Gateways

Download the article: The Lives and Work of Emmi Pikler and Magda Gerber

This article is written from lecture notes prepared for the WECAN conference in Spring Valley in February 2003, and is not a transcript of that talk.

I brought a pot of tiny daffodils to my hostess as a gift, and in selecting them, I chose the pot that was the least developed with only leaves and buds, short and tightly closed, showing forth. I hoped that the daffodils would open after I had left and be a warm and cheerful gift for the days to follow. But the first morning, to my surprise, the first two blossoms had opened, and by that evening, two more were showing their cheerful faces. I commented in surprise to my friend, who replied, "Well, it's quite warm in here, you know. And we all know how warmth enhances the growth of all living things!" As I looked more closely, I was struck by the beauty of each blossom, despite varying phases of openness. One faced me fully open, six golden petals raying out from the trumpet. Another petal bent the slightest bit toward me, while its five companions rayed away. Another blossom was a bit less perfectly symmetrical; three of the petals reached in one direction, while the other three turned away just the tiniest bit.

Download the article: One Week in the Life of Nøkken

The author is a practicum student at Nøkken.
Translated by Jean Paul Bardou

I did my internship in a kindergarten called Nøkken, located in the Northwest area of Copenhagen. It is located right in the middle of the city, and yet it feels as if it is in the countryside.

There are three teachers at Nøkken. Helle Heckmann, who started the kindergarten fifteen years ago, is the daily leader. She takes care of the smallest children in Lille Nøkken (Small Nøkken). Søren is primarily with the middle group, and Rune has the older children, but the middle and older groups are mixed together. Liv is an assistant teacher working part-time. I suspect that Liv hides a magic wand somewhere, simply because she can really do magic. She can turn a sad, gray basement into a convivial dining room with light, warmth, and a delightful, quiet harvest atmosphere. Otherwise, she is with the smaller children. There are three interns, Daniella, a first-year intern, Tove, a third-year intern, and myself. Altogether, there are twenty-seven children at Nøkken with nine in each age group.

Download the article: Purposeful Movement for the Young Child

Author's Note: The following article was inspired by the recent offerings of Susan Weber and Helle Heckman at the 2003 East Coast Waldorf Early Childhood Conference. I am grateful for their wisdom and understanding of the young child, and for their courage to develop unique programs that meet many of the fundamental, needs of today's young children and their families.

Over the last two years I have had the opportunity to closely observe children at both ends of the first seven years of life. Two realizations have become profoundly clear for me. First of all, we need to find our way to supporting the family in the child's first two years of life. Secondly, in order to continue the health that is fostered throughout those first early years, we need to earnestly strive to provide a simplified early childhood experience, based on the intention to support the development of the lower senses.

Download the article: Teaching Young Children Through Work and Play

We have learned so much recently about the importance of play for young children that many families may overlook how meaningful work can also nurture development. Young children flourish when allowed to enter the world of real work that surrounds them, from picking up toys or feeding the cat to grating carrots for salad. In the company of family or other adults, children eagerly engage in work. They want to "help" with the pursuits of adults, and this “work” can be a crucial part of their early learning. If you shield young children from a whole category of activity simply because it is called "work" and not "play," you may be limiting their developmental opportunities. On the other hand, if you invite children to participate in work and play, you give them many more ways to grow and learn. Through work that is meaningful and a real contribution to the family or group, even young children can gain a sense of purpose, and come to feel more a part of the family. With proper adult supervision, there are many types of chores that families can consider for young children that can help them begin learning about responsibility, independence and caring for themselves.

Download the article: Spring Movement Circle

Teachers everywhere experience that children are changing. They are more alert-sometimes even hyper vigilant-and awake in the intellect. At the same time more and more children are surprisingly clumsy and uncoordinated, unaware of their movement and its consequences, easily distracted and unable to focus. We also meet children who are "touchy," both physically and emotionally, who are timid and hold back, not wanting to engage in physical movement or group interaction.

When we look for understanding of these phenomena, both the anthroposophical stream, especially as articulated by Karl Konig, and the mainstream of sensory integration, point to the same fundamental cause. Both recognize that the body is formed, toned, educated, and made "inhabitable" for the soul and spirit through movement, The way human beings have always worked and played in the past has formed and educated the body through healthy movement. Traditional children's games, for example, contain spiritual wisdom in their movements. They guide the body to move in healthy ways, to train, and integrate the senses. The freedom to explore, run, climb, balance-to generally challenge the lower senses-has been a part of daily human experience.

Download the article: A Birth into the Spiritual World Festival

The birthday celebration in the kindergarten is a rare and almost sacred event in the life of the child and his or her parents. Tears of joy well in many parents' eyes during the story as they are reminded of the spiritual journey that has brought their child to earth and into their arms. Each child, still so fresh from the spiritual world, savors the story of the Rainbow Bridge and beams with wisdom and delight. Reviewing the deeds of each year is a recognition of their intentions for this lifetime. Every birthday is a joyous and solemn occasion, which in its simplicity also has profound depth. I always sense their fascination and joy in one another's birthdays. It is as if they are remembering that their classmates have chosen to again be with them on the earth. Truly, the children are filled with the inner knowing of their connection to their spiritual home. This is one festival that adults can no longer experience in the same way as the children who may retain those "intimations of immortality." It is with this understanding and insight, I wish to share the following "festival" that was conceived and born during the Holy Nights.

Download the article: From the WECAN Office

We are pleased to announce the publication of Giving Love-Bringing Joy! by Wilma Ellersiek, translated by Kundry Willwerth. WECAN's publications team, Lydia Roberson and Susan Howard, are working to bring out the first three volumes in the new Gateways series, The Young Child in the World Today, Working with the Angels: The Young Child and the Spiritual World, and The Developing Child: The Child from Birth to Seven. We are also working on The Little Series, study material for the festivals and inner life of the early childhood educator collected by Dr. Helmut von Kuegelgen . Spiritual Insights, Working with the Dead and Michaelmas are the first volumes in the series. We will send out announcements as these publications become available.

We are also working on a web site www.waldorfearlychildhood.org that will feature job listings. If you would like to advertise a position, please send your announcement to the WECAN Office, including a short description of the position, starting date, etc. We also maintain a Calendar of Events on the site. You are welcome to send in events to be posted; there is a limit of five postings per month, so preference will be given to workshops and events intended for a wide audience.

We have copies of updated Sources of Supplies, Directories of Waldorf Early Childhood Programs in North America, and the Early Childhood Bibliography available through our office. Also available is the WECAN Survey report on the Older Child in the Kindergarten by Ruth Ker. Contact us at 845-352-1690 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Download the article: Reflections on the NAEYC Conference

Cynthia Aldinger of the WECAN Board and Rosario Villasana·Ruiz, a WECAN member, attended the 2002 National Association for the Education of the Young Child (NAEYC) conference in New York City as representatives of the Waldorf Early Childhood Association, offering a workshop on early childhood environments.

Attending the annual conference of the largest early childhood organization in the world is an amazing experience. NAEYC always chooses an interesting place to meet, and the conference attracts thousands of participants. Over 30,000 people were registered, but one could tell by the lower attendance at many workshops that people had come mainly to see the Big Apple. This conference had a different feel from the one I had attended in Toronto a few years ago. One positive change is that there were severalvendors who were selling items (both toys and furni· ture) that one would be happy to have in a Waldorf early childhood setting. In the past, this was not the case. It was all plastic toys, strange puppets, videos and tapes. Those materials were still there, but, this year, natural products were more visible.

Download the article: Tribute to a Shining Star

Very early on the morning of February 27, my husband Michael had turned on the television to check the weather, but when the TV. came on, it was on PBS and a Mister Rogers episode was showing. We sat there and watched the last ten minutes of it before changing to the weather channel. Mister Rogers sang, "It's a good feeling to know you're alive," the first refrain of the good-bye song he sang at the end of every show. I said to Michael that Fred Rogers was the only television person I had ever experienced who seemed to transcend the screen-the way he moved, breathed, talked, was sometimes silent. There was a sense of integrity, sincerity, a warmth and love for the children that felt tangible. It was one of those serendipitous moments. Michael and I never turn on the television in the morning, let alone sit and watch Mister Rodgers! Yet, that morning, only hours after he had passed away, there we were watching him not knowing that he had died.

Download the article: Book Review: Only You

Viking Press, 14 pages
Reviewed by Stephen Spitalny

Only You is a very special children's picture book. It is a celebration of everyday life that a parent and child share. It is also a powerful tool for adult education. The proceeds from the sales of this book go to Jumpstart, an early childhood organization. One could say that telling stories is what we do in Waldorf education for the young child. Then why are we reviewing a picture book? There are many reasons.

Only, You is a love poem from a baby bear to his mother. It is a celebration of the unique relationship between parent and child and, in an imaginative way, points to the critical importance of simple activities for the young child. Written warmly with few words and simple, colorful illustrations, this is a book about truly spending quality time together with a child, the essential time that nurtures and shapes the developing human being. This is a book for every school's parent library and should be considered a must-read for teachers and parents alike.

Download the article: Book Review: The Nature of Nurture

NTI Publishing, 168 pages
Reviewed by Stephen Spitalny.

This book is an excellent resource for anyone who works with or is interested in situations of fetal drug or alcohol exposure. It seems that this is a situation that is becoming more and more prevalent, and early childhood educators need understanding and tools to address these complex situations.

Dr. Chasnoff has dedicated much of his professional work to researching cognitive, behavioral and developmental effects of prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine and other drugs. He has developed programs to remediate these effects in preschool settings, and he works with individual families and children. He has previously written four books and numerous articles on this subject. While not an anthroposophist or otherwise connected with Waldorf schools, his work is insightful and helpful. At times, his approach can seem intellectual, yet a glance at the title gives a clue as to his intentions.

Download the article: The Vital Role of Play in Childhood

“The ability to play is one of the principal criteria of mental health.”
Ashley Montagu

Over thirty years of working with children, families, and teachers in Waldorf kindergartens all over the world, I have observed one overwhelming similarity: creative play is a central activity in the lives of healthy young children. It helps children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it. It allows them to digest life and make it their own. It is an outlet for the fullness of their creativity, and it is an absolutely critical part of their childhood. With creative play, children blossom and flourish; without it, they suffer a serious decline.

I am hardly the first to note this fact. The central importance of creative play in children’s healthy development is well supported by decades of research. And yet children’s play, in the creative, open-ended sense in which I use the term, is now seriously endangered.

Download the article: The Physiological Basis of Sleep

(Ed. Note: The complete footnoted version of this article can be ordered from the Waldorf Early Childhood office.)

“A child will flourish if there is a regular rhythm between the will working during the day when it is awake and the will building up the growing organism in sleep. Then the body can become that instrument for which the child was already longing before birth.” (Glas, p. 76) The human body is truly a work in progress, even into old age. We have the capacity to grow, to develop, and to create throughout life, but much depends upon the foundation that is laid in the period from birth to about seven years of age, when the child begins to lose the baby teeth. During this time, the basis of our humanity is formed.

“The development of the physical body between birth and the change of teeth is the basis for the unfolding of the consciousness soul, that member of your soul-being in which the “I” first becomes revealed, between the ages of 35 to 42 years” (McAllen, p. 18). Indeed, throughout life, every human action—impulse transformed into deed, every thought, and word spoken is sounded through and limited by the physical body that is developed in the first seven years of life. The capacity of the child to learn in grade school through the awakened cognitive senses, for example, presupposes the well-developed nerve-sense-brain and the lower-will senses (life, touch, movement, and balance) in early childhood. (Aeppli, p. 64) The early growth years are crucial. And if we look harder at this enormous work of the young human being, we find that the only time that physical growth occurs is during sleep. In addition, sleep is the only time that the body restores and renews its forces from the demands of the day. So, why don’t children sleep all of the time?

Download the article: Going Beyond Self as Image...

A conversation with Michael Mendizza and Keith A. Buzzell, A.B., D.O.

What led to your interest in human development, health and the central role the brain plays in our continued evolution?
In the 1950s, I found the works of Gurdjieff, who had introduced the concept that human beings have not one but three brains. This was 50-60 years before Paul MacLean’s began his work on the “Triune Brain.” Gurdjieff developed a sophisticated view of three brained beings and talked about many of the issues to which Paul has given an neuroanatomical foundation. As a physician, when I came across MacLean’s work it created an explosion of associations between Gurdjieff’s views and modern neuro-physiology.

Download the article: The Magic Lake at the End of the World

I have found this is a wonderful story in the spring for the older girls who may be anxious about the transitions to first grade. It makes a lovely puppet show and play

Once upon a time the king of a great land had one son who brought him great joy, but also sorrow. The prince had been born in ill health and as the years passed, no one could find a cure for him. One night the king prayed, “Oh, Great One, I am getting old and will soon leave my people to join you in the heavens. There is no one to look after them but my son, the prince. Please tell me how he can be cured.” The king waited for an answer and then heard a voice from the fire that burned always by the altar. “When the prince drinks water from the magic lake at the end of the world, he will be well.”

But the king was too old to make the long journey himself, and the prince was too ill, so he proclaimed over his land that who so ever would bring back the water from the lake at the end of the world would be richly rewarded. Many brave men set out to try, but none could find it. In a far valley of that kingdom, lived a poor farmer with his wife, two sons and a daughter. One day the older son said, “Let my brother and I search for the healing water. We shall return before the moon is full to help with the harvest.” The second son also wanted to go but the father feared for them. Then his wife said, “We must help our king and prince.” The father gave his blessing and the sons set out on their journey.

Download the article: Winter Movement Journey

Nancy Blanning is the remedial and therapeutic teacher at the Denver Waldorf School and prior to that taught 17 years in the preschool/kindergarten. She remarks, “Seeing the children in our care change so much over the last fifteen years has been striking. Their nervousness, lack of physical confidence and security, and a weakness in all of the four lower senses finally became a crisis call for me. I needed to change my focus to the therapeutic realm specifically. This movement journey is a gesture towards giving movement enrichment, fun and healthy for all and therapeutic for many, that our modern children need so badly.

In the Gradalis Early Childhood Therapeutic Training we concentrate on bringing to consciousness the many movement opportunities young children need for healthy development. These movement journeys brought in the circle time are an expansion of that. The journey is set up in a large room (our eurythmy room) with the necessary props. Supported by the form and imagination of the story, the children have the chance for unrestricted large movement. The imagination guides the movement in healthy ways. The soul experience of healthy self-movement is joy and freedom. The more open and free the movement can be, the more the soul is nourished as well. The classes come one at a time once a week for a 4–6 week block. These can be adapted to the kindergarten classroom as well. The larger space is ideal but the quality of movement and imagination can be shared in any space.

Download the article: Celebrating Festivals

What festivals do we choose to celebrate with young children in our Waldorf schools, and how do these festivals relate to the surrounding culture? What is our purpose in observing these festivals with young children? Is it possible to retain much–loved traditions, while ensuring that we continue to deepen and re-enliven our festivals? How can we decide whether new approaches or elements are appropriate? What is the role of parents in the school’s festival life? These, and many related questions, are very much alive among Waldorf early childhood educators.

Accompanying the current working theme of the Pedagogical Section Council—the role of Christianity in Waldorf education—members of the Pedagogical Section and other early childhood educators gathered before the East Coast Early Childhood Conference (February 2002) to discuss this topic. In the brief time available to us, we focused our discussion by first exchanging thoughts about the content of verses and graces for young children, and how we as teachers can try to build bridges of understanding with parents concerning the ways in which we nurture the divine spark in each child. We decided to focus next year’s meeting on the celebration of festivals in our multicultural society. It was very hard to restrain ourselves from launching into this rich and many–faceted topic right away!

Download the article: Festivals

Festivals are a celebration of the seasons of the year and connect us to the world around us. They fall in an annual rhythm that can be strengthening to the physical body of the young child. For me, a festival celebrates the coming together of earthly and cosmic forces. Festivals create communities of human beings by celebrating the harmony of earth and cosmos, of matter and spirit. These seasonal celebrations mark the changing of light, the relation of the earth to the sun, and the connection to what is universal in the cycle of the year. Festivals can be the bearers of the spirit within the earthly seasons. They are points where earth–spirit and world/cosmic–spirit meet.

I find certain ideas from Rudolf Steiner helpful in considering how to create a festival in the classroom. These ideas guide my thinking about the greater cosmic forces at work in the four seasons. They form the groundwork for the manifestation of a given festival. Steiner, in Lecture 5 of The Cycle of the Year as a Breathing Process of the Earth, described cosmic tendencies that pull the human being in certain directions at different times of the year. He spoke of the activities that then can help bring the human being into balance. Through this struggle for balance and self–develpment, the human being can receive guidance from the cosmos.

Download the article: Observations of Children Under Three

The benefits of mixed-aged kindergartens are many, especially today with smaller families and frequently unsettled family dynamics. One important benefit spoken of is that young children will have fewer caregivers in the early years, if they have been included at earlier ages in the kindergarten. As younger and younger children come into the kindergartens in our schools today, many questions have arisen. This year, I had the valuable opportunity to experience and learn from the addition (due to school necessity) of several youngest children to my kindergarten class.

The primary questions that I carry now are: What is the long-term health impact for children under three years old, of the "kindergarten" experience? Shouldn't children from birth to age three, have an age-appropriate experience instead, because of their critical life stage? What does "kindergarten readiness" really mean, in this age of inclusion? I feel that we need to earnestly revisit this question, in particular.

Download the article: The Seasonal Festivals in Early Childhood

Seeking the Universally Human

One of the wonderful, and wonderfully challenging, characteristics of Waldorf early childhood education is that there is no curriculum. Unlike the education for older children, there is no specific outline of subjects offered by Rudolf Steiner for these early years. Rather, it is sometimes said that "the curriculum is the teacher." To that I might add two other elements, forming a threefold curriculum: the teacher or caregiver, the developing child, and the social and cultural community, including the parents, surrounding the school or program.

The teacher or caregiver, striving inwardly and outwardly to be worthy of imitation, creates an environment in which each child may feel recognized and held in a mood of dream-consciousness. The child, developing according to lawful, archetypal stages, yet a unique individuality, leads the deeply-observant teacher or caregiver to provide nourishing surroundings and activities. And the school community, offering its particular mix of culture, race, religion, ideals, and questions, all within a specific geographic location, provides a social context within which the teacher and children are active together.

Download the article: A Story for the Evergreen Garden

Author's note: After fifteen years out of the classroom, I stepped back in as a nursery teacher at the Washington Waldorf School in fall of 2009 to help a friend who was recovering from an illness. As Advent approached I knew I needed to approach the winter holidays anew. In the past I had drawn heavily on Advent circles learned from European teachers. Now I needed something that spoke to a 215t-century group of American parents and their children and was meaningful to me, as well.

I thought deeply about the families in my class. Of the thirteen, there were six Jewish families, two Islamic families, one Hindu Sikh family, and the rest I was not sure about. I sought for images that could feed the souls of the children but be accessible to all who walked the spiral of the Evergreen Garden (Washington Waldorf School's name for the traditional Advent Garden).

Download the article: Thoughts on My Visit to North America

First, I would like to thank all the early childhood teachers and the families I stayed with on my two month trip to North America. It was a fantastic experience for me to visit so many different early childhood centers that are as varied as the environment and community where they exist. Children of today have such different needs and that is why it is important that Waldorf education provide a range of choices. Our Waldorf early childhood centers have to meet the needs of the children that come to us. We are not a defined program, but must remain flexible in our options so that the needs of our children are met as our highest priority. This can include early childhood centers connected to grade schools, off-site early childhood centers, and in-home centers.

The loss of the world of childhood is a real danger today, especially with the onset of early academics in kindergartens and even with younger children. Instead of seeing the young children as something quite special in their own right, they are viewed and taught as little adults. Even in our Waldorf early childhood centers, it is common to observe a form of this "teaching" with a focus on the role of the teachers, schedules, and activities. The clearest example is the trend in Waldorf early childhood centers to separate the children into different age groups during the first seven years. The benefits of keeping children aged three to six together have been lost.

Download the article: Getting Over Easy

Challenging Ourselves to Learn New Things

I was in my late forties or early fifties when my eldest son taught me how to fry an egg over-easy. Up until then I had always scrambled. All my attempts at turning an egg had ended in the necessity of scrambling anyway. Recently, while preparing breakfast eggs for my husband and myself, I noticed how, with great ease, I can now turn an egg. In fact, my over-easy eggs are rather lovely! I remarked to my husband that I cannot understand why it was so difficult for me before. Seemingly without thought, I can turn an egg! With his marvelous scientific background, my husband explained to me that over time I have developed an awareness of the right amount of butter in the pan, how to crack the egg with ease, the way the egg looks when it is really ready to turn, how to slip the spatula under the egg without breaking it open, and how just the right motion of my arm and wrist flip the egg gently over – easy!

Together he and I are having a similar, though not quite as easy, experience with our current study of Rudolf Steiner's book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. Decades ago, while studying this book with my fellow students at Emerson College in England, I considered the possibility that I might go stark raving mad before I would ever actually understand this content. Over the years of teaching in adult education, I dreaded the idea of being asked to lead a study or try to teach this content to others. In fact, I am still unprepared to do that. But, guess what—I am actually beginning to understand what Dr. Steiner wrote in this wonderful book.

Download the article: It Takes a Village to Raise a Child

Extended Care in the Waldorf Schools

This is a report from a three-day focus group that met to share and explore extended care programs in Waldorf schools at the 2009 AWSNA conference in Portland, Oregon. The purpose of the focus group was to shape a way of addressing the whole of the school leadership—faculty, College of Teachers, Board—in order to garner full support for the needs of these programs. The group attempted to address an understanding of what is best for children in need of care, while meeting the realties of staff, facilities and costs of providing care programs. Nine people representing six schools and one training institute made up the group. They represented both long-standing schools and younger schools, and included early childhood morning program lead educators, extended day educators and admissions officers. Participants offered a variety of reasons for coming to this focus group: school considering opening an extended day program; programs in a school seemed piecemeal; questions concerning how to design the programs with best pedagogical practices.

Download the article: Reflections on Working with Parents

For decades, pioneers in the field of parent education have been quietly creating exceptional methods of working with parents. Since having my own baby far from home at the age of twenty-three, I have made a life study of parent education. As a new mother in a small workers' community in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert, I was fortunate to find La Leche League leaders who introduced me to the "mother-to-mother support" model. '1his blessing inspired me to learn what I could about parenting the very young child and to bring this knowledge to other parents.

Today, in the parent-child classes that I teach, I draw on my in-depth studies of the diverse disciplines of La Leche League, anthroposophy, Waldorf education, the work of Emmi Pikler in Hungary, and the work of Magda Gerber in Los Angeles. In an attempt to integrate and synthesize the best and most essential ingredients of each of these models, I have come up with a number of approaches that I use in my classes with good results. Here are some of them.