Gateways

Articles in this issue include:

Letter from the Editor by Stephen Spitalny
The Role of Handwork: Developing Skills and Meeting the Needs of the Older Child in the Kindergarten by Barbara Klocek
An Archetypal Festival of Compassion and Brotherhood: Celebrating St.Martin's Day by Joyce Gallardo
Salutogenesis by Rainer and Wolfgang Sassmannhausen
The Sistine Madonna: Thoughts and Experiences by Stephen Spitalny
Seven Important Aspects of Mindful Parenting by Chuck Barbieri
The Kindergarten Apron by Annie Porter
Extended Day in the Schools: Sharing Challenges and Raising Questions by Andrea Gambardella
WECAN Regional Representatives/Board Retreat by Nancy Blanning
Two Streams Entwined: The Work of Emmi Pikler and Magda Gerber in Relation to Waldorf Education by Trice Atchison with Susan Weber
Casa Emmi Pikler: A Children's Garden in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador by Joyce Gallardo
Waldorf Education and Teacher Training in Chengdu, China by Elizabeth Swisher
In Honor of Betty Szold Krainis: Early Childhood Building Dedication by Christine Inglis and Michelle Kuzia
Mary Theines Schunemann by Cynthia Aldinger and Rev. Carol Kelly

Articles in this issue include:

Letter from the Editor by Stephen Spitalny
Working and Living with So-Called Difficult Children by Nancy Blanning
The Stars are Brightest in Your Peripheral Vision by Adam Blanning, M.D.
In the Light of the Heart by Lisa Gromicko
Movement in Early Childhood Education by Renate Long-Breipohl
Sailing Our Ship in Calm or Stormy Weather by Tim Bennett
Stories for the Journey by Nancy Mellon
From the Garden to the Table by Susan Perrow
Waldorf Education in Mexico by Louise deForest
In Memoriam: Wilma Ellersiek by Kundry Willwerth
Book Reviews: You're Not the Boss of Me!; Baking Bread with Children; The Apple Pie that Papa Baked

Articles included in this issue include:

Letter from the Editor by Stephen Spitalny
Reading the Book of Nature by Jo Valens
Creating Partnerships with Parents in First Grade Readiness Decisions by Ruth Kerr
Therapeutic Stories by Cindy Brooks
Reflections on the Sistine Madonna by Nancy Jewel Poer
Working and Living with So-Called Difficult Children, Part 2 by Nancy Blanning
Supporting the Development of Movement in Children Under Three by Renate Long-Breipohl
The Stars are Brightest in Your Peripheral Vision, Part 2 by Adam Blanning, M.D.
Incorporating Movement for the Epileptic/Hysteric Indications by Nancy Blanning

Articles in this issue include:

Letter from the Editor by Stephen Spitalny
The Child's Relationship to the Doll by Bernadette Raichle
The Kindness Ball by Barbara Klocek
Making Peace with Toddler Conflict by Trice Atchinson
The Sensible Child? by Kevin Avison
First Grade Readiness: The Development of Memory and the Transformation of Play by Louise de Forest
Working Together by Maggie Reilly
Holding the Adult in a Meditative Light- Deepening our work with Parents in the Parent-Child Class by Magdalena Toran
The Role of the Evaluator by Holly Koteen Soule
Emmi-Pikler Haus by Joyce Gallardo
Book Review: Parenting With Spirit by Reviewed by Stephen Spitalny

Articles in this issue include:

Letter from the Editor by Stephen Spitalny
Developing the Eyes to See by Nancy Blanning
A Contemplative and Reflective Format for Early Childhood Study by Laurie Clark
Child Observation by Angela Michel
Self-Review for the Teacher by Sally Schweitzer
The Importance of Singing by Karen Lonsky
Plant Dyeing in the Kindergarten by Linda Grant
Saint Martin by Michael Martin
Emmi Pickler Haus, Part 2 by Joyce Gallardo
Teacher Training in Mexico by Louise deForest
Pictures from Norway by Louise deForest
Book Review: Saint Martin Reviewed by Nancy Blanning

Spring/Summer 2010, # 58

Articles in this issue include:

Letter from the Editors by Stephen Spitalny
Deepening Our Capacity to Meet Children in Our Care by Nancy Blanning
Observations of Children Under Three in Kindergarten by Lisa Gromicko
The Seasonal Festivals in Early Childhood by Nancy Foster
A Story for the Evergreen Garden by Joan Almon
Thoughts on my Visit to North America by Helle Heckman
Getting Over Easy by Cynthia Aldinger
It Takes a Village to Raise a Child by Andrea Gambardella
Reflections on Working with Parents by Kimberly Lewis
Wawa Munakuy Nursery Kindergarten by JoAnne Dennee and Joyce Gallardo
Clean-up Time: Chaos or Co-Operation? by Barbara Klocek
The Importance of Touch by Laurie Clark
Book Review: Awakening to Child Health reviewed by Stephen Spitalny

Fall/Winter 2010, Issue #59

Articles in this issue include:

Letters From the Editors by Nancy Blanning and Stephen Spitalny
The Senses as Doorway of Relating by Stephen Spitalny
Math and Science in the Kindergarten by Lisa Gromicko
The Dignity of the Small Child by Kimberly Lewis
Educating the Movement Body and A Drum: Movement Journey by Nancy Blanning
Childhood as an Impulse for Integrated Human Development by Louise de Forest
The Lakota Waldorf School by Patrice Maynard and Laurie Clark
Transitions: Ronna McEldowney by Janis Williams
Book Review: Supporting Self-Directed Play in Steiner/Waldorf Early Childhood Education
Reviewed by Susan Weber

Book Reviews:

Connecting with Young Children by Stephen Spitalny
Reviewed by Nancy Blanning

During his tenure as Gateways editor, Steve Spitalny distinguished himself as a seeker of truth. He stimulated the journal’s readers to ask deep questions about how we interact with young children to truly educate the developing human being. He always looked deeply at Rudolf Steiner’s indications to distill what is truthfully essential, sorting out “Waldorfisms” and practices and opinions that may have started truthfully but become sentimentalized.

In his newly published book, Connecting with Young Children: Educating the Will, Steve shares the fruits of his own quest for these essentials through his many years’ experience as Waldorf mixed-age kindergarten teacher, parent and grandparent, researcher, thinker, and student of Anthroposophy. The opening chapters give a broad view of the nature of the child from birth to seven as he or she journeys toward human being-hood with help of the four foundational senses—touch, life, self-movement, and balance . Long-time students of child development will likely read this section with head-nodding assent to the accuracy of a familiar picture. For someone new to these ideas, these pages give a panoramic view upon which to ground the more specific and concrete chapters which follow—“Imitation, Life Activities and the Role of the Adult as Example and Guide” and “Language and Communicating.” These chapters particularly are recommended for everyone’s reading. There are philosophical and practical treasures on these pages.

The Tear: A Children's Story of Transformation and Hope When a Loved One Dies by Nancy Jewel Poer
Reviewed by Laurie Clark

Nancy Jewel Poer offers a rare gift to children and adults in this stunning picture book. Often we are at a loss in helping a child come to terms with the death of a loved one. This book provides a true spiritual picture of death that can guide a child towards a profound understanding that is developmentally digestible. The sadness that comes with such an event is not overlooked in this story but finds transformation through images that bring hope and a continuing trust in life.

Unborness by Peter Selg
Reviewed by Susan Weber

Peter Selg’s Unbornness is a seed-like gift to all of us as early childhood teachers. It is as if he has responded to Rudolf Steiner’s admonition in the first lecture of Study of Man (Foundations of Human Experience) in which he offers that “We must become more and more conscious of the other end of man’s development on earth, namely birth” (p. 17).

Selg has deeply devoted himself to elucidating Steiner’s insights regarding this crucial aspect of the human journey, and he brings it to us with artistic reverence. In truth, this little book is a meditation. The broadest picture of the human being, brought together with the clarity of the description of the most minute spiritual processes, enable each of us a path of study to understand what stands before us in the individual child in our care.

Spring/Summer 2011 #60

Articles in this issue include:

Letter From the Editor by Nancy Blanning
Moving with Soul by Renate Long-Breipohl
Pikler, Point and Periphery by Jane Swain
Carving a Manger in the Heart by Laurie Clark
Children Under Three: Some Thoughts About the Song Circle and Storytelling by Christine Christiansen
Working with Parents to Reduce Children's Media Exposure by Lauren Hickman
The I and the Body: World Conference 2012 by Brigitte Goldmann
Waldorf Education in Hungary by Louise de Forest
Helping our Brothers and Sisters Around the World
The Blacksmith: A Michaelmas Circle by Sol Velazquez
Jack and Jill by Franca Bombieri
At Home I Have a Little Bed by Sarina Cirianni-Jones
The Peter Stories by Estelle Bryer

Download the article: A Visit to Costa Rica

In March 2011, we traveled to Costa Rica, Central America, where we visited five Waldorf early childhood initiatives throughout the country. We experienced this beautiful, army-less country’s unique character and vision reflected in its peace-loving, conservation-minded people. Everywhere we visited, we were received with hospitality and heart warmth by our Costa Rican colleagues, for which we are most grateful. Here we will describe our visit to the Sea Heart School, which initiated our visit. A longer version of this article with further details and descriptions of our visits to the other four initiatives can be requested from the WECAN office.

Download the article: Hustle Hoosh!

The following is an excerpt from the book Dancing Hand—Trotting Pony, recently published by WECAN. The first half of the book is devoted to games for hands, fists, and fingers, which bring dexterity and flexibility into this most important realm for the development of language and thinking in later years. Renate Long-Breipohl points out the manifold benefits of such games in her article in this issue.

The second half of the book portrays many different animals in a series of verses, songs, and gesture games, some for hands only, some for the whole body. One of these is reprinted in full below. Ellersiek’s approach to the animal world has a very rare and special quality. As Ingrid Weidenfeld points out in her introduction to this section, “the animals are shown through play, acting in their natural way. They never begin to speak; never move in ways they would not be able to move; never are they portrayed as quasi-human.” Thus, she says, “the children learn and experience, through imitation, something characteristic about the animal portrayed through play.” They experience the true, living essence of the animal, rather than an intellectual description or emotional interpretation.

Through Lyn and Kundry Willwerth’s devoted work of translation and editing, these games have now been made available in English. WECAN is very pleased to present them in the hope that they will inspire many joyful hours of play and fun, while bringing forces of life and health to the children.

To continue download the full article, link above.

Download the article: Honoring Diversity: Images from Islam

It can often be a challenge to bring elements to the classroom which truly reflect and acknowledge the children in meaningful ways, especially if they come from diverse cultures. In the 2006-07 school year as the Advent season was approaching, I was preparing a circle by Nancy Blanning called “Searching for the Light”* in which the circle journeys, looking for light, and finds it in the realms of many cultures. It is a wonderful circle and easily adaptable to the children before you. Though several cultures are included in the journey, there was not a visit to the Islamic realm.

Download the article: A Toddler Group within a Kindergarten

The following is an excerpt from the book Trust and Wonder: A Waldorf Approach to Caring for Infants and Toddlers, newly translated from the Norwegian and published by WECAN in 2011.

Here is an example of a day in the kindergarten [with toddlers], one way of doing it. The model is the toddler group in our kindergarten in Norway, with ten children ages one to three.
7:30    The children arrive and play freely
8:00    Breakfast
8:30    Free play
10:15  We wash our hands, and have singing and movement in a “ring”
10:30    Lunch
11:00-2:00 Care (changing diapers, preparing for sleep), followed by nap on waking
Small fruit meal and drink when children wake up, followed by care
1:30-3:00 Free play, outside or inside, depending on season and weather. Some children go home between 2:00 and 3:00.
2:30    Meal for afternoon children
3:30    Free play, or a quiet time
4:15    Kindergarten closes

To provide one example from our kindergarten, we will follow two-year-old Pia during a regular day. Pia is the second of three siblings. An older sister is in another section of the kindergarten and the youngest brother is still at home.

Download the article: The Cottage Garden Home Nursery Program

We are a licensed large family day care in Amherst, MA. We feel honored in having this opportunity to share a picture of our program with our Waldorf early childhood colleagues. While we both are individual WECAN members, we are currently pursuing full membership in WECAN as a home program. This process has become very important to us. We want to be able to tell the world what we stand for and be able to use “Waldorf” in our advertising. We speak—in our conversations with applicants and parents and in our current advertising—of having our personal educational philosophies rooted in anthroposophy, but we feel that membership would grant us a different level of standing in our community.

Download the article: Movement - A Path Toward Freedom

From the 2011 East Coast WECAN Conference ♦ Nancy Blanning

We begin with a vast question. What is the intention of the soul coming into a human life, of incarnating? Rudolf Steiner describes that the soul in the spiritual world reaches a point where it can no longer develop. The individuality must return to human experience in order to keep evolving, to purify, refine, and distill the essence of his being and give this expression through physical, earthly life. Rudolf Steiner states in Study of Man (The Foundations of Human Experience):

...Man evolves through a long period between death and a new birth and that then, within this evolution, he reaches a point where he dies, as it were, for the spiritual world—where conditions of his life in the spiritual world oblige him to pass over into another form of existence. He receives this other form of existence in that he lets himself be clothed with the physical and etheric body. What he has to receive by being clothed with the physical and etheric body he could not receive if he were simply to go on evolving in a straight line in the spiritual world (p. 17).

Download the article: Eurythmy with Young Children

This excerpt is from an undated, out-of-print booklet called “Ideas and Encouragement for Teaching Eurythmy,” translated by Pauline Wehrle. We are grateful to Estelle Bryer for bringing it to our attention and to the Rudolf Steiner Library in Ghent, NY for finding a copy and making it available for borrowing.

Eurythmy with the little children under the age of seven began because Dr. Steiner told us “If one does eurythmy with little children under seven they acquire an ego force that neither school nor karma can give them.” The day after he said this I began with a few little ones. The only indication for the build up of the lesson for this age was: One should do “primitive eurythmy.”

Download the article: Moving with Soul, Part 2

This article is an extended version of a lecture given at the National Early Childhood Conference at Ringwood Waldorf School in England on October 17, 2009. Part One of the article was published in the previous issue of Gateways.

One of Wilma Ellersiek’s gesture games, which are mentioned in this article, is included in this issue starting on page 22.

Self-directed movement for the child under three
The development of movement, speech, and thinking in the first three years of life is guided and protected by spiritual beings. Yet there is a role for the human being as a model as well. Without experiencing upright human beings the child will not learn to be upright; without the unconscious will to be upright and walk, the model would be of no avail. Both have to come together. In the early years the child seems to be guided “from inside” and seems to intuitively “know” what he needs to do: an endless practice of the most varied movement combinations. Rudolf Steiner advises us to leave the child undisturbed and “uninstructed” at this early stage of development. The child educates himself. (See Soul Economy and Waldorf Education, Lecture 7, and The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity, Lecture 1.) The undisturbed exploration of movement “from the inside out” is the precondition for the development of a sense of freedom in the human being.

Download the article: Letter From the Editor

When we began work on this issue of Gateways in the glory of midsummer, I never gave a thought to the approaching tenth anniversary of September 11.1 have an admittedly poor memory for dates or how long ago something happened, focusing rather on the needs and callings of the present moment. We were collecting and inviting articles to continue our commitment to picture the diversity and richness of our Waldorf work with young children in North America and worldwide. I was following that plan and intention in selecting content for this issue.

From the Editor

When I look at our kindergartens, I wonder sometimes whether the children are losing interest in us adults because we actually are not very interesting. The regular domestic activities—washing our small, cloth napkins; wiping the cubbies clean with a wet, soapy cloth—are good examples of caring for our environment, but small in scope and do not take much real effort of body and strength. Cooking is more engaging. Peeling and chopping vegetables for our weekly soup calls for more skill and intention in cutting with a knife, and stirring our bread dough takes determination when the batter gets stiff and courage is called forth to let hands get sticky with kneading. The delicious loaf at the end confirms that we have really done something. With cooking we can experience process more easily and see the result of our efforts. But still these alone do not seem to quell a restlessness the children display. If this question about the children’s interest in us has any validity, what can we do to extend a stronger invitation the children to come, out of their own will, toward what we do?

Download the article: "A Kitchen, Not a Parlor"

Many years ago in England, the summer before I began teaching my first kindergarten class, I had the good fortune to attend a seminar in Wynstones given by Margret Meyerkort. Although at the time I didn’t understand the full breadth and depth of all that she offered, her words resonated within me and I knew instinctively that I was on my intended path. Her enduring comment, “The kindergarten is above all a kitchen and not a parlor,” informed my study and practices over the subsequent years. It implied rhythmical activity, purposeful work, and warmth.

As I grew into my work I grappled with these principles and found that the more we, as adults, worked at our daily life-sustaining and nurturing needs, the more the children would play. Almost on a daily basis our large kitchen table was moved more fully into the room, always in full view of the entering children. One of us would be working, and more often than not, if our daily work was purposeful and earnest, some of the children would engage in their own work—which is play. All children were welcome to join us at our work; there was always room for more. We never asked if they wished to join us. It was a legitimate and perhaps an unconscious inner choice for each child to make for him- or herself. We hoped that our activity would inspire play or the golden words, “Can I help?”

Download the article: Practical Activities with the Young Child
This article was adapted from Steve’s book, Connecting with Young Children.

The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adjust the work taken from daily life so that it becomes suitable for the children’s play activities. The whole point... is to give young children the opportunity to imitate life in a simple and wholesome way. —Rudolf Steiner, April 1923

Imitation is the natural learning mode for the young child. Rudolf Steiner described it as a sort of bodily religion arising from a sense of joy and wonder with all experiences and sensations, the young child, so recently arrived into a physical body from the spiritual world, loves all he meets in the world, the adult, whether caregiver, kindergarten teacher, or parent, has therefore a huge responsibility since the child is molding himself out of his experiences, out of what and who is imitated, therefore it is incumbent on the adults to create an environment of objects, people and activities that we would be happy to have taken up in imitation by the child. An environment that nurtures the child includes crucial elements that create form and order in the developing child: rhythm in daily life activities, safe and healthy boundaries, and adults’ consistency in maintaining the boundaries and rhythm.

Young children naturally are most active in the doing, the willing realm of soul life, they are drawn to adults’ work activity, especially when the adult is truly engaged in meaningful working. I experience that when a chair breaks, or we are making lunch—meaningful work that needs to be done—then the older children in kindergarten are attracted to participating and helping, while the younger ones exactly imitate the activities in their play. Young children are drawn to the activities of real workers and craftspeople like the blacksmith, the carpenter, spinner, plumber, and so on. The experiencing of these activities is a bodybuilding experience for the child, as well as an example of focused adult will for the child’s will forces. A young child who experiences, and even does, various different types of real work is given a blessing of many images to incorporate into his or her development.

Download the article: Kindergarten on the Farm and in the Garden

Recently I came across the word biophilia. Meaning “a love of life and the living world; the affinity of human beings for other life forms,” it is a beautiful wish for good fairies to bestow upon children, and for early childhood teachers to help those wishes come true. Green Meadow Waldorf School’s “farm kindergarten,” located at the Fellowship Community (an inter-generational community centered around the care of the elderly), and surrounded by forest, field, stream, pond and farm, is nestled in an idyllic place for inviting the incarnating human being into earthly life through cultivating rich, reality-based experiences of the seasons, and nurturing a love of nature.

In the autumn, our main outdoor activity is harvesting on the farm. Our small-but-mighty crew helps the Fellowship farmers bring in crops to store in the root cellar, put up for winter, and sell at their shop, The Hand and Hoe. The farmers often generously gift us vegetables for celebrating the harvest at our snack time. Our favorite crops for harvesting are large, child-friendly potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and shiny peppers, the children enter the fields not knowing the task at hand, allowing the discovery to unfold with delight in the moment. Some children stay engaged with gusto in the treasure-hunt of harvest, while others have their interest captivated and carried away by earthworms, weed-flowers, and other ways to enter into the outdoor environment through their own inner activity.

Download the article: From our Gentlemen Colleagues

In anticipation of this issue, a request was sent out to some male kindergarten colleagues to describe activities they are bringing into their classes. Below are some “bits and pieces” that have come in response. They give a surprising and delightful glimpse into the range of what the “gents” are doing.

Lincoln Kinnicutt Kindergarten teacher
Potomac Crescent Waldorf School, Alexandria, VA
We had been doing Nancy Foster’s woodcutter circle, which I modified so  the woodcutter was using a two-person saw. This change was made in part because in the past when we had gestured using an axe, the children (boys) would quickly start chopping each other. We also have a large bow saw, which we use for cutting wood outside, and I wanted to use that familiar image. In circle the children would pair up and hold hands, sitting down with their feet together, and go back and forth “cutting.” When we started cutting wood outside, I realized that the sawhorse I had made was too small. So instead of standing to cut, we would have to sit just like in the circle, using the bow saw as a two-person saw.

Download the article: Working with Wood

The Carpenter pounds with one hammer, one hammer, one hammer
The Carpenter pounds with one hammer and then she pounds with two.
The Carpenter pounds with two hammers, two hammers, two hammers
The Carpenter pounds with two hammers and then she pounds with three...
—A traditional circle activity

Woodworking connects one with nature, and it is a magical process to use one’s hands and imagination to create something from what appears to be just a piece of wood. It is very exciting and empowering for adults as well as children. I feel it is important to share what we love, and I love wood: the beauty and function of trees, finding pieces of wood, feeling wood, seeing the different patterns and grains, repairing wooden toys, and more.

As early childhood educators, we are so good at doing practical work inside in order for the children to inwardly and outwardly imitate. But sometimes when we are outside, it is a little more difficult. Thus, I always have something in my pocket that needs sanding. In the beginning of the school year, there is always something to refurbish, such as the wooden plates, cups, play clips, and more. Since children learn from imitation, many often want to sand, as well, so they share in the work and develop a strong desire to transform something.

Download the article: A Rolling Pin's Journey Home

The daily joy of purposeful work in our early childhood classrooms is revealed in the eager bright eyes of our children as they enthusiastically engage in “real work.” It is most satisfying for child and teacher to work together, keeping rooms neat and clean, repairing broken toys and classroom items, preparing shared meals, setting and cleaning tables. We create our own world, our own “gardens” and “kingdoms.” Together we take responsibility and feel deep satisfaction and pride for work well done.

How can we make our work together ever more enriching, so that it envelops and nourishes our children beyond the classroom? This question becomes even more paramount in an urban environment where life for all can easily become disconnected. I would like to share a simple woodwork project that naturally flourished, weaving its way lovingly from the classroom into the home, enriching both.