Gateways

Download the article: The Child's Relationship to the Doll

In 1995, Bernadette Raichle began Awhina Day Nursery and Kindergarten in New Zealand, which has been a model and inspiration for many others seeking to provide anthropsophically-based out-of-home care for young children. In her book, Creating a Home for Body, Soul, and Spirit: A New Approach to Childcare (WECAN, 2008) Bernadette explores in loving detail the many aspects of making a true "home away from home" for children. These excerpts from Chapters 12 and 13 give a few of her insights.

There is nothing more sacred than making a doll for a beloved child. The creating, which may be experienced as an "ensouling," begins with the first piece of fleece that is taken to begin rolling the head, organically building up, little by little, each layer of wool. . . a gesture of enfolding, of wrapping, until you have before you a beautiful sphere. For the young child, this sphere, which is later to become the head of the dolly, resonates of cosmic memories.

Download the article: The Kindness Ball

It was August and I was getting ready for the new school year. I was hoping for some inspiration, as I knew one of the children coming into my class had a real reputation in the community for being difficult. A harmonious social mood in my class is a high priority for me. I have come to feel that one of my tasks as a kindergarten teacher is to support learning the social skills needed for resolving differences and being inclusive.

This child was prone to poking, pushing, grabbing, laughing at, and saying mean things to other children (and teachers). I had in place a "watching chair" as a discipline tool in my class. This was in fact any chair, but usually referred to several that were set to the side of the classroom. The rough or rude child would be led there, and with the teacher sitting with him or her, would have a chance to sit and observe ("watch") how the other children were interacting. This has the effect of bringing the child into stillness, which for many children is necessary in order for them to calm and collect themselves. It also serves to give positive feedback to children who are able to be kind and cooperative. I have found this a gentle yet effective way to encourage "listening" on the part of the children.

Download the article: Making Peace with Toddler Conflict

Conflict is inherently distressing for all but the thickest-skinned among us. And, yet, there is a subset of people who seem, in contrast, to be enlivened by conflict. Perhaps humanity can achieve a healthy balance - one that can be learned beginning in early childhood - in which conflict is neither eschewed nor ignited, but is instead met with understanding and finesse. In this article, I hope to shed some light on this age-old challenge and, perhaps, offer some tools that may help us and our children deal more successfully with this inevitable aspect of life.

Download the article: The Sensible Child?

The following article is an excerpt from the introduction to Rudolf Steiner and the Twelve Senses, a collection of extracts from Rudolf Steiner's lectures on the subject of the senses. It was compiled for the 2008 Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship Easter Conference at Ringwood Waldorf School in England. The compilation was revised and re-edited from an original collection based on the work of Elisabeth Grunelius, Cornelia Hahn, and Helmut von Kiigelgen, compiled for 1992 Kolisko Conference with introductory commentaries by Kevin Avison.

In the first epoch, before the change of teeth, we may describe the child as being wholly "sense-organ." You must take this quite literally, wholly sense-organ.
-Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood

Download the article: First Grade Readiness: The Development of Memory and the Transformation of Play

This article is part of the forthcoming WECAN publication First Grade Readiness: Resources, Insights and Tools for Waldorf Educators, edited by Nancy Blanning. This much-requested volume will include perspectives from experienced teachers, doctors, therapeutic educators and others on what to look for in children who are preparing for the transition to the grade school, as well as examples of actual procedures used in serveral different settings. Contributors include Joan Almon, Michaela Glockler, Audrey McAllen, Ruth Ker, and Nancy Blanning. The book is expected to be available by June, 2009.

It is increasingly apparent to those of us working in the educational realm that the age at which a child enters first grade can be very significant in terms of academic and social success throughout the entirety of the educational process and beyond. A child who is too young for first grade, although many first grade readiness signs are already apparent, may spend his or her grade school years working very hard to keep up, never feeling that he or she fits into the social or academic world of his or her classmates. For some, this feeling of having to pedal very fast to stay on a par with others continues into adulthood, where they always have the sense that they don't quite "get it" Others may feel that there is still something unfinished in their growing up years. Early in my teaching career, I had the great good fortune to work with a very experienced and inspiring early childhood teacher. When I asked her, what in her life had led her to teaching kindergarten, she answered in all seriousness, "I went to first grade when I was five"

Download the article: Holding the Adult in a Meditative Light- Deepening our work with Parents in the Parent-Child Class

We are given through the insights of Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy a deep understanding of the young child. An archetypal image of health for the whole human being is continually guiding our work. This archetypal childhood is surrounded and penetrated by the calming strength of rhythm, physical and soul warmth, healthy nutrition, purposeful work, ample time in nature, healthy sleep habits, physical movement and above all love. We know too that the soul life of the mother and father deeply affect this incarnating child. It can be said that the child lives within the soul life of the adults surrounding her, especially the mother.

The mother's soul can be pictured as forming a protective cloak around the baby - a Madonna's cloak, raying out into the environment and affecting the whole atmosphere surrounding the child. It enfolds him in warmth and deeply affects him (Salter 91-92).

This true image of the young child lives within us, but the realities of modern life and our own development as human beings can leave us many obstacles and challenges. These challenges can prevent our ability as parents to offer the ideal to our children.

Download the article: The Role of the Evaluator

There was an old woman lived under a hill And if she's not gone, she lives there still Baked apples she sold and cranberry pies And she's the old woman who never told lies
-Nursery Rhyme

The Role of the Evaluator
A visitor to an early childhood classroom can bring a great deal of delight to the children, especially if the visitor slips in unobtrusively and is as happy to be there as the children are to have a guest. Imagine, on the other hand, how it might be for the children and their teacher to host a frowning, tight-lipped "know-it-all"! While every fairy tale may have need of such a hard-hearted character and the challenge that it represents, we would not choose such an archetype to be our evaluator.

Experience in Waldorf early childhood settings is not the only necessary qualification for an evaluator. There are specific qualities, capacities, and skills that an individual serving as an evaluator will want to cultivate.

Download the article: Emmi-Pikler Haus

A Pikler/Waldorf Residential Home for Young Children in Germarny

Emmi-Pikler-Haus, a residential home for children from birth to six years old, is located in Gersdorf, a rural hamlet of Dahme-Spreewald, Germany, halfway between Dresden and Berlin. The nine children who live here range in age from five weeks to six years old. They are mostly social orphans-children whose parents cannot take care of them because of substance abuse or mental illness in the family. The children may have social-emotional or developmental disturbances, as many come from homes where violence, abuse or neglect is common. Each child's story is unique.

Here at Emmi-Pikler-Haus, the children live in a family-like life community with their caregivers, where they are sheltered and protected and given respectful, loving, and tender attention. Consistency and continuity in their daily life is so important for these children, for whom life before coming to Emmi-Pikler-Haus was a series of disconnected, fragmented, and often painful events.

Here life is rhythmical and predictable-bedtime and naps are at the same time each day; nourishing, wholesome meals are served at the same hour each day; there is time for indoor and outdoor play and time for rest. The regular, focused, and respectful caregiving times provide opportunities for intimacy and the cultivation of a special I-Thou relationship between the child and his caregiver; as the child's trust in the adults who care for him is slowly restored, a healing process can begin.

Download the article: Protecting Childhood: Looking Ahead

I was in South Africa just before Easter, and in the mood of that festival I was filled with thoughts about the cocoon phase of life. It seemed humanity was in one, and that means old forms dissolving away and a time of uncertainty while one waits for the new wings to sprout. A very enthusiastic and active Waldorf teacher kept speaking of the future in such glowing terms that I found myself getting annoyed. Why should that bother me, I wondered. Finally I realized: I was identifying with the time of loss and dissolving in the cocoon; he was identifying with the future when the butterfly would be born. Since then I have tried to stretch myself to include both pictures.

Download the article: Book Review: Parenting With Spirit

Parenting with Spirit; A Waldorf Guide for the Three Phases of Childhood by Cindy Brooks and Joya Birns (Parenting With Spirit Publications, 2008).

Cindy and Joya have put together a wonderful booklet for parents on how to relate to children during the first three phases of life. They offer an easy to understand picture of child development and simple guidance on various aspects of connecting with the children, from communication to discipline to the therapeutic use of story. The last issue of Gateways included two stories from Cindy Brooks that are included in this book.

Download the article: Letter from the Editor

Silence is golden! Yet silence is not something highly valued by the mainstream culture. It is a rare experience in most lives these days. Just listen to the sounds of modern life all around us. We resist the experience of quiet; perhaps we even are afraid of silence. It is a common practice for a family to have their radio or TV on as long as people are home and awake, as background noise. Few people drive without the radio or CD player sounding. And one needs only to look at all the people with their headphones and earpiece cellphones to see that many, many people want to be filled with electronic sounds wherever they go.

As childcare givers and guides for parents we have great opportunities to model being comfortable with silence, actually enjoying silence-we are the example for the children and parents alike. If we want children to grow up with the capacity for their own meditative practice, we have to show them that we both value and practice silence. They imitate us, and our actions are an imprint for their later activity, like a seed. We all know that in kindergarten, in our Steiner-inspired early childhood work, we do not fill the silence with our own speaking. We allow the children to be in the quietude of their inner life as they experience the outer world, or to initiate the talking to which we respond. We don't need to intrude into their world with our speaking except when necessary. We don't chat for the sake of chatter, to fill a void. How do we help the parents to discover the importance of giving the children the gift of silence?-not only for their own sake, and for what the silence gives them, but also for their children and for the future. Can we be agents of renewing the practice and valuing of silence?

Download the article: Reading the Book of Nature

Science Education in the Kindergarten

There will come with the greater love of science greater love to one another. We cannot see how impartially Nature gives of her riches to all without loving all, and helping all.
-Maria Mitchell, nineteenth century astronomer

I have just been out in the woods, standing still and waiting for the birds to come back again after my approach initially disturbed them. The effort of patience relaxes into a satisfied waiting. My eyes are open, I feel the cool, wet air. Then, there it is! The fluttering wings of the chickadee-I cannot see the bird, but I have learned to distinguish that sound. When, how, where did I learn that? Nobody told me and I didn't read about it. I've learned this information over time; it's not just a thinking-knowing but a body-knowing and, as such, I feel I can claim it as my own. When one can experience such a thing, one needs very little else except, perhaps, a hot cup of tea to go home to. When Nature reveals herself to you, it fills you up. Who needs greater entertainment? As a teacher of young children, I wish to offer an education that will foster this ability to "read the Book of Nature." This, as I see it, is the essence of scientific inquiry. How can we teach this kind of "reading" in an appropriate way to the kindergarten children?

In my first years of teaching in a mixed-age kindergarten class I felt anxious about the challenge of making decisions around first grade readiness. Witnessing the grandness of the change that the six-year-olds experience on all levels left me confused as to what criteria I should consider when making decisions about their future placement. The ability to understand what I was observing was not living in me yet, and I relied heavily on my instincts and untrained observations. Many times I simply fell back upon the school's cut-off date for grade school entrance and hoped that the parents would support this.

Then I began to meet more and more mystery children whose development and future placement posed even larger questions to me and also more and more parents who wanted to know what was behind my recommendations. Many times I felt inadequate to meet the important questions of the parents. How I longed for skilled and informed local companions to accompany me in making these decisions!

Download the article: Therapeutic Stories

The following therapeutic stories, while adaptable for an early childhood group setting, were intended for parents who have children between the ages of three and nine. It is still possible to tell therapeutic stories to children age nine or over, but parents need to know their child and what she or he is likely to find inspiring. Once the child turns nine she will more likely see the correlation between a therapeutic story told by an adult and the adult's motivation in telling the story, although not always. True stories, especially from one's own experiences or biographies of historic figures, are usually more useful as therapeutic stories for children age nine and older.

"The Little Seed's Journey" is helpful for building a sense of security, safety and confidence in the young child. Meant especially for children ages three to seven, this story could be used with children up to ages eight or nine. "A Stormy Day in Mother Earth's Garden" is helpful for bringing healing after a day of explosiveness-a child's or yours or both! Parents may find that reading this story at bedtime after a "stormy" day leads to greater calm in the child the next day.

Download the article: Reflections on the Sistine Madonna

The Sistine Madonna is one of the greatest and noblest works of art in human evolution.
-Rudolf Steiner, The Mission of Raphael in the Light of Spiritual Science

Man is the sun, his senses are the planets.
-Novalis

The Sistine Madonna has long been a loving presence in Waldorf kindergartens, acting as a gift to the children that brings them an image of an embracing archetypal heavenly mother and heavenly child. This work of art has profoundly lifted and transformed the souls of those beholding it for over five hundred years, for it reminds us of our true spiritual nature. In our classrooms around the world, it is has been there to give hope, transformation, and a sense of protection to generations of children.

Download the article: Working and Living with So-Called Difficult Children, Part 2

Dr. Karnow's presentations began with the following verse, which Rudolf Steiner gave to Dr. Ita Wegman in December, 1920.

The human being is a bridge
Between the past and future existence.
The present is a moment; moment as bridge.
Spirit grown to soul in matter's husk
Comes from the past.
Soul growing to spirit as seed encased
Journeys toward the future.
Grasp future things through past ones
Hope for evolving things through what has evolved.
So grasp existence in evolving growth;
So grasp what will be in what exists.

Download the article: Supporting the Development of Movement in Children Under Three

Two streams are especially important in early childhood, the one which leads to the development of imagination and thinking, and the other stream which is related to the development of movement and will; the stream of connecting with the past, the pre-birth experiences, and the stream into the future, moving forward into earthly life. In working with movement, especially with older children, there is a wonderful merging of both aspects, imagination and will.

The following considerations relate to the steps that children need to have completed in order to happily and confidently participate in guided movement programs such as the morning circle.

In the process of working with issues of movement, the question of what is needed for a healthy development of movement has condensed for me into one single main aspect: Uprightness.Rudolf Steiner has placed great emphasis on uprightness as the archetypal human gesture, and my own work with children has confirmed this for me.

Download the article: The Stars are Brightest in Your Peripheral Vision, Part 2

Working Towards a Constitutional View of the Epileptic/Hysteric Polarity

When development is closely observed it is always dynamic. What do we mean by dynamic? We mean that it is moving, in process. While modern science loves nouns and labels, facts and numbers, development really happens in verbs. This poses a real challenge, of course, because it is easier and safer to stay with the labels, the descriptors, but that rarely helps us know what we should do. When we can begin to live into the process then we can understand the origin and the healing of a developmental imbalance.

Download the article: Incorporating Movement for the Epileptic/Hysteric Indications

In many ways we already incorporate movements into our circle times that express the indications Steiner gave for these polarities. Whenever we vary tempo, particularly when we accelerate movement and speech to create a little bit of tension, we are giving a therapeutic gesture for the hysteric-inclined child. One could picture that with a particular child for whom this little "shocking" is intended, the child could be next to the teacher. The teacher's calm, firm urging to "hurry up" will support the child in being "shocked" to make the shift in tempo. In general, whenever we alter the tempo, quickening or slowing down, we are offering healing experience for the hysteric constitution. For all children, the shift of pace is fun and offers opportunity to develop restraint and impulsive control of full body movement. Variation in tempo also provides a kind of breathing in the circle activity, the importance of which Steiner describes to us in the first lecture of Study of Man.

Download the article: Letter from the Editor

From the Editor Stephen Spitalny For this issue of Gateways we had the good fortune of receiving more articles than we could include. Thank you to all who have submitted articles, and our apologies to all those whose work we were not able to include this time.

There are two themes that I would like you, the potential writers, to consider as something to offer to our readers in future issues. This issue of Gateways has an excerpt from a book on the older child in the kindergarten, written by Tim Bennett from Seattle. It can be the first in an ongoing series of articles about different rhythms-of-the-day in our early childhood programs. This will give a sense of the various approaches people take, and why they made their particular choices. And it will give the readers new ideas that they might chose to incorporate into their work. So start thinking about why your day is arranged the way it is, and then write up your thoughts and send them to me.

Download the article: Working and Living with So-Called Difficult Children

The following highlights come from three keynote addresses given by Dr. Gerald Karnow at the February 2008 East Coast Waldorf Early Childhood Conference in Spring Valley, NY. Topics from the book, Difficult Children: There is No Such Thing by Henning Köhler, gave the conference its theme. Dr. Karnow is an anthroposophic physician in the Fellowship Community and also school doctor to the Rudolf Steiner School in NYC and Green Meadow Waldorf School.

A second article arising out of the conference, on the topic of coming to understand the child through observation of the threefold organism, is in process. Look for it in a future issue of Gateways.

Download the article: The Stars are Brightest in Your Peripheral Vision

Bringing anthroposophic insights into the classroom is challenging, because we have to find practical methods for bridging Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of spiritual physiology with the realities of daily life in the classroom. How do we find a link between Steiner's descriptions and their manifestations? We know that the curriculum and its content supports and guides the evolving development (spiritual into physical) of the small child, but finding specific tools to meet the challenges of an individual child's behaviors can be daunting. Steiner gives us a foundation for beginning this work through his descriptions of the constitutional polarities, but the names given to the developmental polarities may seem too medical, too antiquated, or too abstract. At times it may feel presumptuous to even speak about a child's "spiritual physiology" unless we ourselves have developed skills of clear clairvoyance. But the beauty and reassuring brilliance of these polarities is that when they are present, they are absolutely consistent and manifest in forms both simple and profound. They can indeed help to explain the most puzzling behaviors. But not if you just concentrate on the behavior alone; then the child may elude explanation. This is because in many ways troubling behaviors are like the stars in the heavens - they are a little bit brighter, actually easier to see, when we gaze not directly at them but at the "constellation" of daily rhythms and patterns that surround them.

Download the article: In the Light of the Heart

In the Light of the Heart
Lisa Gromicko
In the human heart
there lives a part of man
which contains matter
more spiritual than in any other organ;
also a part of man
of which the spiritual life
is made more manifest in matter
than that of any other organ.

Hence in the microcosm that is man
Sun is the heart,
and in his heart is man united
most of all with the deepest fount -
the fount of his true being.
(Steiner, Verses and Meditations, 43)

Take a moment to recall a memory from your childhood. . . . Did you go to kindergarten? What did you do after school? What feelings arise from this period of life?

Download the article: Movement in Early Childhood Education

More than ten years ago I wrote an article on the morning circle for the Star Weavings newsletter. Much has happened since then. We have seen more children with movement disturbances, and we have learned to understand more about hyperactivity and attention deficit. In the area of remedial work, practitioners from different backgrounds have worked with movement programs in order to assist school-aged children with learning difficulties.

In defining the specific task of the early childhood educator in the realm of movement, I would like to start by looking at the spiritual foundation.

Download the article: Movement in Early Childhood Education

The following is an excerpt from the recently published You're Not the Boss of Me! - Understanding the Six/Seven-Year-Old Transformation (see Stephen Spitalny's review on page 37).

As the teacher of the Rosemary Kindergarten in Seattle, I am the captain of my ship, as well as the navigator of its daily journeys into charted and uncharted waters. Inwardly the captain's heart holds two questions: Who are these children? What are their needs? Because of my responsibility for these children from the moment they pass through the gate until the moment when they return into their parents' arms, there are a few important rules I follow when on board this ship: keep things simple, slow down, be present for each family and child, and don't forget to have fun and smile.