Early Childhood Curriculum Overview
	Early Childhood The Parent/Child program supports the wonders and exploration of the first years of life in a warm, nurturing and lively atmosphere. Together we explore the joys and challenges of raising and caring for a young child. Participants meet once a week – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday morning – in quarterly sessions. This is an opportunity for young children and their parents or guardians to experience the rhythms of a Waldorf Early Childhood morning. In the inviting environment of a Waldorf classroom, parents engage in home-like activities or make simple crafts while their children help them or play nearby. Circle and story time reflect the world of nature and seasonal festivals. Parents have an opportunity to share parenting skills and concerns in discussion with an experienced Early Childhood teacher. Nursery The Nursery provides young children with the same loving, homelike environment as the Preschool/Kindergarten. Children enjoy snack, songs, stories, and puppet plays, and lots of indoor and outdoor play. The Nursery program is a gentle introduction to school and is a transition in the Preschool/Kindergarten when the child’s age is appropriate. The Nursery program is designed for 2 1/2 – 3 1/2-year-olds, and is taught by a Waldorf trained teacher and assistant. Children in diapers are welcome. Parents are required to help in the classroom once each month. The Nursery program offers three or five days a week enrollment from 8:00 - noon with an option till 2:45 p.m. Preschool/Kindergarten In the Preschool/Kindergarten the young child is an open and impressionable being whose vulnerability requires a loving, safe, and nurturing environment. The Waldorf Preschool/Kindergarten is just such a haven, a place where children grow and flourish, protected from the complex, often chaotic, forces of the hectic world. Here, the early childhood years are seen as a time of joy and exuberance, when the children's social, emotional, creative, and physical beings are developed through cheerful activity and positive example. This is the time to strengthen in our children those qualities of imagination, curiosity, and love and respect for all life that will sustain them throughout their lives. In the Preschool/Kindergarten, each class is a blend of children from three to six years old, whose varying ages and personalities create brotherly and sisterly relationships among them. In the classroom, as in a home, the children work alongside the teacher in the many activities of preparing for festivals, cooking and baking bread, working in the garden, preparing snack, cleaning up, and playing with and caring for one another. Creative activities are always a part of the weekly rhythm and introduce the children to a variety of artistic and imaginative experiences. These include watercolor painting, making toys, drawing, modeling with beeswax, stitchery, singing, music, and creative movement. Other craft activities center on special holidays and celebrations. All these activities help develop in the children capacities such as focus, concentration, intellectual flexibility, hand-eye coordination, and small-muscle skills that are essential to their later academic work. The ample opportunities for free play, both indoors and out, each day are balanced by more structured group activities. In circle time, songs, finger plays, verses, and imaginative games are learned and enjoyed. Stories memorized and told by the teacher enable the children to be inwardly active as they create their own pictures in response. Play is essential to the child's healthy development. Creative play is the way in which the child gets to know the world; it is the "work" of early childhood. Through play, the child strengthens the capacities needed for the future - physical, social, moral, and intellectual skills and abilities. The Preschool/Kindergarten provides a variety of simple, natural toys, and indoor and outdoor settings to spark individual and group play and aid in the development of many skills. Acquiring these skills gradually builds a foundation for future social responsibility and self confidence. Yet even as the children explore new and exciting activities, the reassuring routines of the Preschool/Kindergarten provide a strong, stable framework and rhythm to guide the child harmoniously through the day, the week, and the seasons.