ages. Through these activities, skills and the sense of rhythm are acquired and developed, feelings are expressed, basic principles of time, space, and force can be experienced.

Expansion and Contraction

Our daily lives are filled with the notion of the in breath and outbreath. The year and its cycles, the day and night, and of course our breathing adhere to the principles of expansion and contraction. We should always be striving as teachers to incorporate these principles into our lessons. The circle is no different and the coming together and apart as a group helps to regulate the breath and stimulate social consciousness.

Social Skill building

In order to enjoy a healthy social life, an individual must have become comfortable in situations that require cooperation. Dancing and singing together provide these opportunities in a safe environment.

Retained Reflex integration

The science and study of retained reflex integration has been coming to the forefront of developmental inquiry. A circle that is prepared with the youngest children in mind has myriad opportunities for seamlessly incorporating the ‘zoo exercises’ and others that help the young child to integrate the senses that for one reason or another have not integrated into their full body functioning.

Mathematical sense and skills

Circle time has the added benefit of allowing the children to have kinesthetic experiences with math. The whole body can be involved with counting, and the four processes. The teacher can implement bean bags, sticks, dances, and more to help the children become proficient in the processes.

Fun, Stamina, and Physical Education

Circle should be fun, aerobic at times, and challenging physically. The children should have flushed cheeks and be ready for book work when the last word of circle is spoken.

Fun, Stamina, and Physical Education

Circle should be fun, aerobic at times, and challenging physically. The children should have flushed cheeks and be ready for book work when the last word of circle is spoken.

Article courtesy of
Kolea Quincey, Teacher and Faculty Chair
Wishing Well School

Life as Change - The Curriculum Journey

Wed, 22 Jun 2022 04:12:41 GMT

Life as Change –

The Curriculum Journey

By Vanessa Fountain

As teachers we have the privilege and honour to bear witness to the changes that occur for our students over days, weeks, and years. We see them moving through the curriculum and see how beautifully it supports their developmental needs and growth, acknowledges humanity’s journey thus far and gives our children the skills needed to navigate the future.

This journey of discovery is one that allows the student to learn about man’s journey through time, to see our heritage, to know that the world is fundamentally good, beautiful, and true and to allow us to feel our connection to the world of nature, of man and spirit.

The Waldorf /Steiner Curriculum brings to the child the content needed in a way that shows a deep understanding of the need to support not only the thinking realm but also the feeling and willing realms.

It meets the experiences of the child with the corresponding development in humanity’s history. The Class 3 curriculum is one of the Old Testament amongst other key main lessons, not from a religious point of view but from the point of view of the richness of stories offered. There are many stories that illuminate the experience of the nine-year-old child. An example is the story of Adam and Eve and the fall from Paradise. Simply, Adam and Eve want forbidden things and to challenge authority. In eating the forbidden fruit, they are overcome with shame and loss and surprised by the consequences. This is a beautiful picture of the nine-year-old child. Their job is to discover, to challenge and to realise their “nakedness”, their separateness from the parental and spiritual garden of Eden.

The curriculum also supports the parents with stories to help understand what the child is experiencing.

For example, when the child turns nine or close to this age there is a development where the child understands that certain things are no longer true, that parents are fallible and the veil of childhood in a certain way dissolves for them. It is at this time that the teacher may share the picture of the crossing of the Rubicon. The story tells of Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon River, an act of war at the time. Once Julius crosses the river there is no return. It is an act that will set in motion consequences that are irreversible. Like knowing something, you can’t unknow it. So it is for the child, once they step into middle childhood, the mystery and wonder of early childhood cannot be revisited, at least not in the same way.

It is important to both stories that the fall and the crossing are necessary occurrences in the cycle of growth and change and to the next stage of development.

Throughout these privileged relationships between families and teachers we witness the cycles of change that families experience and the versions and permutations that those changes may take. We see parents and children move through periods of equilibrium and disequilibrium. The children through periods of mastery - calm, joy, and contentment to periods of developmental exploration, frustration, anger, fear, and uncertainty. Its good to remember that these periods are a part of a cycle, a cycle that will continue from birth to death and perhaps beyond.

There is reassurance in recognising that we are just in a part of the cycle of life and that there are strategies to assist our children without robbing them of the experience that will help them to gain resilience, strength, and compassion.

I am always reminded of the beautiful story of the caterpillar. We call him Twig in Kindy. Twig was going about life as a caterpillar doing all the things that caterpillars should. He ate, and he ate, and he was careful not to become the meal of hungry birds. All was well in Twig's world until he started having dreams and daydreams that he could fly. He knew this was not possible but told his dream to Mother Nature. The dear old dame told him that perhaps his dreams could somehow be true, but he would first need to know the secret of life. Elated, Twig went and told his friends “You may not know but soon I shall be able to fly”. The friends in turn scoffed and laughed at him. Disheartened Twig returned to his home.

He tried to be patient and let the wisdom come. As he waited, he became really still and noticed, perhaps for the first time the world around him. The sky, he noticed, was so blue, the green of the leaves and plants astonishingly beautiful and the flowers, well Twig's heart just sang. “The world is so beautiful he thought, I am happy just as I am”. Soon after Twig began to feel sleepy, he created a beautiful cocoon, snuggled inside and well, the rest is history.

The thing is, we are all like Twig. We have periods of mastery and periods of disequilibrium where we are ready to extend, to expand to develop the concept or idea of who and what we are and are capable of.

As adults we just get better at smoothing the transitions. Except of course when we don’t. Again, Twig’s story can be helpful. You see when the caterpillar goes into the cocoon, it sheds its skin. The skin becomes the hard crusty protective inner of the cocoon. The caterpillar doesn’t then “just” turn into a butterfly. It goes through a process of dissolving all that has been into what Martha Beck so beautifully calls “undifferentiated goop”. Within this goop which repeatedly builds up only to dissolve into the “no thing/ the egoless/the identity less” is the seed/idea/spiritual blueprint of a butterfly. It is not until late in the process that the imago cells of the butterfly begin the process of building the new version of self, the butterfly. When the butterfly is finally ready to emerge, it must saw the cocoon open and struggle to get out.

The act of removing itself from the cocoon is difficult and dangerous but it is in this struggle to claim the new version of the self that it finds its strength, resilience and interestingly, its longevity.

Story, like a roadmap or a curriculum can help us to move through change with more ease and surety. Change invites us to prepare (sometimes that’s just being, or in Twig’s case, by eating lots of leaves). It asks us to make a space, a place, a sanctuary/ a cocoon where we can go and find stillness, where we can hear the whisperings of the soul, our dharma, our life purpose, the next step. Change asks us to surrender who we were, to become who we are yet to be, dissolving the ego into undifferentiated goop. And then, finally, change asks us to fight for the new version of ourselves, to know that it might be uncomfortable, even difficult but that like the Rubicon or the caterpillar, once you’ve shed your skin or crossed the river, there is no turning back.

Our children need to know that we as the adults have faith in their journey and our ability to stay with them through the uncomfortable, tricky (read, “what happened to my child/angel?”) bits.

Our curriculum takes us; the children, the parents and the teachers by the hand and leads us through change, inviting us to become the soul’s whispering we know we were born to be. Sometimes change/transformation is uncomfortable, even difficult but let’s walk it together. We encourage you to attend our Curriculum Journey Evening which is held annually.

The Makuru Winter Festival

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 06:46:54 GMT

The Makuru Winter Festival

By Vanessa Fountain

Kaya WCSS Community,

In last week’s blog article I talked about slowing down, about noticing the changes that are happening around us and taking stock of our outer life as an expression of our inner life. In Week 8 we will be celebrating the mid-winter solstice at school.

This is a much-loved festival where we come together as a community, share a meal, and then walk a nature pathway (early childhood) or the mid-winter spiral (primary).

The nature pathway and the spiral are representative of journeying into the centre of the earth, the centre of the heart.

It is a contemplative spiritual journey, a journey made with family (for our children) but ultimately it represents the journey to the self, the journey of light into darkness and must be taken alone.

It is the path of the pilgrim and the hero, a path of self-discovery and finding one’s own light, one’s own path.

It is a journey that takes us deep into the longest, darkest night, but for those willing to commit to the journey there is a light, so pure, bright, and unwavering at the centre. It is a light that cannot be dimmed by the trials, tribulations, tragedies, and heartbreak that we all have experienced. It is the light of the child, of innocence, of strength and courage. It is a reminder amongst other things of who we are as spiritual beings and the task we have here on Earth at this time and in this place. We physically walk the spiral, spiralling inwards. We are silent, our senses are drawn in, inviting us to remember, to come home and then there at the heart of the spiral, is the light. We pause, perhaps we close our eyes and allow ourselves to acknowledge where we are, what we are doing. We reconnect with the light, and we like the sun, expand outwards, renewed, enliven, strengthened by the experience.

The spiral also represents the heavenly marking of the seasons, the centre, midwinter. The outward spiral represents the journey back to summer.

The invitation is to reconnect, to realign and recommit not to someone else’s path but to the fullest, noblest, most light filled, joyous expression of who you are and the life you’ve come to live.

The children love the excitement of being together in the dark, of the lanterns and the light. There is the community and sharing our meal together but there is also the reverence. A few years back I had the privilege to watch the primary school classes walk the indoor spiral. The room was darkened and the spiral rich and aromatic. The children entered in silence. The teacher walked the spiral first, showing the way and placed her/his candle near the centre. Each child then took their turn to walk to the centre and place their candle along the way – lighting the path for those that followed. From Class 1 to Class 6, the children walked the spiral silently and reverently. They then returned to their seats around the spiral and were allowed a few moments to take in the beauty of what they had just done and what they were looking at. One class brought tears to my eyes; the children held such wonder, awe, and reverence. Their teacher had modelled such grace, presence, and deep love, that they felt it to the core of their being. Having experienced authentic reverence, deep respect for the self and others, they were able to experience the spiral at that same level.

We teach reverence, awe, and wonder in the school by modelling it.

By exposing the children to a rich array of experiences that speak to truth, beauty, and goodness. By holding space and listening when someone is speaking or performing.

One of the ways I like to think of this is through the lens of yoga.

Yoga has eight limbs. The first limb is the Yamas or practices to moderate our behaviour so our actions, words and deeds have a positive impact on all our relationships. There are five Yamas. The third of the Yamas is Asteya. Asteya can be translated as (A: not, steya: to steal). “Not to steal” Of course, this refers to the physical act of taking something that is not yours but there are many more subtle meanings.

Festivals, live performances, concerts, all provide a rich opportunity for our children to practice holding space for each other and for the performers.

They allow the children to learn about purpose and context and to know how to hold space for themselves and by extension, others. This is not to say that we all need to behave in one way. Rather that when we agree to come together as a school for a specific purpose, that we honour that purpose. That we allow by our demeanour, our holding, our actions, and our attitudes, everyone to experience the truth, beauty, and goodness that the specified gathering has to offer.

It can be stressful when we ask our children to sit quietly and eat their meal with the family. It can seem frustrating to ask our children to stay by our side when all they want to do is run off with their friends in the dark.

It can be tiring modelling and insisting on quiet, on listening. This is the “not stealing” I was referring to. We don’t want to rob our children of the opportunity to experience the richness the festival has to offer. We don’t want to deny our children of the opportunity to learn to moderate their behaviour. We want to give our children the opportunity to learn to hold themselves and others with compassion, kindness, reverence, and respect.

Martha Beck is credited as saying “How you do anything is how you do everything”. Our world presents as fast, complex and at times downright scary. If we can give them the gift of reverence. If we can model for them the stillness and the calm of a peaceful heart. If we can teach them to listen and to be still, then we have given them the tools to look inside, find calm in a world of storm and offer a space where others can rest.

Our teachers have all planned beautiful lantern making experiences for the children that reflects their unique stage of development.

The Class 6 children have been practicing their performance and the school choir has been fine tuning its offerings for the Primary Makuru Winter Festival. We are so excited to be able to come together as a community for this special festival. Our wish is that we hold each other in love and respect. That we support each other and our children as they gather essential life skills and discover their own unique inner light and path.

May the Makuru Winter Festival fill you with love, hope and strength.

Vanessa Fountain

Rose Kindergarten Teacher

Nurturing the Nurturer

Wed, 01 Jun 2022 03:37:10 GMT

Contemplating Autumn -

Nurturing the Nurturer

By Vanessa Fountain

Kaya WCSS Community,

I love Autumn. I love that the heat has finally broken, and I can get out into my beloved garden. Not only is it cooler but the soil is still warm making it the perfect time to get plants into the ground and established. It is the time of the year when I like to stop and notice the “state of affairs” in my garden. What has grown well, what hasn’t done so well, what is struggling (perhaps in the wrong place) and what is thriving and in abundance.

The thing with noticing is that you need to make time to be still.

Summer’s outward expression of action thankfully gives way to a quiet introspection. My favourite way to do this is to brew a cup of coffee and take a leisurely meditative meander around the garden or perhaps to pull up a chair and just notice from different vantage points how this outward expression of the inner life has fared.

After I have become still and noticed I begin the contemplative process of gathering the leaves that have fallen. Like thoughts in the mind, I watch the leaves that the trees are ready to let go off. The trees don’t struggle with the letting go, they don’t agonise over the letting go, they just let go. Nature doesn’t hold onto the story; I like her reminders.

And like our experiences nothing goes to waste, the leaves become a rich compost for tomorrow’s growth.

Now I clean up. What hasn’t survived, what was too water thirsty, what took too much. I’m thankful for all the adventures in the garden and pragmatic in my approach to cleaning up. I look at what may need pruning. What is doing well but not growing in the direction I want to go. Where is energy being spent but the shade not being provided. I thank the bough or branch and carefully harvest and freeze the billets for future green wood carving projects.

It is time to lay down the layers of green waste (I am thankful my local supermarket that daily fills up a 20 litre bag of lettuce and cabbage leaves otherwise bound for landfill, for my chickens and the garden). Layers of manure and pea straw from my dear farmer in York and the beds are ready to be carried through the winter and into spring.

This is the time when I love to plant bulbs, the ultimate expression of faith, hope and trusting in a beautiful future.

Pop them in and forget. Its always a lovely surprise in winter and spring. And now my favourite bit. Another cup of coffee and I like to acknowledge all that I have achieved.

Where I have struggled, what hasn’t worked, what fills my heart with joy, peace, and love - I make plans for more joy, peace, and love in my life.

Autumn is, as are all our seasons an outward expression of an inner process.

It is in autumn that we can take stock, to slow down and move from a more social way of being to a more inner experience of the self.

This journey of introspection culminates at midwinter when we gather as a community and walk the spiral, recognising the inner light at the centre, at the heart of our being and our Earth and begin the outward journey into the world again.

I love the wisdom that surrounds and supports us. In Noongar wisdom this is the season of Djeran, and it is the time when one would check the shelter for leaks and perhaps, if necessary, even rebuild the home. What a wonderful picture of the body, the ultimate home.

How are we fairing, what toll have the seasons, life, “living with Covid”, taken and how can we support ourselves.

This is the time to notice, to clean up, to prune back from activities that drain rather than sustain us. How can we prepare our shelter so that it is a cocoon to shelter and protect us in our sacred time of introspection and transformation?

I love noticing the red flower gums and other red flowering plants at this time of year. It makes me smile. At this time of year when we go in and take stock, nature gives us red. In Ayurvedic wisdom (the sister science to yoga), red is the colour we associated with Muladhara, the base chakra. The chakra of grounding, of stability, of home, and security. It is also Vata season. The season when we can feel the dry, light, cold, rough, mobile, subtle energies of mother nature. We may feel an emptiness, and our minds may desperately seek busyness as we are invited to go within. But nature always has a remedy close at hand.

The healing balm is to ground down, slow down, recreate your home, your cocoon, and allow time to be in nature every day.

Walking, yoga, gardening, and swimming in the ocean are what I like to do. I really love my early morning swim in the ocean. It stops the chatter of the mind in its tracks (cold water will do that), and I am present to what is and the opportunity to go within, to go home, to reconnect, and realign.

What ever your favourite things to do in autumn are, I hope you can make time to stop, to notice, to take inventory, to clean up, to prune back, and make a nurturing cocoon full of warmth, stillness, and love for yourself. What a beautiful gift of modelling for our children.

Will-developed Intelligence: Knitting Begets Thinking!

Fri, 13 May 2022 02:36:21 GMT

Will-developed Intelligence: Knitting Begets Thinking!

By Marijke McCartney, Handwork Teacher

In 1920 Rudolf Steiner said:

"The more we take into account that intellect develops from the movement of the limbs, from dexterity and skills, the better it will be."

This motto stands behind the whole Waldorf curriculum and especially the Handwork and Craft curriculum. Learning through doing and learning through making are fundamental principles of Waldorf Education.

Out of activity and movement arise thinking and understanding: creative, living thinking is movement internalised.

When we think of movement, we think primarily about the activity of the limbs. The limbs are the instruments of the Will. The Will is the power within us that allows us, through our deeds, to interact with the world. Will activity lays the foundation for our thinking. The brain has

billions of active neural passageways which, when correctly exercised, allow us to make connections and patterns.

Intelligence is formed through movement, activity and manual dexterity. Mental operations bring about real thoughts when prepared by physical action, which is Will activity.

Throughout the whole of Waldorf Education, movement is promoted by means of imaginative play and teaching, speech work, singing and music, modelling, eurythmy, games, handwork and crafts.

Doing is an integral part of every Main Lesson.

We will focus in this article on Handwork and Crafts and on the importance of manual dexterity in the development of intelligence. Recent research has indicated that the use of the hands has laid the foundation of the development of the brain. The size of the brain of our ape ancestors increased according to the increase in tool use.

Walking upright frees the hands from simply supporting the weight. This allows for the development of new skills. The structure of modern man is the result of the changes that came with a tool-using way of life. Human structure, especially uprightness and the changes

in the structure of the hands, and in particular the thumb, makes human behaviour distinctive. Having enough brainpower to know, or guess, what the brain itself was doing, marked a transition to consciousness which is often identified as a special characteristic of Homo Sapiens.

New experiences and new environments became available through the freeing of the hands and the adaptation of the wrist and fingers.

Through hand signals, bodily gestures, vocalization and cooperative tool manufacture and use, conditions were created for the

development of language. Survival prospects were also greatly increased.

Increasing refinement and specialisation of the manipulative skills brought about complex social structures, cooperation and competition within the human sphere. These brought forward the evolution of the human brain. We may conclude that intelligent, purposeful use of

the hand is an elemental force in the birth of the mind.

Professor Bergstrom, a neurophysiologist from Sweden, talks about "finger blindness" which can occur when we don’t use our fingers

The very rich network of nerve endings in our
fingertips is connected with neural passages in the brain. If these nerve endings are not activated by the work of the hands, the individual’s all-round development is thwarted.

If we neglect to develop and train our children’s fingers and the creative form-building capacity of their hand muscles, then we neglect to develop their understanding of the unity of all things.

How does education accommodate the fact that the hand is not merely an icon of humanness, but often the real life focus, the lever or launching pad of a successful and genuinely fulfilling life?

Why did Rudolf Steiner insist that each child should learn to knit, both boys and girls? This was quite a revolutionary idea at the time.

He said if we do knitting with the children, we are working on their minds. Capacities are built up for logical thinking, forming judgements and solving problems. In knitting we are following a thread. One stitch in a row affects the one before and after, just as each step in a logical

argument. We can discover faults in our knitting and thinking by unravelling these steps or stitches. When we are knitting we are making patterns, which corresponds with making patterns in our brain. When we repeat the movements, the connections become stronger, we

become skilful. Our thinking is in our fingertips.

Activating the will in Handwork strengthens will activity in all subjects.

Learning one thing makes it easier to learn another. If we make patterns, seeing, recognizing and using patterns
becomes easier for us. Confidence in one subject carries over into another.

For healthy human will, we need movement, flexibility and fluidity in all the three soul forces: the thinking, the feeling and the willing. Through the activation of the imagination, the senses and the limbs, a harmonious development can be achieved.

The natural world is experienced through the senses, which are connected to the vital processes of life, such as breathing, digestion, growing, and reproduction. If a child is deprived of sense experiences, it can hinder their development and personality. Handwork and Craft expand the potential for a rich sensory experience. Working with different natural materials such as wool, cotton, wood, clay and the elements of earth, water, fire and air in the different craft processes, the child is connected to the world, and can perform purposeful

deeds.

The basis for a rich, feeling life is provided, which is a necessary mediator between the forces of the head and those of the limbs. A healthy mental activity is connected to the feelings of the heart. Too much mental activity can result in cold, cruel thinking, or

selfishness. We need to bring enthusiasm, interest and warmth of feeling into our thinking.

Judgment is required for healthy limb activity. We need to bring purpose into our physical work. An imbalance will result in too much feeling, anger, and depression. The interest and attention enlivens the activity of the breast system, the lungs and the blood. It is this activity

that keeps the brain functioning. It is the activity that keeps matter alive.

Today we can observe a lack of balance in the stimulation of the senses; either through an over stimulation, or a deprivation. This, together with a lack of movement, calls for a more practical, hands-on education.

The activities that for centuries provided children with

stimulation for healthy movement and sense experience are disappearing. The child no longer participates in activities like cooking, making bread, scrubbing, chopping wood, and digging

the soil. We need to restore the children’s connection to the natural world and provide opportunities for healthy purposeful movement.

This therapeutic work starts in the Kindergarten where imaginative play is encouraged and household tasks are performed and imitated.

This will activity in the Kindergarten progresses through the school years from play into meaningful work through craft and technology.

Learning through doing ascends from the limbs to the head. Reflection and analysis of what the hands have made bring consciousness into the intelligence of the limbs. Between the limbs and the head the choice of materials, colour and texture provide rich nourishment for

the feeling life. The artistic experience transforms those feelings into a basis for aesthetics and sound judgement. There is a rhythmic process of exchange taking place.

When the child learns to make beautiful, useful things, a social awareness will arise and appreciation for the work of others, as well as knowledge and respect for the source of the materials, the natural environment, tools, resourcefulness, and recycling principles.

It is important not to waste materials. Craft activities need to be experienced within a context related to the rest of life.

Each story is carefully crafted for the students, bringing elements of moral teachings and ‘real life’ experiences the children can relate to.

Intelligence arises through movement, activity and manual dexterity. It is not directed to finished thinking. It understands what is in movement or still in a state of becoming. It does not arise from the intellect alone, but from the working together of the faculties of thinking,

feeling and doing The intellect itself is primarily concerned with reasoning and the acquisition of knowledge. It focuses on grasping facts, that which already exists or is known.

Intelligence is concerned with making patterns, understanding patterns and opening up new
patterns.

Here the foundations are laid for forming judgements. Mental operations such as reaching conclusions, forming judgements and comprehension are the result of taking actions into the mind and coordinating them there; picking up and following a thread. When prepared by physical action - by an activity of the will, mental operations bring about real thought.

In the creative process of making, the child engages with the material world. In so doing s/he develops an interest in it, develops skills, self confidence, a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement, a sense of belonging, an understanding of the needs of the world and a wish to actively participate.

In addition the senses are developed.

The renewal of education and of social, economic and spiritual life as Steiner suggests, depends on the ability of the coming generations to bring about something new and constructive out of their own inner resources; something that was not there before. They can do that if they learn to understand what is good, beautiful and truthful, - which are spiritual qualities at the heart of Waldorf Education.

Flexibility and adaptability are necessary attributes for the future when our children will most likely have not one, but many careers. In our often insecure world, a strong, well-directed will is of great importance.

They will need to design a world of work that supports human

development: work that enables the individual to unfold and reach his highest potential; work which serves the needs of humanity and the natural world in a selfless way; work that serves the resolution of conflict and solves the world’s problems.

References and further reading

Study of Man by Rudolf Steiner

Will-Developed Intelligence by D. Mitchell and P. Livingston

The Hand by F. Wilson

The Inner Work of a Class Teacher

Thu, 24 Mar 2022 04:25:38 GMT

The Inner Work of a Steiner Teacher

By Aimee Waller

Rudolf Steiner began the first Waldorf school which opened in Stuttgart, Germany on September 7, 1919. He gave a series of lectures to the first teachers, which is now complied into a book titled “Discussions with Teachers.” The teacher training at that time lasted only two weeks. We now have a worldwide educational movement that provides teachers with in-depth training on all aspects of Steiner teaching.

As we learn from each other, we grow not only as teachers, but also as individuals.

In “Discussions with Teachers” it states:

• The teacher must be a person of initiative in everything that is done, great or small.

• The teacher should be one who is interested in the being of the whole world and of humanity.

• The teacher must be one who never makes a compromise in heart or mind with what is untrue.

• The teacher must never get stale or grow sour.

After teaching for 15 years in mainstream schools, my motherly instincts and search for ‘something better’ urged me to learn the teachings of Rudolf Steiner and his unique educational philosophy. The journey to become a Steiner teacher has not only been incredibly fulfilling and rewarding, it has also become a part of who I am.

It is now a lifelong journey of self-discovery and the pursuit of profound awakening.

There are several techniques/exercises, which Steiner teachers use when bringing the “living curriculum” to their students and in relating to them on a ‘soul level’. Teachers must have clear thinking, initiative of action, equanimity, a positive attitude, open mindedness, and harmony.

These skills help teachers to bring to their class, not just ‘an education,’ but contribute to their student’s preparation for living life.

CURRICULUM

Through their training and experience, a Steiner teacher becomes very aware of their own attitudes towards things and how these affect the children. Steiner uses the example of how someone can be quite knowledgeable in mathematics but not particularly good at teaching it. So, the effectiveness of teaching the subject has more to do with one’s own attitudes and ideas about the subject.

Steiner teachers work hard to bring a ‘living curriculum’ to their students. It is not just delivered to students by rote; where teachers provide the information and then children memorise and regurgitate; teachers spend many hours drafting stories, bringing creative artistic experiences and provide discovery encounters to the students in their class. A Steiner classroom is a mystery classroom.

The teachers first bring experience followed by concept. This is the converse of most traditional schooling methodologies.

As teachers really get to know their students, following many years teaching them, the teacher learns to bring aspects of the curriculum to their students in a way the students require. Steiner drew attention to teachers not relying on what others have done before them, but rather on each teachers placing their own free, imaginative work into their classroom practice.

As the teacher moves with their class through the year levels, the teacher brings the curriculum to the students in a way that nourishes both student and teacher. The unfolding of the curriculum, which is carefully brought at an appropriate time of the child’s development, builds on the children’s unfolding conscious awareness and growing relationship to self and the world around them. The curriculum is also brought to students in blocks of time, continuously delving into a subject for up to four weeks.

This allows for immense and deep quality learning, where students do not have to jump from subject to subject but are able to spend time really absorbing and experiencing a topic of inquiry and learning.

In a Steiner classroom, teachers also bring to their class the arts, including modelling, painting, music, speech, poetry and drama, and developing powers of imagination.

STORYTELLING

For some subjects, the stories have previously been written and the teacher, researches and brings the story to each subject after selecting the correct elements for the class. Many stories are also teacher created.

Each story is carefully crafted for the students, bringing elements of moral teachings and ‘real life’ experiences the children can relate to.

While stories are created for subject content, they can also be created for emotional support and overcoming personal challenges. For example, if the class or class members are experiencing certain emotions such as fear or anxiety, the teacher can bring a story where a plant or animal experiences the same emotions and show how the character begins to deal with their feelings and grows through them. This of course would look different as the class moves through the various ages. Similarly, an artistic experience could be brought to the class when students are feeling things as a collective, maybe they are unsettled when a peer has been distressed. The class may immerse themselves in a painting, use their hands and create something with clay or set to practice a particular form that the teacher has bought to them specifically for their challenges. The teacher learns to bring these stories, artistic endeavours, and eloquent forms appropriately after much inner work and mediating on the classroom experience.

Steiner discusses the importance of children experiencing a real feeling of form, harmony, symmetry, and correspondence of lines. He explains that doing these exercises will teach them how to think not just with the head but also with the heart and hands

Steiner teachers engage in a journey of lifelong learning as they must learn to be proficient in, not only subject matter, but also art and music.

While seemingly impossible to be good at everything, Steiner teachers must strive to keep learning so that they can continue to bring nourishing and accurate content but also be artists and musicians. They must learn new songs for singing, new music to play on instruments and new artworks in multiple mediums to enrich and challenge their students. There must be effort and striving, perfection is not the goal. As it is for all teachers, students may surpass their teacher in some skills and that is not only ok, it is ideal!

TEACHER SELF-DISCOVERY

Rudolf Steiner stressed the importance of how the teacher must continuously strive to learn and grow not only with their teaching skills but most importantly with their inner work and self-transformation.

Steiner teachers must be willing to continue to grow and expand their teaching knowledge and forever look inwards and strive for personal growth.

In a series of lectures given in Torquay in 1924 (The Kingdom of Childhood) Steiner talked about how teachers should be patient with their own self-education, always striving to do better but also forgiving themselves when they make mistakes and accepting this. A teacher must understand the reasons behind any conflict with their students and not react as if they are under personal attack. When this inevitably happens on occasion, the teacher must go inward and discover the underlying reason for being triggered by a child or circumstance. This is of course a lifelong journey, as we cannot obtain perfection, but the willingness to forever strive is paramount.

The teacher must set a good example to the child, showing them how to ‘be’ in the world.

Steiner pointed out that the educator must be a respected authority for the child and a “child’s faith and confidence must be awakened-not through axioms, but through human beings” (The Education of the Child). Humour and the ability to laugh at oneself and not take things so seriously are important as we grow and learn with each obstacle.

Whereas traditional schooling educates the child’s intellect, the Steiner teacher aims to educate the whole child: their head, heart, and hands.

It is not only a requirement to transmit knowledge but to provide experience and practical life skills. This is a tall order for a teacher and one that cannot be embraced by everyone. Only through the love of one’s work and continually striving to be a better person can a teacher begin to bring to the classroom what is needed.

‘Rudolf Steiner’s concern is that growing children be brought into a healthy relationship with themselves and with the world around them. The teacher’s presentation must therefore breathe between self and world, thus giving the solid moral foundation upon which the children can build their lives’. (Practical Advice for Teachers).

SPIRITUALITY

While Steiner schools are non-denominational, a Steiner teacher’s connection with their own spirituality is important for their inner growth and transformation. Steiner reminded teachers that they are not alone and that spiritual beings are always there to guide and help us. He gave a picture that behind each individual there was an angel, and above that are the working of the archangels, and so on. Teachers are encouraged to draw on their spiritual beliefs, taking time to align with their higher self, asking for wisdom and guidance.

One important method that Steiner brought to educators was meditation.

Teachers are encouraged to meditate on each child every night (Kingdom of Childhood). This is done by gradually developing an “inward perception of each child’s mind and soul” spending a few minutes on each child in the class. The teacher holds a picture of each child in their mind, asking what each child needs and exploring possible solutions to challenges. In the morning they listen and tune in to any answers that may arise to guide their actions. This practice connects the teacher to the student each day spiritually and allows the teacher to give thought to each student and ask for wisdom. Steiner suggests that this practice forges the link between the two souls (from angel to angel).

Teachers learn how to apply creative solutions to both curriculum and child behaviour. They learn to understand and meet the child’s needs.

A teacher must get to know their students and really understand them. By both self-discovery and inner work, such as meditation, the teacher aims to understand their students and works hard to bring them exactly what they need.

"You must try to understand the students themselves if you want to properly educate their thinking capacity. Such understanding contains within it an element of aversion since it belongs at this end of the scale. By comprehending your students and endeavouring to penetrate all their nuances, you become the teacher of their understanding, their faculty of knowledge. The aversions exist in this very activity, but you make the aversion good by educating your students." (Practical Advice to Teachers by Rudolf Steiner).

MORNING PREPARATION

Morning preparation is fundamental to a good teaching practice. Often teachers will gather in the mornings, light a candle, centre themselves and say a verse. They will then go to their classrooms to continue their own preparation practice before they open the classroom and greet their students.

The greeting at the beginning of the day sets the feeling of the day as each student and teacher connect with a shake of the hand, a smile, and a morning greeting.

Students learn this from Kindergarten and quickly develop the rhythm and practice of warm acknowledgement.

Rudolf Steiner gave six exercises, which he says are fundamental to meditative work. These include control of thought, control of will and equanimity. These exercises are an excellent teacher practice for self-transformation and healing.

https://leadtogether.org/six-basic-exercises-esoteric-development-rudolf-steiner/

Connecting yourself with the cosmos or something higher than yourself helps to draw on wisdom and gives dedicated time in the day to rest your mind and focus.

‘If you cannot manage to see every human being as a cosmic mystery, you will not get beyond the sense that people are no more than mechanisms, and if such a feeling were cultivated, it would lead to the downfall of earthly culture’. (Practical Advice to Teachers).

IMPORTANCE OF SPEECH

Steiner said that correct speech is quintessential for the teacher, as speech reveals the life of the soul. Repetition with speech exercises cultivates the speech, making it more flexible. He states:

‘The inner life, the life of the soul, is the most significant aspects of the child. Teaching and education depend on what passes from the soul of the teacher to the soul of the child… Education occurs because of what you are, or rather, let us say, what you make of yourself when you are with the children’. (Discussions with Teachers).

Speech exercises are not only recommended for the students but also the teachers. These refer to not only pronouncing sounds and words but also to how we breathe. It is common practice for teachers and students to speak verses and songs together during Morning Circle. Teachers also practise speech exercises to further their own development in communication.

In ‘Practical Advice to Teachers’, Steiner states that ‘We understand the speech phenomenon only when we truly understand how it is rooted in human feeling’.

There is certainly a calling that exists for Steiner teachers as they must strive to, not only be the best educator they can be, but also the best person. This is a calling that comes from deep down in your soul, and it becomes a part of who you are!

Specialist Subjects in a Steiner School

Thu, 10 Mar 2022 03:34:32 GMT

The Role of Specialist Subjects in a Steiner School

By Aimee Waller

One of the many things that sets a Steiner School apart is the unique specialist subjects that are offered, which provide students with both practical skills and experiences, and nourishes their body, mind, and soul. As we educate heads, hearts and hands, the arts and the practical skills that are an essential part of the curriculum, make an important contribution to educating the whole child.

Rudolf Steiner talked about the importance of the education of the ‘whole human being.’

Alongside the classroom curriculum, the specialist subjects complement and enhance this idea of educating the whole child. When a child attends a Steiner school, they often experience lessons in handwork, woodwork, a foreign language, and a music program, involving all students playing a string instrument and being involved in a string orchestra.

Let us delve into the importance of these specialist subjects, where ideally every experience meets the child’s needs and the curriculum is meticulously planned to provide an education that prepares them for all aspects of life.

HANDWORK

Rudolf Steiner, when speaking of handwork in the school curriculum, said that the purpose was not to train weavers and potters, but rather to have students practise such work, so that they finish school with basic confidence to manage practical life challenges. The curriculum's aim is to awaken creative powers and provide students with practical products which they are able to use. Handwork engages the soul spirit nature of the child, while providing opportunities to create, play, grow, learn, and develop critical skills.

In the industrial age, instead of making and creating, we are conditioned to purchase and instead of first hand experiences, we get our information at the click of a button.

The art of patience, perseverance, and the appreciation of where our products come from is somewhat lost amongst the convenience to purchase, while playing and creating is lost with the busyness of our day-to-day lives.

With progress, also comes the loss of fine motor skill development and we see in this age, a rising need for Occupational Therapists to come to the rescue to fill in those gaps that were missed due to our technology advancements and busy lives.

Time on iPads, computers and various toys deprive our children of fundamental movement skills.

In contrast, handwork allows students to develop their fine motor skills. Knitting and ‘crossing the midline’ activities such as cross-stitch, are examples that are helpful in aspects of life. In Kindy, students learn how to ‘finger knit’ and use a loom both of which require the manipulation of little fingers, creating beautiful beanies and bags. In the later classes the children learn to knit with needles.

The art of knitting teaches and offers more than abstract concept proficiency. As an example, creating art from wool also teaches simple and complex mathematics; hand, eye, and brain coordination; sensory integration; and resiliency of habit, all while promoting peace of mind.

Practical life-skills can enhance communication skills, as students learn and share where their products and tools originate. When a t-shirt is purchased from a shop, students may not know where it originated or how it was made. In handwork class the younger students learn where the wool comes from and how it can be spun on a spinning wheel, dyed, and rolled into a ball ready to knit.

Additionally, in a handwork class students learn the beauty of colours and how they complement each other, as well as how to prepare, organise and pack away materials. Everything has a place and a purpose. There is little waste, as thrums; the little pieces of scrap wool; can be saved and used later.

A strong ‘will force’ is required for handwork, as threads snap and wool unravels, stitches are skipped, and holes are made.

The ‘will’ to undo and redo and stick with it can be very frustrating for the students, and adults for that matter! At the end of the practice, when students break through this frustration and produce a practical garment, toy, or tool they are filled with a sense of achievement and a swell of pride and joy with the reality that they have created something beautiful and useful.

At West Coast Steiner we value the opportunity to create and appreciate practical and artistic skills. Children construct toys such as chickens, sheep, gnomes, dolls, and garments such as socks and beanies, while their teachers encourage them to use their ‘will force’ and creative talents. Students are always excited showing their creations that can be used so practically and which took many weeks to create.

WOODWORK

Formal woodwork classes begin around Class 5 when the students are undergoing particular physical and mental development milestones. Susan Laing, an Australian researcher, and educator, asserts that the eleven-year-old experiences “a youthful enthusiasm, insatiable sociability, a relentless need for movement, self-centeredness and a tendency to create chaos and confusion.”

Woodwork is a hands-on practical craft that requires the student to go deeply into the material with great focus, as they solve problems, learn new skills, and create something tangible, useful, and beautiful. It creates a means for the older child to create, move and learn.

As with handcraft, woodwork requires great will and perseverance, as each indelicate turn of a chisel is a lesson in patience and resilience. The process of carving and seeing a project through to the end is a wonderful way to develop the ‘will’ and celebrate success. Woodwork is a highly creative process that connects the child with Mother Earth, as well as being very empowering, as the child transforms a block of wood into a useful tool.

Children learn about diverse types of wood and how to plane, carve and sculpt. They manage tools such as chisels, rasps and mallets focusing on their correct use and safety. The children learn the history of carpentry and use items from the past, such as the ‘shaving horse,’ which is typically used to create a round profile along a square piece of wood.

As with handwork, children learn to respect and appreciate their materials, develop, and refine hand-eye coordination and learn how to look after, handle and pack away their tools.

At West Coast Steiner we have a magnificent woodwork program for Classes 5 and 6, where the children create spoons, stools, mallets, and bowls.

Throughout each year they work on small group projects, learning many practical carpentry skills with our specialist Woodwork Teacher.

LEARNING A LANGUAGE

Extensive research on language learning concludes that learning another language improves a child’s cognition, their social skills and benefits their learning in other subjects.

What sets a Steiner school apart in the learning of a second language is the methodology used and the importance and focus placed on the development of such a skill.

In our school children are totally immersed in the language experience as the teacher fluently and exclusively speaks to the children from Class 1 in the chosen language. In the early years, the children listen to the telling of stories and they experience singing songs, speaking verse, and playing games. The teacher uses both their theatrical skills and emphasised movements to communicate. Children become adept in learning the basics of the language, including greetings, colours, and numbers. Although the children will not understand every word or the precise meaning they absorb the feeling and the distinct sounds and rhythms of the language.

In the later primary years, students learn to write and read in the language and discover the culture, customs, geography, and history of the places that converse in the language.

This encourages students to think more deeply about the influence of international cultures, creates a sense of the importance of diversity and fosters a sense of appreciation of the diverse ways of being in the world.

At West Coast Steiner children in Classes 1 to 6 have two German lessons a week. The lessons are carefully presented through drama, story, song, verse, and humour. The use of gesture, mime, pictures, and other visual props, such as puppets, toys, and artifacts, help the students develop a sense of the German Culture. The teacher focuses on pronunciation during verse and song and because the German language is very phonetic this makes spelling and grammar considerably easier.

MUSIC AND STRINGS PROGRAM

People of ancient times perceived that the cosmos was alive with musical tones. When they spoke to their gods in prayer, they sang because ‘they knew’ they came from a place surrounded by music. Music is a language and young children naturally sing and dance and experience the joy of melody and harmony. Rudolf Steiner stated that “what is experienced musically is really man’s hidden adaption to the inner harmonic-melodic relationships of cosmic existence out of which he is shaped.”

Steiner schools consider ‘the arts’ to be an integral part of a child’s life, so music forms a crucial element of every lesson.

This includes, in the early years, singing number songs in Mathematics lessons, and in the later primary years, singing songs of distant lands in Geography lessons. Recorder is introduced in the early primary years, Lyre in Class 2 and then string instruments; violin, viola, and cello; are introduced in Class 3. The older children participate in orchestra and choir and the study of music is woven into many aspects of the curriculum. Steiner emphasised the importance of experiencing live performed music rather than recorded, as ‘it is a lived experience in the moment rather than a mere mechanical one'.

In Class 2 the students begin to learn the Lyre with simple musical melodies taught through imitation. The Lyre is beautifully hand-crafted by the children’s parents and after many hours of challenging work, they hand the instrument over in a magical ceremony.

Another unique element to Steiner education is the Strings program.

Beginning in Class 3, with their melodies, children begin to move away from pentatonic tones to diatonic tones and start singing in rounds rather than a whole group. Steiner often emphasised the importance of moving from the whole to the part. The onset of the Strings program significantly coincides with the nine-year-old change, as children develop a greater understanding of their place in the world and are gaining independence and a strong sense of self. While beginning with the basics of how to play a string instrument, the children then move on to playing in trios, quartets, and the school orchestra.

The developed skill of playing in a group is important, as the children learn to listen to each other and develop the art of cohesion, teamwork, and unification.

Participation in an orchestra further develops musical skills, as they learn to follow a conductor and listen, developing an awareness of the surrounding music.

As with all musical endeavours within the Steiner school, whether singing or instrument playing, it is an essential part of the spirit of the school, as each child experiences music performances from their peers and each musical experience is introduced during the correct developmental milestone.

The musical and artistic focus of a Steiner school sets it apart from other schools.

What emanates from a child’s experiences with creating in handwork and woodwork, learning a second language, and the playing of an instrument, is a deep personal experience and a lifetime love of learning.

Celebrating Advent

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 05:04:45 GMT

Celebrating Advent

Advent starts this year on Sunday December 1 and is celebrated for the four Sundays leading up to Christmas. Advent is frequently celebrated by people of every religious background, every faith, every spiritual path as part of the festivals of the cycle of the year.

In the Southern hemisphere, Christmas falls near the Summer Solstice when the light is at its strongest and we celebrate the triumph of light at its greatest point in the yearly cycle. As the year draws to an end we increasingly spend time outside enjoying “the sun in the heavens”. With the long warm days, intense light and balmy nights we are drawn out into the elements rather than into “the sun in our hearts”.

It can be challenging to develop a sense of inwardness, patience and contemplation when the Spirit of the Earth is on its outward breath. To balance this we can consciously choose to “receive the light” and celebrate what is both universally human and universally spiritual.

Celebrating Advent can provide an opportunity for some quiet ‘breathing in’ during this outwardly busy time of year and help your children to practice preparation, reverence and patience through the ritual of counting the weeks and days to the special celebratory event.

The lighting of candles each week also reflects our own ‘Divine Light’ and helps to bring us a little inward contemplation.

Traditionally Steiner schools and families celebrate Advent by looking each week at the natural kingdoms on Earth: minerals the first week, plants the second week, animals the third week and humans the fourth week ( see verses below).

Here are some ideas that you might like to include in your own advent celebrations:

An Advent Verse

‘The gift of the light we thankfully take, But not shall it be alone for our sake, The more we give light, the one to the other, It shines and it spreads, growing still further; Until every spark by friends set aflame, Until every heart, the joy to proclaim; In the depths of our souls, A shining sun glows.’

Advent Wreath

On a special table made with greenery and seasonal flowers, four advent candles to light each consecutive Sunday of Advent.

Advent Garden

Assembled and added to each Sunday of Advent with the four kingdoms celebrated each week try adding tiny crushed shells (collected from the beach) in a spiral pattern for the spiral on which Mary and Joseph figures walk.

Advent Crib

A nativity scene of the four kingdoms, adding a different one each of the Sundays- Crystal Kingdom, plant kingdom, animal and human kingdoms.

Verses for the 4 weeks of Advent

Week 1: Crystal Kingdom

The crystal kingdom comes first and is honoured by decorating the wreath or garden with crystals, seashells, stones or little bones you may find.

The first light of Advent is the light of stone–
Stones that live in crystals, seashells, and bones.

Week 2: Plant Kingdom

In the second week the plant kingdom is honoured by adding little dried flowers, seeds and pine cones and greenery.

The second light of Advent is the light of the plants–
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.

Week 3: Animal Kingdom

The animal kingdom, in the third week, is honoured by adding little wooden animals or beeswax creatures the children make.

The third light of Advent is the light of beasts–
All await the birth, from the greatest and the least.

Week 4: Humankind

The fourth week sees us honouring humankind by adding a little felted or beeswax child and figures.

The fourth light of Advent is the light of humankind–

The light of love, hope and thought

To give and understand. ~ Rudolf Steiner

Courtesy of Cape Byron Steiner School

Childhood in an Uncertain World

Fri, 19 Nov 2021 06:09:51 GMT

Childhood in an Uncertain World

By Vanessa Fountain

“We must eradicate from the soul all fear and terror of what comes toward us out of the future.

We must acquire serenity in all feelings and sensations about the future.

We must look forward with absolute equanimity to all that may come, and we must think only that whatever comes is given to us by a world direction full of wisdom. This is what we have to learn in our times. To live out of pure trust in the ever-present help of the spiritual world.

Surely nothing else will do if our courage is not to fail us. Let us properly discipline our will, and let us seek the awakening within ourselves, every morning and every evening.” – Rudolf Steiner

History has shown that there have been and will always be those times when our souls are challenged to look towards the future with equanimity and trust in a world direction full of wisdom. It can be difficult when we are faced with a humanitarian crisis (from whatever your viewpoint), and a level of uncertainty that perhaps many of us have not experienced in our lives before. We try to plan for the unknown, future guess the unguessable and attempt to control what is perhaps out of our sphere of control.

My intent here is not to try to make sense of, or comment on the world events as they are unfolding but to look at what we can do to support our children, fostering trust and equanimity in a rapidly changing world.

Perhaps it is useful to consider the following story:

There was once a father and a grown son. The father decided to go on a road trip, visiting all the magnificent landscapes and heritage sites in the region. He was gone a while before it became apparent to the son that the father was missing. The son decided to trace the footsteps of his father to find out what had happened and where his father was. As he followed his father’s movements, he became more and more frustrated as each led to a dead end. One night he found himself staying on a Native American Reserve. He was sharing the reason for his journey with the hotel manager when he was told of a wise chief that lived nearby who was known for his good counsel.

The son went and sat before the chief. He unburdened himself of the worries, the uncertainty of his father’s whereabouts. But mostly the son spoke of the regret and the sense of helplessness that he experienced as his life seemingly spun randomly on the wheel of fate. The chief sat quietly and listened with great compassion in his eyes. When the young man had finished talking, the chief asked him if he had noticed what he was sitting on? The young man looked down and for the first time he noticed a breathtakingly beautiful, coloured and intricately patterned rug. The chief asked the son to turn the corner of the rug over. When he did so he saw a tangled mass of coloured threads. Some were knotted together in groups, some were loosely wrapped together, some were frayed at the edges, some hung in single strands, some were randomly woven into the mass of the other threads. All were beautifully coloured. The chief then gestured for the son to turn the corner back down and again they looked at the beautifully coloured and intricately patterned rug.

The chief told the son that the back of the rug is sometimes how we experience life, a mess of seemingly random events and meetings, knotting us, looping us, fraying us and at times leaving us dangling, wondering what the purpose, or meaning of it all is.

The front of the rug, the chief explained, is our lives viewed from a broader perspective. It is those random encounters, meetings, relationships, and struggles bringing us together to create something so beautiful and colourful, which we could never have individually conceived of or created. Chance meetings and experiences that seemed insignificant at the time have formed us and led us down the pathway that is our life.

This story speaks to the understanding that each of the threads of our lives, are important. Our life purpose matters but equally it relies on the acknowledgement that so too do the lives of everyone else.

The life purpose or dharma of everyone is vitally important to the intricate tapestry of human life.

From here comes the equanimity, from here comes the compassion, the serenity, and the trust. The what in our lives is not always within our control but the how, our response, most certainly is.

Within a Steiner Primary School, we seek to protect the childhood of our students through the environment, the curriculum, and our shared vision of our students, educated in freedom, capably leading the way forward into an unknown future.

We provide certainty and security to our children through the rhythms and routines of the days and weeks. We punctuate the weeks and months with the acknowledgement of the seasons and our relationship to our Earth. This relationship is given colour, shape, and movement through the celebration of the festivals. Through story, art, song, and movement we are able share our trust in the future with our students. We gift them the time and space to develop the skills, capacities and understandings needed for a future world that we, as teachers and parents, are perhaps not able to visualise or comprehend.

Rudolf Steiner’s curriculum looks to the development of the child and meets children where they are at a given developmental stage and gives them what they need to move forward to the next phase of development.

It weaves a tapestry rich, colourful, and intricate, leaving the threads to create in freedom the next stage of humanity’s development.

The children have the curriculum; but what can we as parents do to assist the unfolding and protection of our children’s childhood. There are many aspects to look at, but I would like to focus on the rites of passage that are available to us to give meaning, provide certainty and a road map through the key stages of life.

Life, just like a tapestry, has a right time to introduce a new colour, a pattern, a texture.

So too in childhood I believe there is a right time and an appropriate emphasis for rite of passage events. It can be tempting when there is so much uncertainty, to bring forward and over emphasise key milestone events. Perhaps we seek to compensate for our own experiences or perceived disappointments. The picture that has built for me over the years is that by introducing experiences and emphasis that are inappropriate or disproportionate to the child’s age and stage of development, we set them up for a life of needing bigger and better, of needing to have more “bells and whistles” to satisfy the artificially created need, the urge for more. On the other hand, children who are held and given age-appropriate experiences in my opinion and experience are developmentally more prepared and equipped to meet the challenges of life, know their limits, their preferences, their values and have the strength to hold to them against the pressure of peers and society.

So, what sort of experiences am I alluding to? Here are just a few:

• Large birthday parties for the very young child. These can be overwhelming and unnecessary. In the early years we recommend one friend per age. So, a six-year-old child may have a discreet party with six friends. Large parties do not always account for the delicate balance of developing friendships, social skills and the overwhelming nature of large and seemingly unstructured events.

• Movie experiences before they are developmentally appropriate.

• Gifts/experiences that are developmentally early, eg a double or queen-sized bed brought for a very young child.

• Kindergarten and Primary school graduation. Here we need to be mindful that we are dealing with 6 and 12/13-year-old children. There is an increasing trend to bring the trappings of the Year 12 ball down to these youngsters. The Kindergarten Crowning Ceremony is enough in itself for the Kindergarten child. The Class 6 Graduation is just that – Class 6. Normal Sunday best attire is appropriate, leaving the ball gowns and associated accoutrement for the Year 12 ball.

We overburden our children with experiences that they may beg us for but that are inappropriate and overwhelming for their developing sense of self and place in the world.

I liken it to reading your child a book. With the book they will form pictures that they are able to digest and process. If we show them a movie of the book there may be images that they are not ready for/do not have the capacity to digest/make sense of, overburdening the developing self. Additionally, what do we leave the child to look forward to, to prepare for, wait for (developing patience, resilience and most importantly not becoming a slave to instant gratification)? The stakes get forever higher and so does the corresponding risk to the developing individuals as they enter the teenage years.

If I know anything about parenting it is that there are no guarantees, and we will make mistakes.

We need to trust and have great courage to parent. Some things in our lives and the lives of our children will be out of our control. But there are aspects we can hold. We are fortunate in Steiner Schools to have a curriculum that holds the child in the context of humanity’s journey thus far and prepares them in freedom for an unknown future.

I trust that those who come to a Steiner school are guided by the hand of the master weaver, call it what you will. I trust that there is a plan and that each of us is important and plays a vital role in the overall success of that plan. Let us work together and support each other from Playgroup to Class 6 in creating meaningful, age-appropriate milestone events that build strength of character, inner resolve, teach delayed gratification, the appreciation of the simple joys of life and real connection.

Warmly,
Vanessa Fountain

Rose Kindergarten Teacher

What on Earth is Eurythmy?

Wed, 20 Oct 2021 01:49:26 GMT

What on Earth is Eurythmy?

Courtesy of waldorfpublications.org

This dance form is an essential part of the curriculum in Waldorf schools. It has its echo in another topic unique to Waldorf schools, Form Drawing. This kind of drawing builds a spatial awareness in children, and leads them to know the drawing of line as movement come to stillness. In Eurythmy many of these forms would appear on the floor if the feet were made of chalk!

Eurythmy was started by Rudolf Steiner as a performance art to make music and speech visible in artistic form

Professor Fred Amrine, at the University of Michigan, recently completed research that places the line of modern American dance in the hands of Rudolf Steiner, following Ruth St. Denis and Isadora Duncan. Rather than self-expression, modern dance began as a disciplined, meditatively-based art form. Steiner took this to new heights to create, through dance, visible music and visible speech.

Year by year in a Waldorf school, the eurythmy teacher calls the children to grace and beautiful movement through exercises, patterns and games with increasing complexity as the children grow.

Students learn to comprehend their own movement in a disciplined way over time, and also the movements of others and the need for space to be maintained thoughtfully between people, not only for oneself. So it has a deeply social instruction in it, too!

Through eurythmy, students hear many different kinds of music, understand intervals and scales, all through movement.

Likewise, children learn that different movements express consonant and vowels sounds to bring the speech into the physical external form.

Ultimately, eurythmy makes for intelligent feet and hands that inform an intelligent head and a thinking heart. These are the goals!

In one Waldorf school, the high school basketball team impressed a public school coach on an opposing team. He asked the Waldorf team coach how he was able to get his team to work so beautifully together on the floor. A tenth grade boy, hearing the question, interjected, “It’s Eurythmy. We all study eurythmy and so we know how to move together and alone.” This about sums it up.

Therapeutic eurythmy can be prescribed for conditions and ailments, even for straightening crooked teeth as one orthodontist discovered. Repeated, carefully planned movements can change the health of the human organism.

Want to learn more about Eurythmy? Visit www.waldorfpublications for a list of titles and keep an eye out for courses via Rudolf Steiner College Perth

The Benefits of Making Music as a Family

Wed, 19 May 2021 01:05:05 GMT

The Benefits of Family Music Making

By Cristina Filgueira

“When the human being hears music, he has a sense of wellbeing, because these tones harmonise with what he has experienced in the world of his spiritual home.”

– Rudolf Steiner

A quick Google search will show you that there have been a multitude of studies to discover the benefits of music making as a family. These benefits are many, and wide ranging from helping to build relationships to benefitting children’s development.

Children are born musical, and there have even been studies to show that babies can recognise melodies that they heard while they were still in the womb!

At West Coast Steiner School we aim to nurture each child’s musical ability but you as the parent are in the unique position of having a front row seat to your child’s musical development.

Making music as a family has social, emotional and developmental benefits for children.

I have spoken to many parents who are worried that they do not have any musical background and even parents who think that they might somehow impede their children’s musical development if they are not able to sing perfectly in tune. The wonderful news is that research has shown that even the children of parents who are tone deaf and completely unable to sing in tune (which is very, very rare) still receive 80% of the benefits of having their parents make music with them as the children whose parents are able to sing in tune.

One of the ways of encouraging music making as a family in your house is to have a music space.

You can fill this space with instruments, if you have them (for young children a pot and a wooden spoon makes a marvelous drum if rather noisy drum), or it can just be a space where you and your children can meet to sing, dance and play music games. Your music space does not even have to be a specific space in the house. It can be a time, such as a certain time once a week where you gather to make music together.

The commute to and from school is another fantastic opportunity to engage in some music making with your children.

No doubt your children already tell you all about their day as you make your way home with them, but why not ask them what songs they sang that day and if they can teach them to you? Many of the songs that the children are singing at school also incorporate movement, dancing or games, which are probably best saved for the living room or garden at home, rather than the commute. Siblings can teach each other the actions to songs and perform clapping games and dances together with you as well.

If your child is learning an instrument they will find joy in you taking an interest in what they are working on.

Class 2 and Class 3 children will surely love to teach you a song on the recorder or the lyre. Siblings can also help each other with their instruments and practise together, especially if they are in orchestra or choir together.

Your child may not feel confident enough to teach you a song yet, if they are not used to singing on their own. However, you might like to teach your child a favourite song from when you were their age.

If you cannot remember what your favourite childhood songs are perhaps your parents or grandparents can help you out. It might even be a fun family project to find out and learn every family member’s favourite childhood song!

Of course making music does not have to be a big effort and you certainly don’t have to put on a full family production a la The Sound of Music. Sing a song, or listen ton your children sing a song in the car, make up a song or rhyme about ducks during bath time, have a boogie in the kitchen and most importantly have fun with it!

Cristina Filgueira is the Music Teacher and Strings Specialist at West Coast Steiner School and a passionate advocate of family music-making!

About Steiner Education

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 06:45:30 GMT

About Steiner Education

From Steiner Education Australia

A Steiner education fosters the human spirit in children and young adults, allowing them to flourish in a holistic learning environment that is oriented towards moral growth, social consciousness and citizenship.

Typically located in beautiful surrounds, our schools seek to nurture each individual and connect them to the reverence and awe of the natural environment, one another, and the world around them.

Schools are grounded in working artistically, spiritually, practically and intellectually. As well as being integrated, the curriculum is broadly based, interdisciplinary and culturally rich.

We cherish the right of children to childhood – and this is reflected in the staging of the Australian Steiner Curriculum which is recognised by ACARA.

In early learning, we nurture a child’s development by facilitating creative, self-directed play, as we believe that the initiative, imagination and flexibility awakened underpin later academic learning and are the basis for innovative thought in adult life.

In primary school, the core approach is through artistic presentation of material by the class teacher which promotes engagement, inspires deep learning and supports developing imaginations.

In secondary school, we develop students’ awakening capacity for discernment by fostering initiative and independent, flexible thinking.

Teaching is based on supportive and close relationships with teachers and strong, lifelong bonds between students.

The values underpinning our education are gratitude, responsibility, collaboration, inclusivity, diversity and initiative. These are drawn from spirituality, engender self-worth, enrich relationships and develop a deep appreciation of our place in this world.

Steiner philosophy had its genesis in 1919 in Europe, as Austrian philosopher and social reformer Rudolf Steiner recognised the need for education to enable children to become free and autonomous human beings, able to impart purpose and direction in their lives.

Now, more than ever before, Steiner education is recognised as a highly valued approach to develop flexible and agile thinking and an ability to collaborate and thrive in a 21st Century world.

Gonski 2.0 highlighted the need for a contemporary education to emphasise critical and creative thinking, social skills and problem solving – delivering a deep sense of purpose, connectivity and agency to enact change. These are the hallmarks of a Steiner education.

Our approach sets students up for a life of contribution and achievement, fulfilment and success, and gives them the confidence and capability to forge their own paths as free, morally responsible and resilient people.

A 2018 survey of parents showed 87% of parents are satisfied with choosing a Steiner school – one of the highest levels of satisfaction amongst parents in any educational system.

Students spoke passionately about being happy and fulfilled and having strong relationships with their teachers and fellow students.

Across the globe, Steiner education is recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as providing a strong humanitarian and non-discriminatory approach crossing racial and cultural divides.

Steiner Education Australia (SEA) exists to support and strengthen Steiner education across the Asia Pacific and to ensure Steiner education is accessible to all Australians. We tap into a network of over 1,000 Steiner schools across the globe including over 50 in Australia. Never before have we seen so many Steiner Schools or students in Australia which is a testament to the approach and outcomes of our schooling.

The first Waldorf school was founded in Stuttgart in 1919. Today there are over 1,100 Waldorf schools and almost 2,000 Waldorf kindergartens in some 80 countries around the globe. And more all the time.

~This article is courtesy of www.steinereducation.edu.au ~

Talking to Children About the Bushfires

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 07:27:37 GMT

Talking to Children About the Bushfires

By Dr. Justin Coulson

The ongoing bushfires around Australia are extraordinary. We’ve all seen them. Too many have experienced them or had close encounters, either personally or through a friend or loved one. Homes, lives, animals, environment – so much gone. No matter where you live in this country, you’ve been affected.

So, too, have our children. How do we help them to feel reassured when they witness so much that can stoke fear and insecurity?

For our children need to thrive, it is important that they feel their world is safe and predictable. As adults, we know that it’s often not, but… our children need to believe that it is. It is our job, as parents, to instil that belief.

That’s why it’s important to take care when talking to our children about traumatic events. We want to be able to talk about what’s happening, without making it worse.

This article is for parents whose children are NOT directly affected by bushfires.

How do we help our children understand what’s going on, particularly when many of us may have limited depth of understanding ourselves?

For Younger Children

Here’s the good news: children who are younger than about six years of age probably won’t be particularly interested. They might see something that troubles them on the news, have a basic question or two, and that’s about all. If they do come to you with a question, answer it honestly, but succinctly, then allow them to move on when they feel ready. In almost all cases, your child won’t be concerned any longer. And because they don’t really understand, it’s best to shield them from exposure to the trauma as much as you can. Keep the news turned off so they don’t see it.

For Older Children

Curious or concerned?

Children between the ages of six and 12 can comprehend and recognise that the country is reeling, and these older children may have more questions than our little ones. When they come to us, they will either be curious or concerned.

You’ll know your child is curious by her tone. Curiosity is active, energised, and inquisitive. Children who are curious will ask “why”, “what”, “where”, “when” and “how” questions that are less about emotion and more about facts. Answer their questions truthfully, but don’t give them too much. When someone wants a drink, we turn on the tap, not the firehose. Limit information to what is appropriate for their age and understanding.

Children who are concerned need more.

Their questions stem from a desire to understand and be reassured. They may still ask similar sounding questions, but there will be an undercurrent of worry and apprehension. Their energy will be lower as they ponder the unpleasantness of the circumstances we are experiencing. And for our concerned children, they want to know that even if the world is unsafe and unpredictable, their world is safe and predictable.

When you answer their questions you might say, ‘Seeing those people running from the fires – stranded on the beaches – it makes you feel awful, doesn’t it’. Or, ‘Don’t you wish these awful things didn’t happen. Like if there was some special super-hero who could just put out all the fires, save all the animals, and make everyone safe’.

These responses show our children that we understand. They help them feel that even if the world isn’t safe all the time, their world is because we are there for them.

Our job isn’t to solve the issue. It’s to let our children know we understand.

Give hope.

Giving hope is the next step. We do that by sharing stories of people doing incredible things in the midst of the awfulness.

Mr Rogers’ famous quote always springs to mind at times like this. He says, ‘When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”’

Share stories of the helpers with your children. Tell them about Celeste Barber raising $50+ million dollars for relief funding. Tell them about the woman who saved a koala from the burning bushland by wrapping it in her shirt and pouring water over it. Tell them about the children who are having lemonade stands to raise money.

Then empower them by asking them what they can do to help.

Maybe they’d like to have a lemonade stand or a cake stall and donate the proceeds to the volunteer firefighters. Doing something helps our children feel better and recognise that they are no powerless victims. They can make a difference.

When you disagree.

For parents of older children, you might find that sometimes questions lead to disagreements. Maybe your child has opinions that you find jarring (one of you might be a climate fanatic and the other a climate sceptic). Maybe your child is extremely disdainful of the government or particular leaders.

You might be tempted to say something like, ‘What would you know? You’re only 13!’ That will only put distance between you and your child at a really difficult time.

The best approach is to get curious, not furious.

Say, ‘You have some really strong feelings about this. Tell me more about that.’ Opening up a dialogue with your child fosters understanding and closeness even when you don’t agree. Get curious, not furious.

If you’ve been directly affected by the bushfires.

It is normal to have strong emotional or physical reactions following a distressing event. But you don’t have to go through it alone. If you and your children have been directly affected by the bushfires and are feeling anxious, scared or depressed, seek professional help. A professional can help you and your children weather these trying times.

~This article is courtesy of www.happyfamilies.com.au ~

Knit to Code

Wed, 25 Nov 2020 03:03:44 GMT

Knit to Code

CEO Blog from Steiner Education Australia

The recent segment on A Current Affair, From Knitting to Coding[1], showed Birali Steiner School students highly engaged in knitting which has many benefits for well-being, resilience, creativity, mathematical thinking[2]…. and the development of digital coding skills. Principal Chris Jack and Steiner based academic Dr Shelley Davidow from the University of the Sunshine Coast spoke about how digital technologies are easily mastered at the right developmental stage by students who are firstly multiskilled in world crafts and contemporary non-digital technologies such as knitting.

There is a growing body of research[3] which directly links the process of knitting with developing coding skills

Knitting uses the same types of loops, conditions and concept of functions as computer language. As Dr Davidow explained in the segment on A Current Affair, knits and purls are essentially the 0’s and 1’s of computer programming and when used in infinite combinations they create the same amount of variation as any code. Learning to knit is an obvious stepping stone to learning to code.

In the Steiner curriculum, knitting also plays a prominent role as part of an approach to learning where arts and crafts are not just an ‘add on’, but integrated with academic learning to enable deep learning experiences.

The Steiner handcrafts curriculum includes knitting right from class 1 and progresses to complex four needle knitting in classes 5 and 6. All these elements awaken a young person’s creative powers and will, which can find fruitful application in later life, in many different fields and aspects of living including use of digital technologies.

As researchers are continually evaluating the impact of the digital technologies on the developing brain[4], Steiner schools continue to consciously teach an ‘uplugged’ curriculum in the early years of learning as it is more important than ever for development of creativity, original thought and an uncluttered self-image — a solid foundation for later application of creativity in the use of, and enthusiasm for, digital technology in its many forms.

Learning to communicate and learning deeply without mediation of complex technology enables children to see themselves as active, creative human beings, connected to the real world around them.

We lose something by being so reliant on technology. It is so easy, so handy, but whether it improves student outcomes is questionable. As Pasi Sahlberg states: “What is happening with our kids now is the biggest educational experiment in history. As adults, we have much to learn about …the benefits and pitfalls of screen-based technologies for young people’’.

For Steiner educators, knitting goes far beyond the practical.

Handwork is a way to deepen learning, not to do well on tests or get a good job, but to educate the whole child. It is also wonderful that knitting is getting the accolades it deserves in preparing young people for the digital world – from educators, craftspeople, scientists, technology experts, and researchers alike.

~This article comes to us from www.steinereducationaustralia.edu.au~

[1] Here is the link to the segment on A Current Affair From Knitting to Coding: https://www.facebook.com/ACurrentAffair9/videos/211391223892594/?sfnsn=mo

[2] See https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/what-knitting-can-teach-you-about-math-180969637/

[3] See, for example:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/science/math-physics-knitting-matsumoto.html

https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/31684/can-learning-to-knit-help-learning-to-code

[4] See, for example the longitudinal study currently being conducted in Australia through the UNSW Gonski Institute Growing Up Digital https://www.gie.unsw.edu.au/GUDAustralia

A Conscious Christmas

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 07:15:34 GMT

A Conscious Christmas

With Advent commencing on Sunday November 29, now
is a good time to reflect on what type of family festival you

would like to create. Our Kindergarten Teacher, Vanessa Fountain, offers her experiences and thoughts on consciously creating family celebrations.

I don’t know if it is just length of life and lessons learnt or the fact that our children are now young adults and have come to their own opinions about the way we as a culture celebrate Christmas but last year we did our Christmas very differently. That doesn’t make it “right” or “the way” but I’d like to offer it, if for no other reason than to elicit a reaction that brings your own soul’s longing closer to your awareness.

The Lila of life can be warm, magical, wondrous, exciting and exhilarating. It can also be challenging, heartbreaking, stressful, cold and lonely.

For many the festivals that we hope will punctuate our lives with joy and meaning, only serve to reinforce the areas in our lives where we perceive that we don’t measure up, fit in or have apparently failed. That which should be joy filled, triggers anxiety attacks, depression and feelings of dread.

I would like to give you an imagination or a picture of an aspect of the Christmas festival from an Anthroposophical point of view. We do not teach Anthroposophy in Waldorf schools. Anthroposophy is for adults to explore or not, out of their own free will.

The Christmas Festival from an Anthroposophical point of view is a very ancient festival. It was celebrated in the earliest Mysteries of most religions as a festival of the sun. Not, however as a festival of the outer sun but of the inner transformation represented by the sun.

The mystery schools teach us in pictures and stories. One of the oldest pictures is of the sun, the moon and the earth being one body. The sun shone within this body and no light fell on its outer surface, it was in and of itself, light. In this picture, when the sun and moon separated from the earth, no longer was there light within but the light shone on the surface of the earth. If we understand this picture as representing the spiritual aspect of man, coming from the spirit world where the light was the spiritual being, to separating from the light, (coming into earthly being and then to the journey of reawakening, recreating out of free will, to raise up and transform the light) then we can also see this as a picture of the journey of spiritual connection and spiritual disconnection. This then required a mediator between the spiritual and the temporal (the church). Man then continued on the journey of self-awakening through free will and on to the development of consciousness.

This picture lives within the mythology of most cultures and the imagery has been taken and envisioned to suit the consciousness of different times.

Ancient cultures with their dependence and connection to the land and the seasons were acutely aware of the journey of the sun in relationship to their position on the earth.

Now in these mystery schools there were the initiates who understood these pictures on a deep level and then there were those who through their connection to nature just felt the significance but were not cognisant of its implications. And so it was that when the sun was at its furthest point, and its strength was felt at its weakest – it was then that the initiate sought to rediscover the sun within/ to overcome the spiritual death and raise the human being and the earth to a transformed spiritual state. For the land worker it was the promise of the return of the sun at the deepest and bleakest point of winter.

It was the promise of spring, of the overcoming of death (winter) and of new birth and new growth.

This light was given many names throughout the ages, but for Christianity from an Anthroposophical point of view it was called the Christos. This is a very simplified explanation of a picture that lives at the heart of Anthroposophy and I encourage you to explore it further if it interests you.

So holding the picture of spiritual transformation and at the same time considering how my family and I could hold Christmas more consciously, we asked ourselves;

What does Christmas means to us as individuals?

What does Christmas means to us as a family?

What traditions do we want to continue and why?

What does not serve us as a family?

What does not serve us as members of a global community?

What will bring us closer to our understanding of what the essence of the festival is?

We went through our own process, reconnected to our understanding of what the festival stood for and its essential message. We talked about what had worked for us at different ages and what hadn’t. We talked about future generations in the family and what we would like to pass forward.

We looked at how our understanding could be expressed as an act of universal love to community, friends and loved ones that are not Christian and do not celebrate Christmas.

Last year, we chose not to have a Christmas tree, we stepped out of the Christmas gift arms race, we simplified everything. Instead, we spent time together – stress free. We celebrated the love, the striving, and the perfection in our human imperfection. We said no, and we said yes, to what would bring us closer together, to what would raise us all up in our striving to be the best version of ourselves that we can be. We said yes to compassion and understanding that sometimes life isn’t happening the way we had imagined it would, but that it was ok, it is a process and we are there to support each other through it.

Life is a journey. Things happen, things change. Some things are expected and some not. Some things bring us great joy and some things bring us to our knees.

For my family we will continue to hold the question around how we celebrate Christmas but at the centre will always be how we hold each other. We will continue to learn, to fine tune and to find our light and the light in each other.

So how do we celebrate Christmas in the kindergarten in a Waldorf school?

In most Waldorf kindergartens you will find a picture of Mother Mary. This is not there as a Christian icon but as a picture of the archetypal mother. And so it is when we tell stories, sing songs and learn of the preciousness of the Jesus child that we uphold the archetype of the preciousness of the spirit child within us all.

The stories speak to the love of a mother and father for their child, to stories of wonder and awe at the world around us. The interconnection between us and nature and the support we have from and give to the spiritual world.

The four weeks leading up to Christmas are Advent. Advent is celebrated in the kindergarten by acknowledging different aspects of our world.

In week one, we reconnect to the mineral world – “the world of stones, crystals, seashells and bones”. In week two, we acknowledge the plant kingdom – “plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance”.

In week three, we turn to the beasts – “The light of hope that we may see in greatest and in least.” And the fourth light of Advent, “It is the light of Man, The light of love, the light of thought, to give and understand.”

For the children, Christmas in the kindergarten is carried by the normal rhythms and routines with the focus being upon the observation of their world and their place in it, through the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms.

But how do we support our children at this time of year, when consumerism is at its worst, when the world and those that occupy it seem to go just a little crazy?
This is the part that I call:

CHRISTMAS: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

The Good:
• The magic of the wonder and excitement of the young child on Christmas morning

• Of family coming together and behaving themselves

• Of gifts of love and consideration. (Homemade or consciously chosen well in advance)

The Bad:

• Stressed parents

• Expectations and perceived expectations to create a ‘wonderful Christmas’

• Work deadlines loom before the Christmas break

• Big lead up, big clean up

• Overcommitted social calendars

• Worries about the financial cost of Christmas presents

• Getting all the Christmas shopping done in time

The Ugly:

• Mass of complex social interactions with family and relatives. Stressors: Lack of privacy, lack of control - a holiday that seems to have a form set in stone, regression into childhood behaviours around parents and siblings that we thought we were done with , anxiety, loneliness and disappointment

• Credit card debt

• For many Christmas is a time of depression, isolation and a reminder of all in their life that does not measure up to what society tells us our lives should look like.

• It falls at the end of the year, a natural time for taking stock of the year that has passed – yet another opportunity to not measure up.

• Stressful shopping expeditions

• There is the presents arms race. Where Christmas isn’t Christmas without there being many, many presents. We inadvertently teach our child that bigger is better; more is better and foster greed and consumerism. Many Anthroposophists only give one present from the parents to the child for birthdays and Christmas. One precious, well considered and treasured present.

• Parents and children being exposed to outrageous consumerism and the aisles of landfill.

• Social inequity screams at this time of year.

• We engage in the Father Christmas story – mostly unconsciously. Do we choose the pictures we give our children or just buy into a cultural norm? I’m not saying that telling our children that Father Christmas flies on a sleigh drawn by reindeer and drops down your chimney is wrong, I’m just asking, did you question it before you had your first Christmas with your child? I know we didn’t.

• Then there is the post-Christmas letdown.

• And New Year resolutions ready to be made and broken in quick succession. (I believe this is because they almost always come from a premise of lack or not being good enough as we are. Where is the compassion and understanding – gone, only seven days after Christmas? If we can’t be loving and compassionate and journey with ourselves what hope have to teach it to those in our care?)

Festivals punctuate our months, years and indeed lives. They give them meaning. They show how we have grown, how we have journeyed on the voyage to “knowing ourselves” and how that “knowing” is expressed in how we engage with others. But for festivals to be meaningful, we need to engage with them consciously.

I wish you a Christmas filled with love, connection, equanimity, compassion, peace, and a visioning of the world we would like our children to inherit. But that’s my heart’s desire, what’s yours? What is the gift of this festival that you want to give to yourself and your child?

Much love,

Vanessa Fountain

Rose Kindergarten Teacher

Being Nine Years Old

Wed, 30 Sep 2020 06:04:37 GMT

Being Nine Years Old

The teacher knelt before the boy to explain how to cross the street carefully and to check to see if he felt uneasy about crossing without a teacher holding his hand. The boy’s mother was taking a job in the area and she wanted her children in a Waldorf school. The boy had come to visit the second grade that day. He had, up till then, been home schooled, and there was a question about whether or not the boy belonged in second grade or third grade because of his age—older than the youngest in the third grade and younger than the oldest in the second grade.

After the teacher had completed explaining carefully how to cross the street without a teacher helping him, the teacher asked, “Can you do that? Are you afraid? Shall I go with you?” The boy rolled his eyes and said, sarcastically, “Yes!”

The teacher smiled inwardly. She knew he was too old for the second grade. He had already crossed “The Rubicon” as Steiner named it, of age nine.

You may have your own memories of this important nine-year-old change of consciousness. You might have learned, seemingly all of a sudden, that there is no Santa Claus, no tooth fairy—that it has been your parents all along.

The feelings of betrayal, disappointment, cynicism, come rushing in and it is, well, embarrassing. You might have just argued ferociously with a classmate who had already crossed over this river of awareness ahead of you and who was trying to tell you that there was no Santa Claus. You, still on the other side of the river believing in magic, may have argued hot and furiously for the undeniable existence of Santa Claus.

Now this feels embarrassing as you realize how silly you were to believe for so long.

In the Waldorf curriculum, for grade three when a whole class is turning nine, the literature is the Old Testament in the Bible. This is not a religious decision but a story decision, with the Bible as one rich source of helpful stories. The account of Adam and Eve reflects in a glorious and perfect way the feelings of a nine-year-old. They want to try forbidden things and then are shocked at the consequences. They are ashamed and they experience an overwhelming sense of loss.

So it is with nine year olds.

The stories in the Bible after this movement of “getting caught” unfold then to a new life on Earth. Adam and Eve learn how to grow their own food, cook, build shelters and make their own clothing.

This just about sums up the third grade curriculum in a Waldorf school: farming, building, sewing, knitting, measurement—including cooking and cursive writing.

Loneliness is a new feeling that comes at this age. Many children at this crucial nine-year time worry that they are really adopted or that their crib was switched in the hospital and they may have ended up with the wrong parents. Children tell each other stories of the hair a father has in his nose, or the moles on her mother’s face. These are physical characteristics that went unnoticed before the child turned nine. Once the child crosses the river of consciousness into the land of nine-year-oldness, there is no turning back.

The magic of early childhood is forever gone and magic becomes something belonging to the marvels of nature, not any longer elves, or leprechauns or flying reindeer.

The child can suddenly feel very alone. Adults are less reliable than they used to be. They break promises, forget important things, scold sometimes, and make mistakes. The child can now tell when he or she is being treated like a “baby.” This can prompt trouble with sleeping, of fear of the dark.

Infantile habits long broken—thumb sucking, or bed wetting, having nightmares—all can re-emerge.

Teachers and parents can make the mistake of assuming that the child is attaining early puberty. This error is a costly one. When adults treat children like teenagers, they steal away the height of childhood’s golden years and push the child ahead past the last two or three years of play and freedom from the burden of adolescent consciousness. The theft of childlike joy is a terrible thing.

The best part of childhood at age nine is the birth of newfound confidence, and competence.

A healthy child at age nine can do many things very well. They become wonderful company in a brand new way and can fill hours on a long car ride with interesting chatter about almost anything.

The skills cultivated in the Waldorf curriculum make a child feel less lonely and more independent. “I can do it,” is the feeling a teacher looks for in the nine year old.

The insecurities that arise are dissolved in work, a strong practice of will, the sense of belonging through participation, the experience of competence and fulfilling tasks.

The position of the stars at birth, some say, holds the destiny of the human being. It takes eighteen years, seven months and nine days for the stars to circle back into that exact position. This moment of re-positioning is called a Lunar Node. Often at these moments, every eighteen years and seven months, people tend to change their lives. It is as if the stars in their original position call to the human being and remind them of their true destiny, their true course in life. We re-adjust. The Institute of Noetic Sciences in a 25 year research project on transformative experiences noticed in the research that moments of transformation—Epiphanies—tend to cluster around the ages of eighteen/nineteen; 36 to 38; 55 to 58. Nine-years-old is halfway round the celestial path and it is as if, the stars call the child to grow, to comprehend, and to remember the importance of his or her tasks on Earth.

So when the boy rolled his eyes at the silliness of needing an adult to help him to cross a small street, the teacher knew that he would no longer “fit” as a second grader. His consciousness had leapt forward already into the ability to see and to be independent, capable. It would have been a disservice to keep him in the land of legends and fables when, as in the Bible stories, there’s work to be done!

~This article comes to us from www.waldorfpublications.org~

What is the Michaelmas Festival?

Wed, 16 Sep 2020 06:43:04 GMT

What is the Michaelmas Festival?

The end of term three is fast approaching and with it comes our Michaelmas Festival.

This year we wish to deepen our understanding of the impulse of this festival and how we can celebrate it in the southern hemisphere.

In the northern hemisphere this is an Autumn festival where the earth is preparing for the coming of Winter. Even though we are moving into Spring we still experience the universal desire to strengthen our will forces and hold steadfast in the face of adversity. For the children this festival is an opportunity for them to unite together in teams and discover that together we can achieve great feats or in the very least have fun! The day will involve the primary children being involved in multi-age teams and having to complete a series of tasks.

Many people are familiar with an image of St. Michael and the Dragon.

Sometimes he is depicted as holding the balance or weighing scales and more often he is seen subduing the fiery red dragon. Many legends surround St. Michael. There is a legend of his wrestling the sun from the clutches of the dragon and losing a portion of the sole of his foot in the battle- the human foot subsequently having an arch! Most references to Michael characterise him with sun-like attributes; a radiant being full of light and courage. Sometimes, like St. George he holds a lance, at other times he holds a transparent sphere or an iron rod.

Another image of Michael is as the figure that holds a sword with which he can defend, not kill, only to ward off the 'dragon force'. This sword is "the sword of light" rather than a metal sword.

Michael is about transformation, balance, consciousness, courage and human striving (both individual and in community). He is the spiritual being who stands for human dignity, social responsibility and freedom.

The Michaelmas Festival is above all a festival concerned with community and cooperation; striving and initiative.

It consists of a variety of imaginative games, thoughtfully planned to foster cooperation, problem-solving and initiative; enacted by the children who work cooperatively in teams. Each team will consist of children from Class 1-6. The teams will move around a series of games stations laid out on the field. The children will walk in a procession, proudly carrying their banners aloft marching and singing. Each game lasts about ten minutes, and at the sound of a trumpet the teams will reassemble and proceed to the next game's station. Each activity/game is given an imagination of some aspect of dragon lore.

Much will go into the preparation of the Michaelmas Festival; storytelling, singing and the making and decorating of different shields.

All children will have a chance to contribute. The older children will lead and encourage the younger children, giving help where necessary. The younger children have a chance to look up to the older children and feel safe.

The Michaelmas Festival is a very appropriate one for children to participate in given the ever increasing challenges of our world.

We hope to foster community spirit at many levels. We also hope to have some fun!

Why a Class Play?

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 04:10:16 GMT

Why a Class Play in Waldorf Schools?

For almost every grade in most Waldorf schools, there is a class play.

This is an exciting event and means a great deal to everyone: the teachers, the students, the parents, the extended families of students. Interestingly enough, Rudolf Steiner never indicated that every year should have a class play! This is a tradition built in the ensuing decades of the last 100 years of Waldorf education. Doing plays is a happy tradition, but not a necessity in the curriculum!

The class play gives a teacher many chances to build the social strength in the class.

It often also reinforces aspects of the curriculum. It changes the routine in a stimulating artistic way that provides relief from the steady rhythm of the days and weeks and months of the school year. This relief returns when the regular rhythm returns and the class feels the ordinary soothing events of life replace the dynamic and artistic tension of preparing a play and performing it.

Plays in a Waldorf school are called “pedagogical” dramas for a very good reason.

They are aids to the class teacher in developing skill and capacity in students, strengthening the sense of interdependence in the whole class, and brightening the creativity of the class through drama.

Some teachers elect to do a play only every other year or every three years. This is entirely at the teacher’s discretion. A certain class might need uninterrupted rhythm or concentrated work on a subject, for example, instead of a play. The teacher decides on the play and the casting. Often an unlikely candidate for a lead part in a play or an obvious leader for a small part can surprise everyone, unlikely roles to all but the teacher!

The teacher might be looking to stretch a child’s ability.

Sometimes teachers engage students in paper maché, painting, and dying for set design, or sewing and fabric arts for costumes. Music and dance are often included in plays. Singers and instrumentalists alike are included. The range of possibility is many in a class play. This presents a good rationale for doing a play, the combining of many artistic undertakings to make a beautiful play.

Dramatic arts are also used by teachers in several non-performing ways.

The whole artistic approach for Waldorf teachers includes all the arts: music, drawing, painting, sculpting of all sorts (clay, beeswax, wood, stone), music making and singing, drama, speech formation, dance, and collages of several of these arts. The class play is one significant opportunity for a collaboration of arts.

As with all the arts, confusion about the product and the actual goals can occur.

We do get confused in Waldorf schools about the “best paintings,” and the “most beautiful sculptures,” or the most stunning main lesson books, the most beautiful singers, the most talented instrumentalists. Using all the arts carries the goal of clear thinking and deep inner experience during the experience. The displayable results are mere vestiges of the child’s artistic experience that brings the meaning home to the sensibilities of the young artist. In the culture of North America, the preoccupation with “talent” and “genius,” or the personality-driven aspect of our culture can make it very hard to stay with the essentials of why we actually do plays in Waldorf classes.

Of course, one wishes for a good play with high drama or effective comedy.

If a casting decision is to give an unlikely candidate a prized part, the results could be less than satisfying dramatically than it might be with the “most talented” in a class. Reviews by Vanity Fair or The New Yorker standards might name the class plays a flop! But it might just be a very effective pedagogical play.

If the teacher gives the play away to a theater professional and auditions are the way to cast the play, the artistic merit of the play by worldly standards might improve, but the pedagogical impact will certainly suffer. The participation of parents in the class play can be a complicating factor as well. Sometimes parents have strong feelings about the part their child should have, or about the play the teacher has written or chosen, or about how the production should go. This adds stress to an already creatively stressful process and is often driven by cultural expectations and not by the pedagogical ideals mentioned already. And surprising things can happen: one part a performer had was as Nana, the dog, in a rendition of Peter Pan, who had no lines and brought the house down with the comedic gestures of the canine nanny.

The ultimate satisfaction of a class in its play is the successful immersion into the characters and the story of a play. Once the play is performed, the audience’s comprehension of the story, the laughter, and tears the performers feel for one scene or another from the audience are like icing on a well-baked cake.

Children do learn to depend on each other in a new way from the ordinary, and students do change after deeply entering into a character unlike their own.

Students find new voices in themselves, new motivations, new friends, a new appreciation for each other through interaction on stage.

Sacrifice is needed for a good play: the sacrifice of one’s personality for another, sacrifice of preference for the good of the play, sacrifice of friends to interact with unlikely companions for the play, sacrifice of many preferences for the sake of a good play. And the sacrifice of repeated rehearsal might be the biggest sacrifice of all!

In the end, a class play is a lot of fun and excitement; the rewards of many weeks of hard work. Unlike other arts, it is such a social art and is shared socially with the whole community. Live theater is always thrilling because unlike a film; no one knows what is going to happen on stage nor how the actors will react. Many is the time that class teachers instruct, “Whatever happens remember who your character is and respond in that character, no matter what!” It brings lessons for life with these facts.

It isn’t so much what happens — things will always happen — it’s how we respond that makes the story so compelling!

So, practice for the play begets practice for life, a gift well beyond a performance or two!

This article appears courtesy of www.waldorfpublications.org

Growing Children, Thriving Children

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 03:30:56 GMT

Growing Children, Thriving Children

by Lou Harvey-Zahra

As children outgrow sitting on laps, holding hands, maybe even bedtime cuddles, which activities continue to foster daily connection between you and your children? Eating evening meals together and talking about your day. A bedtime whisper of loving words. A shared book? Every family has their own regular times to connect together. It is vital that we recognise how important these are during middle childhood from 7 to 12 years.

At times, the busyness of life can take over. Every day is full of school runs, work, digital distractions and other activities.

It can feel like there is no time to really connect with our children, especially as the bonds of early childhood begin to loosen. But this is not the time to disconnect. Middle childhood provides an opportunity to reinforce bonds in new ways through family rhythms that suit your children’s stage of development.

This article is taken from my new book Growing Children, Thriving Children: Raising 7 to 12 Year Olds with Confidence and Awareness and aims to provide practical guidance in establishing and maintaining daily family rhythms that allow conversation and connection, even when parents feel time-poor, stretched, or, at times, rejected.

The following ideas can foster feelings of security, inclusion, connection, love and joy during the middle years of childhood.

Mornings can sometimes feel like a rush to get everyone out of the door on time, but it’s important that children are met with a moment of warmth to start the day, like the rising of the sun. Loving words begin the day in a positive way. As a morning greeting, I would simply say ‘My love’ or ‘My beautiful’ with a quick embrace.

Dedicate a few seconds each morning to displaying love, rather than a growl to get ready!

I was recently listening to American talk show host Jimmy Fallon speak about his late mother. He explained that they had played a special hand squeezing game together. Three squeezes meant ‘I love you’. This could easily be used as a morning greeting, or at the school gate as a subtle farewell.

After school, children’s (and parents’) moods may be negatively influenced by hunger and tiredness ‒ also known as being ‘hangry’! Prepare a quick afternoon snack of chopped fruit and vegetables, and a drink while your child finds the current chapter book. The power of reading to children is not to be underestimated.

On a physical level, their breathing will slow and deepen, and the body will gradually unwind and become more relaxed.

A parent’s voice allows children to go into an almost hypnotic, subconscious state, allowing them to imagine mental pictures, connect to characters and unconsciously absorb moral issues. This develops their creative capacities, and expands their impressions of life, and so much more… It creates an opportunity for connection after school, or if not time, at bedtime.

Here are some of my favourites to read to children during the middle years:

- 7-year-olds: The Faraway Tree series; The Wishing-Chair collection; Mr Galliano’s Circus series; Children of Willow Tree Farm and The Cherry Tree Farm.

- 8-year-olds: Stig of the Dump by Clive King; Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Fantastic Mr Fox, George’s Marvellous Medicine, The Witches and Matilda.

- 9-year-olds: Little House in the Big Woods; Farmer Boy; Little House on the Prairie; On the Banks of Plum Creek and By the Shores of Silver Lake. As well as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.

- 10-year-olds: some recommended reads include The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis; Heidi by Johanna Spyri and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

My daughter was seven when I found two identical foot spas in the local second-hand shop. I would add a few drops of lavender to the water, and while I read a chapter book aloud, we would soak our feet together. It wasn’t long before my son’s toes ventured in too! You can create a foot spa easily at home by filling a washing-up bowl with warm water and a few drops of essential oil. Place marbles on the bottom. Now roll your feet for pure relaxation!

Daily communication times form a strong foundation in middle childhood, which is important for the upcoming teenage years.

Children need to feel that they can talk to their parents, and that there are always opportunities for communication.

The ‘weather report’ is a game which provides an opening to hearing about each other’s days. Children and parents can use weather symbols to describe the feel of the day, ‘sunny’, ‘cloudy’. If parents go first, children often follow.

The dinner table is a place to build the family ‘tribe’ during middle childhood, to cultivate a feeling of belonging together. When a parent asks children, ‘What did you do today?’, the most common response is ‘Nothing’! But if adults act as role models, sharing the events of their day first, children will naturally join in. To foster conversation skills during mealtimes, play the rose game.

In the rose game, each person thinks of a rose as they reflect on their day. The parts of the rose remind them of things they can talk about: ‘petals’ represent an enjoyable or fun memory from the day, a favourite aspect or moment; the stem symbolises a new lesson, something that the person learnt that day; the thorns signify an event that caused sadness or anger ‒ or perhaps even laughter. Take it in turns to describe the day, using each part of the rose.

Bedtime is an important transition time of the day. Children are entering into the unconscious, so it is a time for comfort, a time to feel safe and loved still.

The following ideas suggest ways of connecting at bedtime. During the middle years of childhood, whisper a loving message at bedtime. Once my children were in bed, I would simply whisper, ‘I am so glad you are my son’, or, ‘I love you’. The middle years of childhood can include emotional ups and downs, so ending the day with a loving moment is special

Rhythms for morning greetings, resting, meals, chats and bedtimes may appear simple, but the emotional connection and stability they bring during the years of middle childhood are not be underestimated.

These rhythms create profound long-term emotional associations, they are free and often take five minutes.

Lou Harvey-Zahra’s new book is Growing Children, Thriving Children: Raising 7 to 12 Year Olds with Confidence and Awareness. This is Lou’s 4th parenting book, following on from her Waldorf bestseller Happy Child, Happy Home and Creative Discipline, Connected Family. Lou lives with her family in Melbourne. See her website is www.happychildhappyhome.com

The Six Year Old Change

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 06:46:33 GMT

The Six Year Old Change

By Michelle Brightwater

The six-year transformation or change is an amazing and tumultuous time in the life of your youngling (and for you!). This time is referred to as the “first puberty,” which gives a great deal of insight into the kind of behavior you might expect during this time. Although it is called the six-year change, it usually happens between the ages of 5.5 and 7 years. This developmental shift is not simply the next step in a linear progression, but rather a full transformation into a different being.

It is likened to a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly. Everything changes for your child…physically, intellectually, socially, emotionally. Her body is changing, her consciousness is changing and her connection to the world is changing.

Let’s start by getting a clear picture of the changes happening, then we can move on to ways to meet and to support our dear one as he works his way out of that cocoon! Physically, your child is GROWING. His limbs will stretch, he will lose his “baby fat” and those sweet dimples in his hands. He will develop actual wrists, a waist and a neck. This means he will be hungry and may have growing pains. Leg aches, joint aches and even tummy aches are par for the course.

He will also lose his baby teeth and grow his adult teeth. This is an uncomfortable and exciting process.

At our meeting, I showed an x-ray of a child’s mouth and jaw at this age and it is full to bursting with new and old teeth. Looking at this photo invokes a pang of compassion…it shows the crowded, shifting space of your dear one’s head! Even his heart rhythm changes during this transformation.

All of these physical changes result in your child feeling “funny,” uncomfortable, moody and sometimes even in downright pain. And the physical changes are just one element of this developmental shift.

Please hold your child with tenderness and compassion, feed him healthy, nourishing food and make sure he gets good rest. His body is working hard and building!

Intellectually, a new world opens up to your child. Until now, all of his life forces have been focused on developing and building the body. The internal organs are not fully formed at birth. It takes until around the age of seven to complete most of this formation. Once this happens, the life forces are freed up to work on developing the feeling realm and the intellect.

Your child will suddenly view the world differently, she will understand more.

She will see that adults make mistakes and have more pointed questions about the world. This induces a painful time of the loss of the magic of early childhood. She used to swim in a sea of self-centered fantasy. She was very connected the world and to you. Now she has a more emerging sense of herself as separate and individual. This is exciting and powerful, as well as terrifying! You will feel her separating and this is a bittersweet time for parents. We want our children to bloom and grow, to spread their wings. But ouch…separating from us can be hard to take.

Be strong and have courage to allow your young one to go forth and to become the fullness of being she has come here to be!

This new perspective sets the stage for a new round of limit-testing. Everything looks different, so he needs to find the boundaries once again. Don’t be surprised if he tries out new things–inappropriate language, arguing, outright refusal, disrespect, running around in a frenzy, telling white lies–the sky is the limit. Again, this is the time to be strong without alarm. If you hold the boundaries with love and understanding, he will find his center again. We need to approach the six-year changer with the attitude that we have compassion and understanding of what is happening, and that we are here to hold him, to be in charge and to love him unconditionally. We know his heart is still made of gold and that he must try things out to find his way. We will remind him which way to go and help him to get there.

Although her intellect is beginning to bud, she is still not ready for full academics and intellectual explanations. Your dear one still relates to the world best through story and creative pictures. Let her dwell in the magic and wonder of early childhood that still remains for her. First Grade is just around the corner!

Your child’s play used to be inspired from the outside. He used to see an object and it would become something in his mind’s eye and he would play that. Now his play is inspired from the inside. He creatively imagines what he wants to play and now seeks objects to become the scene he sees. He will spend more time setting up his play than actually playing it out. Since this shift means that all comes from within, there are times when he cannot find the inspiration.

You will start to hear “I’m bored.” This is ok, in fact it is good! This is a big sign of First Grade readiness.

Let him sit with it and struggle to find his inspiration. If he gets too distraught or moves into a frenzy, bring him into your work. Children at this age need real, meaningful work to help organize their energy and motion. Let them help chop vegetables for dinner, set the table, take out the garbage with you, sweep, scrub walls, pull weeds, hammer nails, repair things…whatever you are working on. Your cheerful, purposeful, competent action and energy will guide and ground him. Usually after a little time working with you, he will find his way back into play with his frayed edges smoothed.

Up until now, your child has been a being of pure will. Her will has helped her to learn to walk and talk, to be a human child in this American culture. She has been centred on doing. With the six-year transformation, she shifts into the next seven-year stage of being focused on feeling. She will begin to become more sensitive to the words and actions of others. She suddenly realises and notices more in this capacity. An off-handed comment that she would have scarcely noticed a few months ago now really hurts her feelings. Many children will say things like “everyone is mean to me,” or “no one likes me.”

This is an emotional time akin to adolescence. She is developing feelings, empathy and compassion and can be very sensitive.

Please take these statements with a grain of salt. Have compassion for your tender one, but know that things are almost always not as bad as she feels in that moment. This is an important time to keep the communication flowing with your teacher. Check in. One day an incident or two can feel like the weight of the world and the next day, life is beautiful again. Also, please do your best to keep your rhythm. Even if you child says she does not want to come to school, know that this passes once she enters the classroom. You can let me know when your child is having this kind of morning and I will let you know how the day goes. Having all of these new feelings is hard at first. Its a great feat to learn to sort through them, to identify them and to make sense of them. Your rhythm is a great comfort and scaffolding.

With this new awareness of emotion, he will see that his actions can also trigger emotions in others. Children learn that they have power. They can make someone else do something they want with a word or action. They can make others laugh or pay attention with a word or an action. Kindergarteners experiment with manipulation and exclusion, as well as with being goofy or inappropriate. It is our job to help guide this and to hold the boundaries. I let the children know that “those words hurt feelings,” “we all play together in the Sunflower class,” “we will bring our kind ways,” “Sunflower words.” This is another place where children need boundaries and love. I identify their need, name the emotions and give clear, simple words on how to be kind and appropriate and to do what is right. We find compromises and solutions. Sometimes it is hard. Your child might have to wait or share. But these are crucial lessons to learn for a healthy social environment. This is where our stories are a lifeline. When I see certain behaviors emerge, I tell a pedagogical story or faerie tale with a character engaging in the behavior and the resulting feelings and actions of those around him. The character then goes on to take the path of right action, of nobility, and goodness is restored (and he usually becomes the King.) Again, we should not be alarmed by this experimentation.

We simply need to guide them to the shining path and give LOTS of patient reminders.

This is also a time of emerging sexuality. We always have a few children “fall in love” each spring. We have weddings, princes seeking princesses. One year, I had a boy find a crown at the start of each play time. He would build a house, set a table with a fine feast and then call out “I need a queen!” And he had a queen in mind. Each day, Sarah would accept and be his queen. She would sit at his table and he would serve her. They were precious! We often had to use our phrase, “we will save our kisses for our moms and dads.” Your children were created to be sexual beings. They need guidance on what behavior is appropriate, starting now! Another phrase heard in Kindergartens around the world is “pants up and skirts down in the Kindergarten.” Again, do not be alarmed. Just inform your dear one of the right way of being with a neutral, firm, loving tone.

Children at this age also begin to talk about God and infinity. Our children are fascinated by the concept of “googleplex.” They want to know the highest possible number. What is the MOST!!?? They are so dear. One child said “infinity is 1063!” and another corrected him saying “No! It means it goes on forever!” They have amazing philosophical and theological conversations. Again, the world is opening up to them. Their minds are expanding.

In the classroom, I manage all of these emerging butterflies in a number of ways. Of course I bring my loving firmness. I make deep heart connections with each child and seek to understand her wholeness to the best of my ability. I hold boundaries and give lots of reminders with a neutral, informing tone. I set the example with my own speech and gestures. I tell tales. I model fine manners, joyful work, compassion for all, wonder and creativity. I give the children many opportunities for meaningful work. We use real tools to hammer and saw to build our own toys and useful items for the classroom and the community. We use our hands to help others, to give. I provide physical challenges on our walks and in our circles. We balance, climb, jump rope, play clapping games, run obstacle courses. We have special, important jobs We serve each other. We practice our manners and “Sunflower words.” Sometimes we make healing pictures for each other. We give hugs and apologies. We celebrate everything we possibly can and we give gratitude. You may have heard our “Thank You” song. We use this song to thank each other for gifts and kindnesses. All in all, we seek to have the “right way of the world” affirmed in our beautiful Sunflower classroom. It can be gritty work at times, but all is well. As we say at the end of each circle, “I dance with the flowers, I sing with the sun, my warmth I give to everyone.”

This is a time of great beauty, expansion, growth, confusion, sensitivity and change.

The best way to guide your youngling through this at home, is by meeting him with deep compassion, loving firmness and a strong daily rhythm. Our love and attention will see him through. Let him work, venture out to seek new challenges and be there to enfold him in your arms when he needs it. He will vacillate between going boldly out into the world with a new vision and regressing into clinging and insecurity. He needs to be held between form and freedom, just as he will in adolescence! And know that you are not alone. We are the village. We hold each other and all of our Sunflower children together. They are your nephews and nieces, your family. What a gift we all are to each other.

~This article comes to us from www.magiconions.com~

Warmth

Thu, 21 May 2020 08:16:08 GMT

Warmth

By Vanessa Fountain, Rose Kindergarten Teacher

As a child I remember being knee deep in the creek, wet from the rain, catching tadpoles and frogs. I liked the rain and didn’t mind being wet. I remember being out in the pool, teeth chattering, lips blue, as my three brothers, sister and I tried to make the whirlpool strong enough to sink the armada of floating devices we had amassed. Barefoot up a tree, in a creek or in a fabulous stick cubby in the rain, were my favourite places to be. I guess for Australians these are not unusual memories. We love our Australian “seasons” and our ability to move through them with very little change of attire.

Mum was a bit of a wild one at heart.

She loved the elements as much as we did, so I’m not surprised at having few memories of her protesting to our ill clad adventures. Having raised us on a farm, in the hills and on a tropical island, she was good at adapting to the various malaises that can befall five adventurous children. We didn’t quite grasp the effect these seemingly normal episodes of elemental exposure had upon our developing bodies.

I can’t tell you that because I exposed myself to near hypothermia more times than I can remember, this is why I have this or that ailment.

But what I can tell you is what I have learnt over the years through Anthroposophy on the importance of warmth for the developing child. And, like education, the effects of which will not be fully realised until children have reached their forties. We liken health and education to a marathon (paced, enduring and steady) and not a sprint (flashy, fast and short lived).

I can tell you that habits are hard to break and that the sooner/younger we begin to dress our children appropriately, the more readily they will come to see layered clothing as normal. No longer will we need to hand the mornings accoutrement to our teachers with an apologetic “here, you try”. I remember leaving my 5 year old’s teacher with an armful of clothing, a skimpily clad wriggler and wondering how she got the clothing on all those children when I couldn’t manage one.

Children are developing their bodies, especially in the first seven years.

Anthroposophy tells us that these first seven years are of crucial importance to the healthy development of the organs that will sustain us through our adult life. Energy that is diverted to keeping the body warm is therefore not available for developing the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys and brain for example. It is thought that we are laying the quality of the foundations of a healthy body and that by not dressing appropriately we are giving the body a substandard start in life.

We generally cannot rely upon or ask our children at this age if they are hot or cold.

They have an accelerated metabolic rate and as such are generally unaware of what they are feeling in terms of body temperature. It is only on the verge of hyperthermia that a child will, blue-lipped, tell you he/she is cold. Similarly, a child will keep a jumper on throughout the day even though the temperature has risen since the jumper was put on in the chill of the morning. Sticky and cranky, the child will not realise the discomfort stems from overheating and think to remove the offending item. Children are in the moment and find it hard to be aware of bodily messages. Think of the young child that is so engrossed in his/her play that they find themselves of the verge of wetting their pants or indeed sitting in a puddle of urine.

**Joan Salter, in The Incarnating Child , puts it beautifully when she says...**

“If the ego is to be able to perfect the organs so that they endure in good health throughout life, there must be well-maintained deep body warmth. For… it is the warmth organization wherein the ego work... [In the adult] the ego is fully incarnated and is able to control the body temperature, whereas [In the child] the ego is in a process of incarnation and is not yet fully in charge.”

It is not only the quality of the organ development but also the body’s ability to fight off infections that is compromised. It is no surprise to Kindergarten teachers when the tutu clad, sleeveless fairy of the class repeatedly goes down with colds as he or she dances barefoot across puddles to Kindy every day.

So how do we dress our children? Well, I hate to say it, but we could look to our Northern counterparts who, by necessity have not forgotten the importance of warmth and layering.

Let’s start with the head. A hat is essential.

Be it a sun hat, a scarf or a beanie, depending on the weather. We lose body heat through those areas that are not covered. This is especially true for babies who even in summer should have a covering of some sort on their head. Fine cotton gauze, silk or wool coverings for babies are readily available. Layering is the most flexible method of dressing our children for the changeable weather that we experience here in Perth. A singlet of cotton, silk or wool is ideal. Many of our children come to school with a singlet, a t-shirt, a long sleeved skivvy and then a woollen layer (be it a vest or a jacket).

As the morning progresses we remove layers and then after lunch if the weather has cooled we start redressing the child. Particularly at rest time when the children lie down and frequently sleep, it is important that they have dry socks and are generally warm. Speaking of socks, there are many outlets for good quality socks made of cotton, wool and wool/silk combinations. They are an investment in your child’s future body. How often we see little babies, bare feet poking out of carriers. Again, this sense, the sense of warmth needs to be protected. The baby has been cocooned in the womb and now needs us to cocoon them as they adapt to life in the elements.

**Wilhelm zur Linden, author of When a Child is Born, says...**

“As adults we know how uncomfortable it is to feel cold and how it prevents us from working properly either physically or mentally. A baby feels even more uncomfortable and yet he cannot complain… The soul and spirit need sufficient warmth for their work of moulding and remoulding the body.”

But, your child is now 6, hates wearing clothes and to be honest, you are just not up to the fight on top of everything else first thing in the morning. What do you do? Just like everything else in life – take baby steps. We are not trying to achieve the Waldorf Mum or Dad of the year award here with hand knitted Tibetan Yak undergarments, thrice blessed under a full moon. We want harmony in our homes and children who are warm.

Quality underclothes made of silk or fine wool are an investment.

If paying the school fees is enough of an investment for your family at the moment then a good old fashioned Bonds style singlet will also do the job. The trick is to layer and layer in natural fibres. I love children in old fashioned leather shoes that can be buckled, laced and polished. No longer can we waterproof our shoes in kindy, giving them a good polish when the majority of our shoes are synthetic and Velcro fastened. We learn in our stories of Laura and Mary about looking after our shoes, polishing them, caring for them and then when we outgrow them, passing them onto a new owner. How lovely it would be if this again became our reality.

Teaching our children how to choose their clothing is a gift for life. We strive to assist this by always providing the appropriate clothing in the school bag, be it a raincoat, gumboots, sun hat, sun over-shirt, leather boots or leather sandals. Where possible, our night attire and bedding should be natural and again layered to take into account the changing temperature.

I have to mention here, one of the biggest challenges we face in teaching our children to dress themselves — it is us, the adults.

For many of us, like me, we grew up barefoot and wet whenever possible. We haven’t awoken to our own bodily need to protect, layer and nurture ourselves. We are drawn to teach our children to reconnect with the Earth, to reground, something that is essential to our future as a planet. But there is a place for both. We need to be conscious, in-touch and responsive to the needs of our bodies and actively teach our little ones to protect and nurture these precious vessels we have stewardship over. I do struggle with this, but revisiting the topic has renewed by resolve to provide a model worth imitating. Join me if you’d like and we can support each other in giving the best start to our children by caring for ourselves on a deeper level.

I have touched briefly here upon the sense of warmth as it pertains to the physical body. Steiner, when speaking of warmth, refers to physical warmth, emotional warmth and spiritual warmth.

He linked warmth to the activity of the human ego, also known as the “I”. Here we are referring to the immortal spirit of the individual and not the ego as espoused by Freud. Steiner wrote in The Education of the Child that, “Children who live in an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who have around them truly good examples to imitate, are living in their proper element.”

And on joy, humour and happiness in The Kingdom of Childhood, “If you make a surly face so that a child gets the impression you are a grumpy person; this harms the child for the rest of his life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of person you are.”

Thermoregulation also has a spiritual aspect.

Warmth is used to describe attributes of the soul and spirit. We can feel warm inside when experiencing or remembering something or someone positive and conversely we can feel cold when we are stressed, distressed, or experiencing/remembering negative experiences. The wisdom of our language expresses it well. “A chill ran down my spine”, “my blood ran cold”, “I could feel his coldness”, or “her warmth radiated like the sun”.

As we move into the cooler months, we focus on the sense of physical warmth and how we can nurture and protect the dear souls in our care.

Do your best, one garment at a time and know that we are happy to receive clothing and wrigglers at the door. We, as parents know all too well that feeling of relief as you hand the two seemingly disparate bundles over and pray for a miracle. Know that miracles abound, you just have to believe in what you are doing, do the work and stay the journey.

Blog Post

Becoming - A Lifelong Task

By Vanessa Fountain

The story suggests the need for the child to step into the next developmental stage.

The children recognising the picture are at this point squealing with laughter!

My experience is that sometimes our children are not yet conscious of their experiences or able to verbalise the effects of experiences when they meet them so deeply and developmentally appropriately.

It takes time to adapt, to let go of the need for instant entertainment, and to drop into the dream, the magic and the mystery of the story.

Along with our Steiner Curriculum, our Early Childhood educators work with The Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) Principles.

But I sometimes think that as parents we can forget that becoming is about change.

Becoming requires a safe place and safe holding, clear boundaries and developmental knowledge, where it is understood that we will make mistakes, life will be messy, we will show those around us our humanity, our striving, our gifts and our challenges.

A blueprint for their life, the experiences, the adventures that they would like to have.

Making time to become – my long service leave

But my long service was more about stopping, resting and working on my life work – me.

It took time to slowly put things down. Mentally, emotionally and spiritually.

I listened, holding space for that part of me that needed to be heard.

Rudolf Steiner said that it is not what you know but who you are that is important.

It’s your life, don’t live it for an idea, a someone or something else, be authentically you.

Play then, play now and the future of childhood

By Vanessa Fountain

The gathering sought to celebrate the importance of play and the continuing need for “advocating for play at every level..."

This strategy would ensure that the right to play is supported and owned by all stakeholders across the WA community.

"The conclusion was that play is fundamental."

The Office of Early Childhood will lead the development of a WA Play Strategy, emphasising the importance of play in cognitive, physical, social, emotional, and language development.

The Steiner Early Childhood curriculum does understand the importance of free imaginative play and places it centrally in its pedagogy.

However, the attack on childhood is so pervasive and relentless that there is no space for complacency.

It takes a conscious, willed effort to ensure that childhood is protected.

If enrolling in a Steiner school was all that was required, how easy would it be. One click, and childhood is protected

The call to protect play also spoke of the barriers to playing in the places where our children live and go to school.

We, as a Steiner community, have so much to share with the world and to feel proud of.

How are we supporting our teachers and each other to uphold the agreements we have all made by enrolling at our school, West Coast Steiner School?

Together we can help each other to be the strength, to be the wisdom, to be the love that encircles and protects our precious children and their future.

Morning Circle in Kindergarten

By Julia Noronha

The Morning Circle is designed to establish a rhythm and incorporate repetition.

When children experience the same images, movements, and gestures repeatedly, they gain a deep sense of satisfaction and mastery.

The Morning Circle fosters a sense of community and belonging among the children.

This practice is crucial for the development of self-control, as well as physical awareness, helping children come into their bodies.

Recognising that young children are beings of movement, the Morning Circle is designed to be joyful and engaging.

By watching and imitating the teacher, children naturally follow along without the need to consciously think about the process.

The Morning Circle in Steiner education is thus a holistic and enriching experience, supporting the overall development of the child in a joyful and meaningful way.

Holding the Question - What is "Steiner" enough?

By Vanessa Fountain

So, what is Steiner School?

What is the difference between studying Anthroposophy and teaching in a Steiner School?

How can I support the school?

If you want to study Anthroposophy:

The Journey of the Teacher:

And so, to our quest or question, what is Steiner enough?

How lovely it would be if we could hold with the same reverence and awe that we do the child, the unfolding of the teacher and their calling with their class.

In College, when we see or hear something in the school that invokes a question, you will never hear us say “that’s not Steiner”. Rather, you will hear us say "how can we help?"

At what point was I Steiner enough? At the point where I stepped up to the task.

Oh, but this is a Steiner School and, this or that school is ‘more’ Steiner.

So, what is it to be Steiner?

And when are you Steiner enough? – when you decide to walk the path.

Why Do We Have Circle Time Throughout The Grades?

By Kolea Quincey

The elements of an effective circle hold true for all age groups and the differences lie in the graduated degree of challenge and age appropriate material that one incorporates. I have come to these particulars through decades of teaching.

Let’s look at a circle; first of all, throughout history and in almost every culture in the world, the circle is considered to be a sacred form.

The Elements of an Effective Circle

Article courtesy of Kolea Quincey, Teacher and Faculty Chair Wishing Well School

Life as Change - The Curriculum Journey

By Vanessa Fountain

The Waldorf /Steiner Curriculum brings to the child the content needed in a way that shows a deep understanding of the need to support not only the thinking realm but also the feeling and willing realms.

The curriculum also supports the parents with stories to help understand what the child is experiencing.

It is important to both stories that the fall and the crossing are necessary occurrences in the cycle of growth and change and to the next stage of development.

There is reassurance in recognising that we are just in a part of the cycle of life and that there are strategies to assist our children without robbing them of the experience that will help them to gain resilience, strength, and compassion.

The thing is, we are all like Twig. We have periods of mastery and periods of disequilibrium where we are ready to extend, to expand to develop the concept or idea of who and what we are and are capable of.

The act of removing itself from the cocoon is difficult and dangerous but it is in this struggle to claim the new version of the self that it finds its strength, resilience and interestingly, its longevity.

Our children need to know that we as the adults have faith in their journey and our ability to stay with them through the uncomfortable, tricky (read, “what happened to my child/angel?”) bits.

The Makuru Winter Festival

By Vanessa Fountain

The nature pathway and the spiral are representative of journeying into the centre of the earth, the centre of the heart.

It is the path of the pilgrim and the hero, a path of self-discovery and finding one’s own light, one’s own path.

The invitation is to reconnect, to realign and recommit not to someone else’s path but to the fullest, noblest, most light filled, joyous expression of who you are and the life you’ve come to live.

We teach reverence, awe, and wonder in the school by modelling it.

One of the ways I like to think of this is through the lens of yoga.

Festivals, live performances, concerts, all provide a rich opportunity for our children to practice holding space for each other and for the performers.

It can be stressful when we ask our children to sit quietly and eat their meal with the family. It can seem frustrating to ask our children to stay by our side when all they want to do is run off with their friends in the dark.

Our teachers have all planned beautiful lantern making experiences for the children that reflects their unique stage of development.

Nurturing the Nurturer

Article courtesy of
Kolea Quincey, Teacher and Faculty Chair
Wishing Well School

The very rich network of nerve endings in our
fingertips is connected with neural passages in the brain. If these nerve endings are not activated by the work of the hands, the individual’s all-round development is thwarted.

Learning one thing makes it easier to learn another. If we make patterns, seeing, recognizing and using patterns
becomes easier for us. Confidence in one subject carries over into another.

Intelligence is concerned with making patterns, understanding patterns and opening up new
patterns.

The first light of Advent is the light of stone–
Stones that live in crystals, seashells, and bones.

The second light of Advent is the light of the plants–
Plants that reach up to the sun and in the breezes dance.

The third light of Advent is the light of beasts–
All await the birth, from the greatest and the least.