The morning begins with the teacher’s warm and loving welcome. Vigorous and energetic outside play in the large and rolling play yard is always part of the preschool morning. The teachers understand the importance for the young child to have the opportunity for joyful physical movement and purposeful play as well as the opportunity for their senses to unfold. After unstructured free play outside, the class departs for a walk around the land to awaken their bodies and senses for the day. Teachers and children together observe the natural world around them, cultivating a sense of wonder throughout the seasonal changes.

Upon returning to the classroom, the teacher leads the children into Circle Activities, which include development of large and small motor skills through integrated movement with poems, plays, songs and fingerplays drawn from the festivals and rhythmic elements of the year. From 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, the children reflect and celebrate the seasonal cycle around them. Once a week the children move to poems and songs in Eurythmy class. Eurythmy is an art of movement to speech and tones developed by Rudolf Steiner and is found in Waldorf Schools over the globe. Eurythmy is especially suited to young children and their natural musical nature.

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.

Sequencing, sensory integration, eye-hand coordination tracking, appreciating the beauty of language and other basic skills necessary for the foundation of academic excellence are fostered in the preschool and kindergarten programs. 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 Tale, nature or multicultural story or puppet show. The telling and retelling of the Fairy Tales and other stories opens a world into which each child may enter and be filled with rich imagination. The morning closes with a verse and a warm, loving farewell from the teacher to each child. Through love and warmth, beauty and play, the teacher and children together create a family – a small world of wonder within the larger universe.