Developmental Education Research Curriculum Language Arts Developmental Education From the moment of birth, young children are deeply influenced by all they take in from the environment. Their sense organs are completely receptive. All they experience through touch, hearing, sight, taste, smell, their sense of their own movement, the goodness and reliability of the world, and the warmth of soul of others deeply impress their developing bodies and minds. Young children from three to six years old are possessed by an urge to explore and learn about their world in a way that is unsurpassed at any other stage of human life. Every child wants to touch, taste, see, hear and move with everything in the environment. These deep, direct experiences of life and the world are foundational experiences out of which future intelligences - social, emotional and intellectual - are born. For this reason, the quality of the environment of a Waldorf early childhood program is integral to its goals. We create a feeling of warmth and security by using only natural materials such as woods, cotton, silk and wool in the construction of the décor and toys. The colors of the walls and curtains are warm and soft, the seasons are reflected by decorations gathered from nature which are displayed in the room. In this warm environment, teachers place toys that children can use to imitate and transform activities belonging to everyday adult life: simple, homemade dolls, china tea sets, pots and pans, clamps and saws. Moveable stands covered with cloth can become a playhouse, a boat or a train. Some toys suggest a particular use; others do not. Baskets of silk cloths, pinecones and polished stones, blocks and planks invite the touch and the imagination. To walk into these rooms is to enter a children’s garden, where one is safe to breathe, play and imagine. The physical development of the child during his or her first seven years lays the foundation for all the education that follows. Our early childhood program supports healthy development during these critical years by receiving the child each day in reverence, providing meaningful gestures for imitation, and establishing strong rhythms to ground the child. The yearly rhythm is centered on the seasons and the festivals within each of the seasons. Many activities focus on the preparation for each seasonal festival. Weekly and daily rhythms help establish sound habits in the child and a well developed will and desire to learn. Children flower in this environment. They become more respectful of one another, move with greater self-assurance and grace, and are more open in their creative self-expression. This kind of growth, this kind of unfolding of the imagination and creativity through free play, constructive projects, art, drama, music, oral recitation and dance are essential to our human nature. Back to Top of Page Research There is a growing body of research that supports the position of Waldorf schools that children should remain in play-oriented preschool until the age of six. The clearest example is a major study in Germany comparing 100 public school classes for five year olds. Fifty had only play in their program while the other 50 had academics and play together. The children entered first grade when they were six and the study surveyed their progress until they were ten. The first year there was little difference. By the time the children were ten, however, those who had been allowed to play when they were five surpassed their schoolmates in every area measured. The state educators considered these results so conclusive that within months, they had converted all of the academic programs back into play programs. When we start children on their academic subjects too soon, their imaginations do not develop fully. Dryness can enter the intellectual processes and academic learning may become less interesting as time goes on. The German study also revealed the advantages of mixed age kindergartens. The younger children bring their fluidity into play situations; the older ones bring their inner direction, and the two complement one another well. Each age group comes to stories and activities in different ways and each group takes from the experience what they need. Back to Top of Page Curriculum Our curriculum nurtures the preschool child’s natural, magical state of consciousness. For example, the children paint with watercolors weekly, working only with the three primary colors. The youngest children are content to experience pure colors in their most flowing form. The three and four year olds become intrigued with the discovery that additional colors can be created by mixing two colors, and the five and six year olds discover that the fluidity of the colors on the wet paper can be controlled, and that forms and pictures begin to emerge. Fingers learn to translate fantasy into form as the children model with beeswax, sew with a needle and thread, or participate in other activities appropriate to their ages. Baking, kneading dough, rolling and cutting cookies, or cutting fruit for snack, provides opportunities for the awakening intelligence of the child to penetrate into the fingers. Washing and cutting vegetables for soup, baking bread, washing napkins and other home-like tasks develop manual dexterity and hand-eye coordination. These skills are essential for later academic work, yet to the young child, all is play. Play is the direct line of ascent to adult imagination, creativity, and problem solving. The whole basis for creative thinking and imagination evolves from free-form child's play. But that is not all. In order to grow into their bodies, a child must be left free to move. Running, skipping, jumping rope and balancing allow the child to develop the physical coordination and control needed to perform the more complicated and sophisticated movements involved in reading and writing. Current brain research has proven that these kinds of early movement are crucial to later brain function in the adult. Back to Top of Page Language Arts During story time, the children develop listening skills, and as they grow older, observers notice how actively they listen. As five and six year olds, they will often go home and repeat an entire fairy tale they have heard to their families. During circle time, they gladly learn songs and verses coupled with appropriate gestures and movements. Visitors are often amazed that such young children can participate in songs and verses that can be quite lengthy, yet our classes delight in this activity. In addition to listening skills and memory, the ability to focus and to bring about attention has been cultivated. Now the child can begin to form inner pictures of the spoken word, the basis for comprehension and making meaning out of the world. After practicing comprehension out of an oral story, a child becomes ready to make meaning out of symbolic, written language.