Preschool (ages 3-5)
Preschool is engaging, joyful, and developmentally appropriate with an emphasis on movement and sensory-integration. Through love and warmth, beauty and play, the teacher and children together create a family – a small wonder within the larger universe.
preschool options for 3-5 year olds (Children are ready for this preschool program when they are close to their 3rd birthdate and potty-trained)
2-day, 3-day, 4-day or 5-day mornings-only or full-day (8:15-3:15pm)
Extended care until 5:30pm
Waldorf Early Childhood education surrounds children with a “mantle of warmth,” incorporating rhythm, truth, beauty and harmony in the child’s environment in ways that support the child’s healthy development. We believe that young children should be afforded a nurturing environment that protects and shelters childhood, allowing children to grow at their own pace. Recognizing the developmental needs of the young child, our early childhood curriculum also focuses on the environment. In preschool we provide a physical space that is beautiful and engaging yet not over-stimulating. While also providing a social environment that contains adults and adult activities worthy of imitation.
Upon entering a Waldorf Early Childhood classroom for the first time, many parents experience a sudden sigh of relief, a deep sense of relaxation and security, and a feeling that “oh yes, this is childhood as it should be.”
Imagination & Play in Preschool
The teacher nurtures the children’s power of imagination in a developmentally appropriate way. She does so by telling carefully selected stories and by encouraging free play. Free or fantasy play, in which children act out scenarios of their own creation, helps them to experience many aspects of life more deeply. Clearly, creative play is taken very seriously in a Waldorf preschool class. It is a time when the child’s imagination can flourish and when social activity, initiated by the children, can take place.
So the materials for the creative play are varied and beautiful: silks, large cloths, stones, pine cones, shells, logs, capes, and crowns. These materials are unformed and non-specific and offer the children an unlimited, unrestricted canvas for play and practical work. One day the children may set sail on a ship, the next day the same toys may become a castle or a restaurant. In their simplicity, the materials serve the free flow of a child’s mind so that the child’s imaginative qualities flourish and create a strong foundation for creative thinking in later life.
Time in Nature in Preschool
The morning begins with the teacher’s warm and loving welcome where vigorous and energetic outside play in the large and rolling play yard is always part of the preschool morning. Obvioulsy, the importance for the young child to have the opportunity for joyful physical movement and purposeful play. After unstructured free play outside, the class departs for a walk around the land to awaken their bodies and senses for the day. With careful attention to physical sensory approach, teachers and children together experience the natural world around them, cultivating a sense of wonder throughout the seasonal changes.
Foundations of Math, Science, and Language Arts in Preschool
Sequencing, sensory integration, eye-hand coordination tracking, appreciating the beauty of language and other basic skills are necessary. In Preschool the foundation of academic excellence are fostered. In this truly natural, loving and creative environment, the children are given a range of activities and the structure that help them prepare for the next phase of school life.
Each day, the children come together for a fairy take, nature or multicultural story or puppet show. The telling and retelling of these folk stories opens a world into which each child may enter and be filled with rich imagination. Then the morning closes with a verse and a warm, loving transition activity. Through love and warmth, beauty and play, the teacher and children together create a family. Truly, a small world of wonder within the larger universe!
Circle Activities in Preschool
Upon returning to the classroom, the teacher leads the preschoolers into Circle Activities. Usually including development of large and small motor skills integrating movement with poems, plays, songs and fingerplays. Themes are drawn from the festivals and rhythmic elements of the year. Examples include the abundant autumn harvest to winter’s darkness and anticipation of the light through spring’s bright new birth of green and summer’s ripening fruits. So the children reflect and celebrate the seasonal cycle around them.
Modeling Adults in Purposeful Preschool Work
Many of the preschool activities are extensions of home life. Depending on which day of the week, the children may grind grain for the bread they bake for snack, do simple finger knitting, or engage in gardening, mending, or housekeeping. They learn to love and care for their things in their “classroom” home. Painting with watercolors, sewing, woodworking, forming beeswax into delightful shapes, and preparation for the festivals are just a few items that guide the flow of the day. We strive to provide an environment that stimulates and is worthy of a child’s imitation in which 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. The mixed-age preschool/kindergarten classrooms all provide an organic whole grain snack every day. Snack time is of great importance in the preschool classes as the children have participated in the preparation of the food by helping to chop the vegetables for Vegetable Soup Day, by rolling the oats for Oat Day, grinding the wheat for the bread, and even churning the butter or grating or grinding cinnamon or sesame.
Boulder Valley Waldorf School 