Kindergarten (ages 5-6)
Kindergarten is a special time for children (aged 5-6) to thrive with targeted learning that feels like play! At BVWS, kindergarteners learn with an emphasis on movement and sensory-integration. Students are engaged in meaningful experience that inspire life-long love of learning of math, language and science. Kindergarteners form a busy class community where they collaborate well with practical activities indoors and outside in nature.
Foundations of Math, Language Arts, & Science in Kindergarten
We foster academic excellence in the kindergarten programs with a playful approach. Sequencing, sensory integration, eye-hand coordination tracking, appreciating the beauty of language and other basic skills are woven together as foundational skils. Children are learning math and science through practical activities indoors and outside in nature. In this truly natural, loving and creative environment, children are given a range of practical activities and the structure that help them prepare for the next phase of academisc and school life.
Time in Nature in Kindergarten
The morning begins with the teacher’s warm and loving welcome. Next children engage in morning outside play before departing for a walk around the land to awaken their bodies and senses for the day. Here, we lay the foundations of math and science. Teachers and children together explore the natural world around them, especially taking note of seasonal changes. Children try their hand at fort building with found logs and branches, observing the laws of physics that unfold. Kindergarteners particularly love the fairy forest, cottonwoods, and time on the farm!
Literacy Learning in Kindergarten
Speech and language acquisition is a focus of many aspects of the kindergarten day. During daily literacy time, children come together for a fairy tale, multicultural folk, nature story, and puppet show.s The telling and retelling of these universal stories opens a world into which each child may enter and be filled with rich imagination. Children begin to recognize the recurring literary elements that make up a story, such as, setting, character, problem, resolution and ending. The students enjoy and play with rich language, rhyme, alliteration, and word families. Children love “reading” and telling their own stories to classmates during literacy.
Imaginative and Play-based Learning in Kindergarten
The teacher nurtures the children’s power of imagination in a developmentally-appropriate way. In this way, children work with selected stories as well as weaving them into their unstructured free play. This free or fantasy play, in which children act out scenarios of their own creation, helps kindergarteners to experience many aspects of practical life more deeply. Children are experience vigorous and energetic outside play on the kindergarten playground or on a walking field trip somewhere on the 38-acre campus. The teachers understand the importance for the this age to have the opportunity for joyful physical movement.
Circle Activities & Movement in Kindergarten
Students participate in special Circle Activities, which include development of large and small motor skills through integrated movement with poems, plays, songs and games drawn from festivals and seasons each year. Students work with counting, number sense, puzzles and language rhymes and games in these Circle Activities.
Handwork and Creative Projects in Kindergarten
Depending on which day of the week, the children grind grain for the bread they bake for snack, do simple finger knitting, or engage in gardening, composting, mending, or woodworking. They learn to love and care for their things in their “classroom” home. The flow of the day iguided by busy acitvities such as painting with watercolors, sewing, woodworking, forming beeswax into delightful shapes, and preparation for the festivals.
Practical Skills and Purposeful Kindergarten Work
As valued contributing community members, kindergarteners are involved in chores and “daily activities of living”. Practical life skills are much loved by children this age. Kindergarten faculty strive to provide an environment that stimulates and is worthy of a child’s imitation so that each child can be physically active in a meaningful way. Following the morning work and play, the room is always tidied to be ready for another day. Snack time is of great importance as the children work all together to prepare the food, set the table, enjoy the food, and clean up. Children welcome the responsibility and find joy in being helpful.
Boulder Valley Waldorf School 