Download the article: Choosing Fairy Tales for Different Ages

Deciding which fairy tales are appropriate for which age group is a problem which faces every  kindergarten teacher as well as every parent who wants to offer fairy tales to children. Over the years, with the  experience of actually telling the tales to children, one develops a "sense" for this, but in the beginning some  guidelines may be of help.

Among the fairy tales, there are stories of varying degrees of complexity. At the simplest level there is the "Porridge Pot", while a considerably more complicated story is the beautiful French tale of "Perronik", the simpleton in quest of the grail who must overcome seven difficult obstacles. The latter is a tale for the elementary school child, perhaps just as he is leaving the world of fairy tales around age 9, while the former little tale is a delight to three year olds as their first fairy tale. They enjoy hearing of the little pot, so full of abundance, which overflows for lack of the right word. At this age the children themselves have a sense of life's eternal abundance which one child expressed to her mother in this way when her mother said she did not have enough time to take the child out to play: "But Mother, I have lots of time. I’ll give you some."

In almost every fairy tale there is either a problem which must be solved, such as how to get the porridge pot to stop cooking, or a confrontation with evil, which can take many forms, such as the Queen in Snow-White or the various monsters which Perronik encounters. The milder the problem, the more appropriate the tale for younger children and conversely, the greater the evil, the more appropriate the tale is for older children.

Download the article: Choral Recitation

Published in Education as an Art Vol. 31, No. 2 – Spring/Summer 1973
by Christy Barnes

"Why is there so much choral recitation in the Rudolf Steiner School?" parents often ask. "Isn't it rather monotonous? Is it good to sacrifice the individual nuances of a single voice in this way? What do the children gain from it? Isn't it a waste of valuable time in which they should be learning?"

The children should and do, of course, recite individually in the classroom. They all sharpen their tongues on tongue-twisters and fill out their voices and lungs on exercises that have sonorous, rolling vowels. But they need more than this. The ten-year-old boy who still speaks in the high tones of a six-year-old, who does not yet place his heel firmly on the ground and whose thoughts wander off into space, like his voice, needs some individual work. The teacher encourages him to speak with the decisiveness and strength of a king or a general. She tries to get his voice to follow the imperious, downward gesture of command or she may have him stamp his foot as he speaks, for speech tends to follow the line and direction of a physical gesture. She may give him alliterations based on the strong, gutteral sounds G and K to recite. As the boy works in this way over a period of time, you may gradually notice a new firmness and confidence begin to take hold of his whole nature. The girl who has a tendency to stutter needs harmonious, rhythmical verse to speak, for the rhythmical quality of her breathing is impaired. She needs, too, the kind of exercises that will help her to breathe out fully before she gasps too quickly for the next breath. The boy with the strident voice and the all-too-ready fists can be led to speak with a more relaxed fullness, to become sensitive to the modulations of his voice and the subtleties of the consonants spoken exactly and clearly in the foremost part of the mouth. Thus, through individual speech work the teacher becomes aware of the way in which each child is related to his speech organism, and the child's speech may be one avenue, and a very important one, for understanding, diagnosing his difficulties and helping his development. By guiding his speech, she is provided with one means of leading him to become more daring or gentler, less heavy and insensitive or more down-to-earth, as the case may be. She can help him to breathe more deeply and freely and to become more harmonious in himself and in relation to the world.

Download the article: Christmas Plays in South Africa

In Cape Town the Christmas plays have been performed in the Waldorf schools since the 1960's when the first schools were founded. This has become a virtually unbroken tradition, with the Shepherds' Play emerging as the favourite to be performed by the teachers for the children.

Download the article: Class 12 and the Constellations of the Zodiac

Originally published in Child and Man, Vol. 23, No.2, 1989 (UK)

The illustration in figure I * shows the position of the planet Jupiter at its brightest in 1989 (end of December) among the stars of Gemini , the Twins. When pupils now in Class 12 in Waldorf schools entered Class I , Jupiter was almost in the same position, and in the intervening years moved one complete circuit of the zodiac.

When the pupils were in Class 6, Jupiter had moved only half-way round the zodiac and stood among the stars of Saggitarius. Then, they were about to have an introductory lesson in observational astronomy, making them familiar with the zodiacal constellations, among others, and with the basic laws of the turning sky.

In Class 12, when Jupiter has stepped through the entire zodiac and returned to its position at the feet of the Twins, the pupils are ready for another major study of astronomy, apart from any supportive studies of the subject in the years between.

For Class 12, Jupiter and the zodiac parallel the progress of the pupil through the school years. The zodiac itself stands as a complete circle in space and time, imaging the totality which the final-year student is brought, by the Waldorf curriculum, to experience in every subject, and to experience in the sum of all the subjects put together.

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