Kimberton Waldorf School

Education That Matters

Early Childhood

Kindergarten Walking Stick Project

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Ahhh, the spring energy in the kindergarten! Our older children are SO ready to become first graders! So last week we began our big end of year project; crafting a walking stick to help us on the next stage of our school journey. We took a walk to the forest to hunt for just the right stick; not too thin, not too thick, not too short and not too tall. Once we had found the perfect sticks, we took our saw and carefully cut them to the perfect size then brought them back to the classroom and got to work.

We will spend the next few weeks, stripping the bark, sanding till they are smooth as silk and polishing them with beeswax polish till they shine.

This longer project, using real tools, instills a level of confidence in our older kindergarteners. It hones their hand eye coordination, improves their gross and fine motor skills and helps to increase their stamina and strengthens their will -all vital and important skills needed for their journey through the grades.

And what’s more they get to keep a beautiful and functional project that they created with their own two hands and will treasure for years to come.

A week in the life of a Kindergartener at KWS:

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Harvesting violets and turning them into syrup… visiting the cows at Seven Stars Farm… noticing tiny blossoms along the trail to Mermaid’s Tail… wagon rides with friends… tending our kindergarten garden… watercolor painting, puppet shows, and bread baking… preparing soup together with little hands and full hearts…

All leading to a joyful kindergarten potluck, where our whole community gathers 🌸 it’s in these simple, meaningful rhythms that childhood is honored. wow—how lucky we are ✨

“A lovely Rainbow see it span, so brightly shining over our land.

It is so red, yellow and blue. I’d like to climb it now with you.” 🌈🎨

(painting day song)

Of all the simple, powerful tools in a Waldorf kindergarten, puppetry holds a very special place.

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Of all the simple, powerful tools in a Waldorf kindergarten, puppetry holds a very special place. Through gentle movement, rhythm, and story, puppetry speaks directly to the child’s imagination – meeting them where wonder lives.

When children watch a puppet story unfold, they aren’t just listening – they’re experiencing it. Puppetry nourishes language development, strengthens memory and attention, and lays an essential foundation for creative thinking and emotional understanding. Stories like The Grateful Statues, a Japanese fairy tale, invite children into a world of reverence, kindness, and gratitude, allowing moral qualities to be felt rather than explained.

In these quiet, magical moments, children practice deep listening, form vivid inner pictures, and begin to understand the world through imagination and empathy. This is the unseen work of early childhood: building capacities that will support learning, creativity, and human connection for years to come.

Ciara, Ona, and Josephine O’Hara Featured in Lilipoh!

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In this month’s digital Lilipoh, we’re celebrating family and growth!

KWS graduate Ciara O’Hara ’24 shares a heartfelt essay about her bond with her little sister Josephine, while the Featured Author in this edition is Early Childhood Lead Teacher (and Ciara & Josephine’s Mom!) Ona O’Hara! Miss Ona pens the inspiring piece “How We Rise Is How We Raise” – a must read for all.

Click the link HERE to read both articles and be inspired by their stories of love, learning, and the impact of family.

Sprites Night

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Around the fire we gathered, awaiting our spirit guide to lead us through the portal into a world of light, love, and story.

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Sprites Night offers children (and the child in all of us) a way to connect with the unseen magic of the world – a journey through wonder on a starlit night. Guided by candlelight and a gentle spirit guide, families journeyed through scenes of wonder and warmth, stepping “through the veil” into a world where magic, nature, and imagination intertwine.

View Emily Cullen’s reflections from years past on the history and importance of this beautiful annual event.

Window in Early Childhood – inspired notes from the Rosebud Cottage Classroom by Ona O’Hara:

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We had such a beautiful last week and I brought some new circle elements working on body geography and proprioception, a new story, and wove in some new dynamic elements into our play, like obstacle courses. These have really supported the children’s sense of unity and fostered such sweet moments of natural recognition and care between the children. Facilitating and witnessing these nuggets is a pointed and poignant reminder of the beauty of humanity and that raising children as we are supports a deep hope and faith in it. It is amazing how much can shift when our perspectives are flexible and fluid.

For example, how little children tend to pull out everything available to them in the moment only to flit on to something else literally a few minutes later and it can quickly seem like chaos. However, as I gently guided and observed this last week, I marveled at the children’s industrious abilities to create and transform and how much the natural tendencies of children illustrate the connection and potentiality of all things and the mirroring of small phenomena to large.

I was reminded of the beginning of William Blake’s Auguries of Innocence which goes:

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”

Rosebud and Kindergarten Bread Bun Recipe

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by Ona Wetherall O’Hara, Early Childhood Leader, Rosebud Lead Teacher, KWS Parent of 3

One of the most natural materials for modeling is homemade bread dough. 

Making bread together is a wonderful human activity that connects us to the earth, and bread out of the oven has one of the most comforting smells.  This activity also provides an opportunity for the awakening intelligence of the child to penetrate into his or her fingers. The manual dexterity and eye/hand coordination that results from this activity is essential for later academic work, yet to the young child, this is all play. 

We come together to enjoy the food we have helped to prepare. There is an emphasis on gratitude for the food, and on table manners. As teachers, we provide an example for the development of a lifelong social skill. 

This is a song I sometimes hum/sing while we’re grinding grain:

Blow wind, blow!

And go mill, go!

That the miller may grind his corn,

That the baker may take it,

And into bread make it,

And bring us a loaf in the morn!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcaaw1s_bIw – for the tune

In Rosebud Cottage we make a sourdough hybrid with a starter we keep in the fridge and feed twice on the counter the day before bread day then combine with some dry yeast, activated with maple syrup and warm water, to give it enough boost to rise quickly after the children have shaped the buns so we can bake it off and eat it for snack. Without a starter, this recipe will still work!

Recipe

Parchment paper on your baking sheet is super helpful for things not sticking.  After shaping let buns rise for 15-30 minutes. Bake at 375-400 for 15-20 minutes or until gloden on the middle rack.  We like to make cucumber, cheese, and fresh butter sandwiches.

Ingredients:

  • 2 Cups warm water
  • 2 t active dry yeast
  • 3 T honey or maple syrup
  • Stir and let sit for 5-10 minutes
  • Add and stir 2 cups
  • Whatever flour you prefer (a combination of white and wheat, bob’s 1 to 1 GF flour, and can also substitute a cup of oats, left over honey millet, corn meal, almond flour, etc)
  • 1 T sea salt
  • 3 T whatever oil you prefer 

Directions:

  • Stir and add flour until the dough starts to come together and becomes hard to mix with a spoon.
  • Start using your hands to knead the dough and add flour a 1/4 cup at a time until the dough feels fairly “doughy”.
  • Dough will continue to firm up from flour obsorbing moisture so air on the side of a wet/sticky dough at this stage for fluffy bread.
  • Cover bowl with a towel and let sit for about an 30-60 minutes. You can also put it in a large container in the fridge for anywhere from 6 hours to 2 days. 
  • Have flour on hand to sprinkle on surface for “bun” making and to use if the dough is sticky when you’re ready to make rolls or anything else (little pizzas are fun!). 
  • Parchment paper on your baking sheet is super helpful for things not sticking.  After shaping let buns rise for 15-30 minutes. Bake at 375-400 for 15-20 minutes or until gloden on the middle rack.  We like to make cucumber, cheese, and fresh butter sandwiches.

Serve warm with butter. You can even make your own! Fill a small mason jar with heavy cream and have your child shake it for 6-8minutes (great will work here!) in the end you will have butter and some buttermilk too! Of course any butter taste great, we add honey and cinnamon for a sweet treat sometimes! 

Enjoy the fruits of your labor together.

The Baker Story

One chilly rainy spring day the baker woke up.  First he opened one eye. Then he closed it. Then he opened the other eye.  Then he closed it. Then he opened both eyes.  (I do all this as I tell the story.  Perhaps if you get the story going your child might even tell you the story) He yawned and stretched and then he put on his baker shirt and his baker pants and his baker shoes and his baker hat and he went to his kitchen. 

 First he made a fire in his oven.  He got some paper and some little sticks and some medium sticks and big sticks and then he light a match and lit his fire so carefully.  When it was going just right he went got his big baking bowl.  He put in some warm water, and some yeast, and some golden sticky honey. He stirred it until it was just right.

 Then he started adding flour and sprinkled a little salt and added a little oil.

He stirred it and stirred it and then he kneaded it and kneaded it until it was juuuust right. Then he covered the bowl with a big towel and set it to rise.  Then he got his umbrella and went out for a walk.  The dough in the bowl started to rise and wanted to see the wide world too. It started to sing: (ask your child how it goes)

 I rise and rise

Higher and higher

I rise and rise

To see the sky

 The dough rose up and peeked out of the bowl and wanted to go up the chimney to see the wide world. The dough sang some more:

I rise and rise

Higher and higher   

I rise and rise

To see the sky

 

The dough pushed the towel right off the bowl and rose up higher going up the chimney.

I rise and rise

Higher and higher

I rise and rise

To see the sky

And was just peeking over the top when the baker came back and said “what are you doing there, dough, come down here!” and he pull and pushed the dough back into the bowl.  Then he got his big pan and started to roll lots and lots of little buns.  When his tray was full his slid the tray into the hot oven.  He wiped out his bread bowl and put it back on the shelf and got down his bread basket.  Then he sniffed the air and could smell that the bread was almost ready.  He peeked in the oven and the bread buns where all golden and baked! He took out the hot tray and put the bread buns in the basket and went out into the town square.  He could see lights on in the houses and little curls of smoke coming out of the chimneys and he knew all the little children of the town were waking up.  He called out “bread buns for sale, bread buns for sale” and all the little children came out of their houses with their pennies.  They came to the baker and said “a bread bun please” and would give the baker their penny and the baker would give them a bread bun.  The baker gave out bread buns until his basket was empty and then he went home to take a good baker’s nap!

And that is how the dough got to see the wide world.

Snip snap snout, this tale is all told out.

 I never tell this story exactly the same so don’t feel like you have to tell it just as I’ve written it here.

A Kindergarten visit to Seven Stars Farm

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What better way to spend a morning than to visit our incredible neighbors across the street Seven Stars Farm?! Their biodynamic dairy products are served in our cafeteria and are loved by all. In the Rosebud and Kindergarten classrooms, the children themselves turn the cream into whipped cream and butter for bread.

A visit to the calf barn is a delightful ritual for the Kindergarten children, and so special to learn more about the dairy process and give these sweet calfs extra love.

Literacy and Numeracy in Early Childhood at KWS 

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by Ona W. O’Hara, Winter 2025 
Early Childhood Leader, Rosebud Lead Teacher, Parent of 3

The ability to write, read, and understand words and numbers begins long before the ABCs and 123s.  It begins with hearing and seeing vocalizations, forming simple articulations, impression and expression of rhythm, and simple body geography like finding two hands.  In Waldorf early childhood education we build on these simple and natural, yet essential, skills of the very young child with implicit instruction to build strong foundations for literacy, numeracy, and a healthy lifetime of learning. 

Our approach to education includes an understanding of human development that places an importance on the especially physically formative time and age of imitation and self-discovery that is the first 7 years of life. As young children start to self-identify as individuals, another early stage of literacy and numeracy naturally comes into play. Children learn how old they are and sometimes express this with their fingers and they discover that their name can be uniquely seen in letter form. Children often start to recognize the letter or letters for their name and are then inspired to form their own letters. Often the very first letters a child understands and learns to write and read are the letters to their very own name. Our early childhood programs have an emphasis on supporting a naturally paced unfolding of each individual child to have a strong, confident, and secure sense of self which in turn supports an enthusiasm and strength for language arts, math, and all areas of study. 

Phonological awareness is cultivated daily through intentional oral storytelling, singing, and rhyming which supports the development of instinctual language comprehension, syntax (language rules), semantics (meaning), structure, and word order.  Practicing language in this way also supports vocabulary and memory skills. Throughout Waldorf education, we see that children learn readily and naturally through action and experiential learning, and this is reflected in the way our early childhood programs approach literacy and numeracy. 

The foundations of numeracy are naturally and playfully cultivated through our early childhood curriculum so that a scaffold of number sense is securely ingrained for building upon in grade school.  Through finger games, rhythmical circle work, experiential activities such as snack preparation, table setting, play, crafting, and self-care, children playfully and practically learn counting, sequencing, sorting, addition, subtraction, measurement, shape, weight and other simple mathematical concepts.  

Waldorf education implements a whole-to-parts approach to learning and this is reflected in the way literacy and numeracy are approached in a threefold way through listening, imitating, and practical experiential activities; then writing, painting, and ingraining concepts through activity and repetition; and finally transitioning naturally and with understanding into reading and more complex math processes.  In early childhood, we are especially focused on the first aspect of this journey to proficiency in literacy and numeracy.   

Here are some of the other ways our early childhood programs and curriculum supports the development of young children to be confident and thriving humans and students in grade school:  

  • Fine motor skill work through practical activities, crafts, and finger games to develop healthy dominance and strong pincer grip. 
  • Gross motor skill work and curriculum that support the foundational senses (touch, life, movement/proprioception, balance/vestibular system) which strengthen the ability to self-regulate and have a healthy attention span.  
  • Curriculum that focuses on building a sense of self and confidence, in part through child-led play, supporting the ability to be self-motivated and succeed academically. 
  • Intentional interweaving of learning with play and activities, for example, while making bread together and singing “patty cake”, naming the first letter of each child’s name and marking it on the bread bun.  
  • Oral storytelling and curriculum designed to support self-directed imagination.  
  • The mood of the teacher is carefully held to include specific and accurate language presentation.  
  • Eye tracking activities that support reading and the ability to focus and switch from near to far and back. 
  • Repetition supports retention of concepts. 
  • Rhythmical curriculum supports development of memory and sequencing. 
  • Supporting a healthy social/emotional development which supports the ability to learn.   
  • Rhythm, including rest, healthy food, and an abundance of movement to support myelination of the brain needed for higher levels of academic learning. 

The following excerpts from Dianne McGaunn’s and Kat Marsh’s research article, How Reading, Writing, Literature, and Language are Taught in a Waldorf School  further elucidate this subject. 

“A common misconception about Waldorf literacy education is that Waldorf schools do not teach children how to read until second grade. While it is true that decoding (learning how to read through a phonics approach) is not specifically taught until late first or second grade, early childhood educators and first-grade teachers concentrate on building a strong foundation for literacy learning through drama, artistic endeavors, writing what students know by heart, healthy play and movement experiences, beautiful recitation of poetry and many other forms of learning that are multi-sensory experiences. Therefore, when students are taught a traditional phonics approach in second grade, they have a deep foundation to aid in the reading process.”

“Waldorf teachers understand the importance of developing fine and gross motor movement skills for writing and reading. In the early childhood classroom, activities such as cutting food for snacks, drawing with crayons, sewing, and modeling with beeswax help develop fine motor skills for smooth writing experiences.

Other gross movement activities such as cross-lateral skipping help develop the connecting “bridge” of the brain that orchestrates the processes between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which is not fully developed until seven or nine years of age. This bilateral brain integration is critical for whole-word recognition and decoding words, two essential reading skills.”

“In addition to the importance of healthy movement in brain development and learning, the Waldorf approach to literacy follows the course of literacy development throughout human history: oral learning (speaking and listening), then writing (as in hieroglyphics), and only then reading. This progression and sequence or order of skills (movement, speaking and listening as precursors to reading and writing) supports a child’s development because it strengthens inherent skills aforementioned, and only then introduces writing skills which are the next step toward developing a broad understanding of literacy. Children taught in this sequence have a better understanding of the meaning of print and will come to the task of reading with purpose, comprehension, and confident engagement.”

“Current research supports the idea that teachers can improve reading skills by having students write about what they are reading, teaching them writing skills, and increasing how much they write. In the Waldorf first-grade classroom, writing the letters of the alphabet emerges from daily imaginative stories thus giving students a meaningful basis for linking printed letters with sounds (as in the early relationships to humans with hieroglyphics). Students write simple words that they know, and gradually the skill of writing words and recognizing word families is used to build simple sentences.”

“The Waldorf early grades curriculum is rich in phonological awareness and emphasizes holistic literacy skills along with informal print writing to give students a stronger basis for formal print reading. Literacy development in Waldorf schools cultivates awareness, appreciation, and skill in both the spoken and written word, following a developmentally sound approach that helps to ensure that students claim a love of literature, language, and writing as part of their birthright.”

“In essence, the Waldorf approach to literacy is purposefully patient and thoughtfully builds a foundation for a life-long love of literacy, in its many forms.”

The article quoted above may be accessed in its entirety through the following link: “Early Literacy Learning in Waldorf Education.”

The Way we Rise is the Way we Raise, Part 2: 

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If We’re Hard on Ourselves, We’re Hard on Our Kids 

by Ona Wetherall O’Hara
Early Childhood Leader, Rosebud Lead Teacher, Parent of 3

As an early childhood teacher, I often think about the parents of the children in my class just as much as the children. Parent work is so important in education and especially in early childhood, when children are often separated from their parents to a school setting for the first time. Parents need just as much support as children! While thinking through pending conversations with parents I recently had a thought that rang so true for me, and I thought perhaps it would resonate with other parents; if we’re hard on ourselves, we’re hard on our kids. In turn, our kids are, and become adults who are, hard on themselves. 

A strict approach can be a blessing and a curse. Perhaps it can help instill a driven and disciplined disposition in our children. After all, in some ways I wonder if maybe, as parents, we have lost our grip with being hard on our kids in a healthy way and we tend to be too “soft”, as we struggle to hold boundaries with our children. On the other hand, we also know how painful and debilitating it can be to get stuck in places where we are being hard on ourselves, we even do it to ourselves in reflection of our parenting, much of which is natural human reaction to unexpected, startling, confusing, and challenging situations. There lays a predicament: can we find a way to be hard on ourselves, and our kids, in a way that encourages us and them to strive and grow and not feel defeated and stuck? Can we try to be self-aware without judgement, as human beings and as parents, learn from our reflections, and pass that on to our children?  

Being a parent brings us to the edge of our vulnerability and leaves us feeling exposed and raw and that’s often where our children meet us with their needs. For some of us, we carry baggage and/or trauma from our own childhood that we often desperately want to avoid in our own parenting journey. However, what we are internally processing often becomes what our children externally express, in one form or another. Sometimes, the things we fear the most are what our children manifest for us to deal with, because life has a way of serving us our work to do one way or another.  

One of the biggest influences on our parenting is what we experienced as children.  Some of these experiences we strive to honor and pass on to our children and some of them we want to avoid, hoping to model and give our children something different. It can be easy to judge our upbringing and forget that, for the most part, our parents, just like ourselves, always want to be good parents. We also easily lose sight of the fact that everything we experience contributes to who we are as people, partners, and parents and it’s difficult to grow if we dismiss that or expend energy judging it. In some ways, if we’re hard on our parents, we’re hard on ourselves, and we’re hard on our kids. One approach to breaking this passed-down cycle of judgement is to appreciate all that we as parents are striving for, knowing that part of that drive comes from pushing through our life experiences and using all of them to do our best. In other words, positive outcomes come from positive (or at least objective) approaches and it’s really difficult to feel and be successful driven by negative perspectives. 

As we start to think about summer, a helpful aspect to include is; how can we set ourselves up to not be hard on ourselves and in turn not hard on our kids.  Summer is a time for breathing out and relaxing.  Perhaps that can include some time for compassion and acceptance for all that we are so we can grow and parent from there and model that for our children.   

Winter Full Moon & Stars at Rosebud Cottage

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The Rosebud Cottage classroom with Miss Ona Wetherall O’Hara created beautiful watercolor paintings of this week’s full moon. Please enjoy their paintings as well as their current winter rituals:

“Winter is dark but each little spark shines the way to a new day.”

-Rosebud Cottage Winter lunchtime candle lighting.

Winter Night

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Pile high the hickory and the light
Log of chestnut struck by the blight.
Welcome in the winter night.

The day has gone in hewing and felling,
Sawing and drawing wood to the dwelling.
For the night of talk and storytelling.

These are the hours that give the edge
To the blunted axe and the bent wedge,
Straighten the saw and lighten the sledge.

Here are the questions and reply,
And the fire reflected in the thinking eye.
So peace, and let the bobcat cry.

Our cherished Martinmas tradition: Lantern Walk

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The Lantern Walk is a cherished tradition in Waldorf education, taking place at a time when Autumn is starting to wane and dark winter days are ahead. 🍂
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When we celebrate Martinmas, we celebrate that there will still be light, warmth, and sharing in the coming cold dark months that lie ahead. The essence of the Lantern Walk or Martinmas festival is to acknowledge the light that shines in each of us. This light needs to be protected, just as the lights inside our lanterns do, so they don’t blow out. This time of year is also said to be a time when the veil between the human and the spirit worlds is at its thinnest, so we can remember that help from the universe is always there for us. It is also a time of year when we recognize that the cold and darker days of winter are coming, and we can join together in compassion to help each other stay warm and shine bright.
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‘Each of us is one small light, but together we shine bright’!
-Ona Wetherall O’Hara

Glimmer lantern glimmer,
little stars a-shimmer.
Over meadow, moor and dale
flitter flutter elfin veil.
Pee-wit pee-wit, tick-a-tack-a-tick, coo-coo-roo-coo.
Glimmer lantern glimmer,
little stars a-shimmer.
Over rock and stock and stone
wander tripping little gnome.
Pee-wit, pee-wit, tick-a-tack-a-tick, coo-coo-roo-coo.

A Brief History of the Lantern Walk, Martinmas, a Festival of Compassion

The festival of Martinmas originated in France in the fourth century in honor of St. Martin who was ‘known as a friend of the children and a patron of the poor’. Legend has it that Saint Martin shared his cloak with a beggar by cutting it in half, so the beggar would be protected from the cold night. In honor of Saint Martin’s kind deed, Martinmas is celebrated as a festival and spread from France through Germany, the rest of Europe, and Scandinavia. Somewhat like American Thanksgiving, it is a feast of sharing and gratefulness! Martinmas takes place at a time when Autumn is starting to wane and dark winter days are ahead.

How we Rise is How we Raise

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by Ona Wetherhall O’Hara, October 2024

Thoughts on the importance of modeling, the strength of imitation, and how threefold principles and seasonal festivals can support us.

A couple weeks ago, I made a fire and baked our (dragon) bread in our outdoor cobb oven we have at our Rosebud pre-kindergarten program.  Two children came with me each time I went to the oven to make and feed the fire and bake, checking on the rolls a few times, and most of the class also watched at one point or another from the porch. The next week that activity came to life in the children’s play and each day engaged more and more of the class as first one, then two, then 5 children and more started feeding little sticks to a hole in a log, going to the sandbox to make a confection, dumping it into the hole, taking it out and offering it to children and teachers, and beginning again. Young children learn and develop so many skills through imitation and in turn their social, emotional, and cognitive development is supported. Remembering and utilizing that may be our most powerful tool as parents and teachers. 

How we work, worry, and wonder become the roads on which our children journey to becoming independent humans.  The forms we hold are the vessels their freedom lives in.  Of course, this weighty task holds much to inspire us to be the very best version of ourselves as a model worthy of imitation for that which is most dear to us; our children.  But we often need support.  Human support and parenting support.  The world of parenting is almost feeling endangered; we are so full of doubt and guilt, we are anxious and fearful, we are overloaded and our nervous systems are fried, and we are losing the ability to tap into our intuition and to trust ourselves and others, and we are modeling this for our children.  And we try to intellectualize with our children and constantly ask them to make choices, forgetting that they operate on the wings of nature, which, at the end of the day nurtures their needs beautifully, and often ours as well. This is where we can look to threefold principles and seasonal festivals to support, inspire, and inform us.   

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Courage, Compassion, Wisdom. 

After a summer of long sun bursting days, Autumn brings a threading of the needle from the Fall Equinox to the Winter Solstice (the shortest day) and hearty lusty festivals filled with reflections of courage (Michaelmas and the taming of the dragon), compassion (Martinmas and the offering of warmth), and wisdom (the spiral of light for reflection and connection).  These vital human elements are also reflected in the sentiments of hands, heart, and mind; goodness, beauty, and truth; and willing, feeling, and thinking.  We are all on a path of human becoming, always searching for purpose, trust, and meaning.  We seek this for ourselves, for our children, and for our community.  We long to know ourselves and we need each other and empathy for this.  Universally human and divinely individual elements spiral together through the eye of the needle in striving, wonder, and intention.  

Reminding ourselves to tap into and reflect out courage, compassion, and wisdom will support us so when we look back on what may be our most influential season of life, we can take pride in the way we showed up.  Seasonal rhythms invite and implore us to embrace and celebrate our spiritual nature which connects us not only to the cosmos but to ourselves, each other, and the world around us.  Nature also helps connect us to how our children naturally engage; first through experience, then emotion, then thinking, which is the opposite of the way we adults tend to approach life.  We strive to model and cultivate respect, appreciation, admiration, and wonder in meaningful and beautiful ways.  It is often challenging to find the energy for this striving when we feel the fatigue of life and thinking trying to overpower us.  Help can be found by looking at some of the threefold foundations of our educational pedagogy.  This threefold working in harmony is the wonder, the promise, and the hope of humanity.   For ourselves and our children, while sweating the small stuff, and the big, we can pause, find our courage, our compassion, and our wisdom.  We are rising up because we are raising up the future of our world.                     

Ona Wetherall O’Hara, October 2024.
Kimberton Waldorf School Lead Pre-K teacher, Early Childhood Leader, Governing Team Member.
Parent of a KWS Graduate, Senior, and Kindergartener

Photo by: Rowan O’Hara, KWS Class of 2023

Lantern Walks: a festival of compassion

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lanterns

by KWS Kindergarten Teachers

“I go with my little lantern,
my lantern goes with me.
In heaven the stars are shining,
on Earth are shining we.”

Along with many other Waldorf Schools both here in the US and across Europe, KWS carries the tradition of celebrating the festival of Martinmas with a Lantern Walk during the evening on (or near) November 11th in the Early Childhood section as well as First and Second Grade. But what does a Roman soldier who was born in the 4th century have to do with life in 2023?

The story of St. Martin is one of empathy and generosity. It begins at the city gates in Amiens, France, where St. Martin’s cavalry regiment was stationed. A poor man dressed in rags begged all passersby to have pity on him, but no one bothered to look at him. Martin approached and saw the man shivering. A young soldier, he had no money and nothing else to share and so he took off his cloak and used his weapon to slice it down the middle. Half he gave to the poor man, and half he wore back to his barracks. Now we, as the season darkens, begin to turn inward and ponder such questions as how do I find compassion within? Where is the balance between caring for self and caring for others? It is the work of the adults to ponder the festivals in whatever intellectual, spiritual, or personal way we choose.  

For the young child, however, we offer a much simpler gesture and experience as we know that this is the way the children learn most deeply. We do not bring them the story of St. Martin until second grade. However, we do make handmade lanterns in the weeks leading up to the lantern walk and sing lantern songs. Their beautiful images carry us throughout the day as we bake, walk in the forest, and work on our projects. Slowly the image builds in the class community of how “we go through the land, like the wild geese band, children of one light are we.”  

The Lantern Walk is a simple, reverent event bringing an opportunity for everyone to sense the quiet power of their own inner light; to ponder deeply, wordlessly, their role as a spark of light in the dark of night. It is a night of quiet joy as we walk peacefully along a luminaria-lit path. The children carry their handmade lanterns and all those walking sing the traditional lantern songs that encourage us to be that warmth and light for ourselves and for others.  

Martinmas celebrates hope, kindness, and being called to help others. This is a contemplative, uniquely individual festival in which we may solidify the courage we strove for during the harvest season (Michaelmas) and allow it to grow into soul confidence. Often after the walk in the following days, a new urge arises in us to see how we can give to others. In finding our sense of self, we find trust that our inner light will lead us toward taking care of each other. The children do this naturally without so much as a word from teachers and for many weeks, we often hear the joyful refrain of ‘This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.”  

Waldorf Education, Stolen Focus, and the Crisis of Attention

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Dr. Brad Kershner offers reflections on the metacrisis and shares an in-depth summary of the book Stolen Focus by Johann Hari. He makes connections between the themes of this book, the larger constellation of social and cultural problems we are all facing, and the principles and practices of Waldorf education – an approach to learning in community that offers timely and relevant values and practices to address our deepest educational questions and dilemmas.

This lecture was offered to parents at Kimberton Waldorf School – October 11, 2023

Erin Byrne, Forest Kindergarten Teacher

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What draws you to the Waldorf approach to education? And in particular, to leading the Forest Kindergarten? 
I have been a Waldorf teacher my whole adult life, and my first teaching position was at KWS in the high school. As a young person I was searching for meaning and looking for a new approach to education, found Waldorf education and started teaching when I was 24. This is my 4th time coming back to teach at KWS, as I left to go back to school, then when I had my two boys, etc. I also taught young adults with special needs at the Camphill School Transition Program at Beaver Farm. I was there as program manager, faculty chair, and special education teacher for 12 years and then became Regional Coordinator for the Camphill Association of North America for another 3 years. My job as regional coordinator was wonderful when I was traveling to all the Camphills for meetings and peer reviews, but I spent way too much time in front of a screen. I had always been intrigued with the forest kindergarten approach and was able to visit the forest kindergarten at KWS before the pandemic. When school started up again, I became an assistant in the kindergarten, and proposed the idea a year ago to expand our forest kindergarten program. 

Is there a particular highlight from the first year of the Forest Kindergarten that stands out to you? 
Every day before we enter the forest, we sing a song together to open our senses, and to have good manners while we walk quietly to our forest program area, as we are entering the home of all our forest friends. The song goes: 

Look with our owl eyes 
Listen with our deer ears 
Smell with our dog nose 
Feel with our raccoon fingers 

I especially love it when the birds come to our pinecone bird feeders while we are quietly eating our snack. We’ve had visits from nuthatches, blue birds, cardinals, and woodpeckers! 

You have sons that graduated from KWS? How have you seen this unique education impact their lives as they leave the nest and create their own lives?  
Both my boys went from preschool through 12th grade. I realize now that the things we did with them when they were growing up has had a huge impact on their lives. We spent a lot of time in the great outdoors: bicycling, canoeing, hiking, fishing, swimming in creeks, camping, canoe camping, etc.! They both work in outdoor education: Jackson (KWS class of 2011) worked in wilderness therapy as both a guide and a medic, and now is a back country park ranger in Yosemite. Gabriel (KWS class of 2013) has just left his job as a senior guide in wilderness therapy and is currently working at a Waldorf kindergarten in Colorado. They both inspired me to work outdoors as well. 

Jackson just released an album entitled Moving Water. You can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Music or free on YouTube.  

Eryn Byrne with Jackson & Gabriel

St. Patrick’s Day Foot Painting and Foot Bath

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by Ona Wetherall, Early Childhood Section Leader

The Rosebud Cottage welcomed spring through color and form with their annual St. Patrick’s Day hand and foot painting activity this week! Not only did we welcome spring through color and form and creating a keepsake to treasure, but children also got a tactile sensory experience while enjoying one-on-one nurturing time with their teacher with their peers around them in supportive reverence. Children painted and got painted, followed by a warm foot bath and foot rub with lotion, before using their strength to punch out shapes and fine motor skills to create the final shamrock touch. This is an activity I look forward to every year! I so love spending these beautiful moments with each child, finding out more about them as I observe how they respond to the experience, noticing how beautiful and unique all their little hands and feet are and sharing in lots of giggles and awe. 

Education of the Will

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Written by Ona Wetherall, Early Childhood Section Leader

One of the common threads in Waldorf education, which is especially focused on and talked about in early childhood, is the education of the Will; nurturing the young child’s natural impulse to do and channeling that into purposeful activity that nourishes their growing bodies, minds, and souls.  In reflecting on the education of the Will, different approaches and examples can be found.  The pictures below all depict moments of engaging and nourishing the Will.  Perhaps the first ones are obvious but the last one is as well, for even finding moments of pause, reflection, and relaxation are activities of the Will.  Whether for a child or an adult, feeling and thinking cannot balance without an engaged Will.  Another way a child’s will is educated is through imitation, with adults setting examples.

In our ever increasingly busy lives, where we always seem to be engaged in something, whether physically, mentally, or emotionally, we can ask ourselves, “what is driving us?” Or “where is our Will coming from?” Is it coming from external influences or internal impulses?  It’s important to notice this because how we engage ourselves is setting an example for how our children will.  External influences will always be in flux and bring positives and challenges, but internal impulses will sustain us, will hold us steady and strong in the ups and downs of life.

As parents and educators, we want to support our children as best as we possibly can to grow up with the ability to feel steady, strong, and positive about themselves and to go out into the world with that influence upon it.  We want our children to have the ability to sustain themselves in a positive way and have the heart, wish, and drive to take care of their world and their fellow humans, in part by seeing and knowing the good, truth, and beauty of it.  This is how we make the world a better place, this is how we hold on to the goodness in humanity for ourselves and our children, and it starts with the Will to Work.  The Will to do something purposeful and good.  

When our daughter picked that snap pea that she had planted, watered, and watched grow, she ate it and proclaimed, “it is so good!”, and it is.  

– Ona Wetherall
Early Childhood Section Leader

Building Foundations in Early Childhood

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by Ona Wetherall

Our youngest students’ curriculum is designed to support children’s instincts to be active and social while supporting foundational sensory development of balance (vestibular), touch, movement (proprioception), and well-being in a rhythmical, self-directed, nature-based, holistic learning environment.

In an organic and unique expansion of our Kindergarten programming, we are excited to be revisioning and expanding our forest experience for all our Kindergarten students next year.  Erin Byrne, who has been working in our Kindergarten and has many years of Waldorf experience and knowledge, will be attending The Academy of Forest Kindergarten Teachers this summer and will be our Forest Program teacher!  We have designed our Forest Program in a way so that every kindergartener gets to experience and enjoy our beautiful campus and forest which supports our students’ development in so many ways, bolsters stewardship of the earth, and brings our students in direct connection to the rhythm of nature which is also an important part of the foundation of our pedagogy.  Kindergarteners from each class will come together to form a forest group for 2-week blocks at a time and in this way, every kindergartener will have a forest immersion experience at least 3 times a year and get to fully experience every season during the school year.  In addition to updating our forest facilities, which include a yurt,  our Forest Program will have its own space on the main campus which is being renovated this summer.  This space will also serve to support after-school and summer programming as well. 

Growth, movement, and working together to meet education and our students in intentional, progressive, and relevant ways; this is KWS!

Nurturing the Young Child’s Creative Forces

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by: Molly Brett

In Waldorf Early Childhood education, we work to foster and strengthen the young child’s imagination.  We do this by focusing on many different aspects of life that support the child’s growing creative forces.  Our classrooms are designed to be warm, inviting, and inspiring for the children in our care while intentionally making available simple, natural, and open-ended items that can be utilized in many ways.  Our songs and stories use rich vocabulary to stimulate and encourage language development as well as, the ability to create whimsical, internal imagery.  Our arts and crafts help to develop the children’s motor skills, self-esteem, and sense of beauty—enlivening both their inner and outer worlds.  An artistic practice that is unique to Waldorf education is wet-on-wet watercolor painting.  Today we will delve deeper into this artistic practice by looking at what it is, why it is a part of our curriculum, and how this activity builds on itself throughout the years.   

Wet-on-wet watercolor painting creates a fluid and dreamy artistic experience for the young child.  The colors move, change, and possibly mix creating an ever-changing landscape of emotive color. In Waldorf Early Childhood education our goal is for the young child to encounter the variations of shade, tone, and even mood of all the colors of the rainbow. We start slowly with one color at a time.  Beginning in the fall we will paint with yellow mirroring the golden rod we see growing in the fields and then in a few weeks when the apples are ripe and ready to be harvested, we will transition to the color red.  We will be singing songs about juicy apples, making apple sauce, and experiencing the gesture of the color of the season thru our wet-on-wet watercolor painting.  As the seasons change so does the color.  Once the trees are bare, the temperature has dropped, and we are anticipating “King Winter’s” arrival and his bearing of the first snow we transition into the blue of winter.  The contrast between the Red of Fall and the Blue of winter is soul-felt throughout our weekly painting time.  These gestures are never spoken to but simply experienced as we glide our brushes over our paper.  Eventually, the colors begin to “play” with one another, and the children begin a quiet exploration of the secondary colors and how they arise.  

The painting sessions in Waldorf Early Childhood are process-oriented and led thru imitation by the teacher.  There is little to no talking once the painting has begun.  The teacher quietly illustrates the process: sponge dry the wet paper, “dip, dip” the brush in the color, “drip, drip” the brush on the side of the container, and allow the brush to glide across the paper from left to right our eyes following the brush just like when we read.  We are not focused on an end product while painting.  The nurturing of the senses and the therapeutic gesture of the activity is what we strive to create space for in our weekly painting rhythm.

Not only do our weekly painting sessions create a space for experiencing the gesture of color but they are also a time to develop healthy habits that will carry into grade school when wet-on-wet watercolor becomes more complex.  Learning to respect and care for the watercolor materials is woven into our painting time.  In my class, a story is shared to invoke the child’s imagination in this process and to develop imagery for the processes of painting.  It is because of the intention of creating this form that the space for a quiet and meditative experience becomes available.  Hopefully, the skill of learning how to quiet the mind and oneself lives on within the child for years to come.

For young children, the gift of time and space for play and the creative process is foundational for the growth of imagination, the strengthening of originative forces, and the experience of the fluidity of thought.  Wet-on-wet watercolor painting embodies these concepts thru a physical and concrete exercise of exploration by a participatory process.  This ethereal experience of color deepens the child’s connection to the seasons thru color and offers an inner experience which develops the feeling forces within, all the while honoring where the child is developmentally.  When we honor and teach towards the malleability of the young child’s mind, we strengthen the imagination, and just like the malleability of color the birth of the heart forces and critical thinking arise in due time.  Like the birth of spring, in the early childhood classroom, when suddenly the yellow of the golden sun meets the blue of the sky making way for the lushness of green on our paper, suddenly the magic of growth and creation is reflected back to us right before our eyes.

Why Play-Based Learning is Best in Pre-K and Kindergarten

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Historically, early childhood education was developed for nurturing and cultivating a child’s natural propensity to learn through play. The focus of early childhood education was on developmentally appropriate activities for young children as a preparation for schooling when children were ready (around age six or seven). In the 1990s and the 2000s a shift occurred in education through No Child Left Behind and other government programs that changed the focus of early childhood education from a developmentally based approach to one based on academics and testing. The thought was that children needed to learn how to read and perform mathematics at earlier ages in order to be prepared for standardized testing. Unfortunately, this approach was not based on an understanding of child development and how children learn and has resulted in a rise in anxiety in young children as they are pushed to participate in activities and modes of learning that they are not ready for. 

Waldorf schools, on the other hand, have remained committed to providing education for children that is developmentally based. In a Waldorf early childhood classroom children are engaged in child-directed creative play, storytime, artistic activities, and time outdoors. These activities help to support healthy development of young children and teach them essential skills they need for future academic learning.

Teaching to a child’s experience and level of development is the key to good education at all grade levels. Pre-Kindergartners and Kindergarteners are no exception. They experience their world with their intrinsic will and self-centered curiosity. They learn most naturally by doing, not be didactic instruction or abstract information.  Waldorf educators use this knowledge of child development to teach young children the skills they must master by providing an environment and experiences which support their development.

The opposite approach which seeks to make an active, intrinsically motivated and curious young child sit still to recite or memorize, is detrimental to the child’s emotional and academic development. It is critical at this stage of life that children’s propensity for self-directed creative and imaginative play is nurtured. 

 When children are busy playing an atmosphere of work permeates the room. Play is the work of the young child. During play activity, children are learning to develop a rich imagination, which will serve their reading comprehension as they take words on the page and transform them into narrative memory.  Group play also helps children to learn to compromise with their peers, communicate their desires, carry tasks to completion, and problem-solve with others.

Just as free play uses the child’s self-directed will for learning, structured activities help children master their will in a gentle and natural way. As the class comes together to sing songs, recite verses or listen to a teacher-told story, children are learning how to listen and develop attention. As they repeat and remember verses or songs, they build their long-term memory. The story told by the teacher also exposes children to the beauty of language which supports literacy skills and builds the person-to-person relationship between teacher and child. Artistic activities such as watercolor painting, beeswax modeling, and finger knitting are done as a group activity, although each child is absorbed in their own work. They are learning the joys of bringing a task to completion. They also help to develop the children’s small motor skills.

Our goal in our early childhood program at KWS is to inspire a lifelong love of learning. We want our students to transform their intrinsic curiosity to a desire to learn the academic tasks required in the grades and in life beyond school.

http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BALiteracyOlfman.pdf

Play is crucial to a child’s development and well being.

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“Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced.”

Jeffrey Goldstein, Ph.D., author and research associate at Utrecht University also says, “Play seems to have some immediate benefits, such as aerobic conditioning and fine-tuning motor skills, as well as long-term benefits that include preparing the young for the unexpected, and giving them a sense of morality. How? Learning to play successfully with others requires ‘emotional intelligence,’ the ability to understand another’s emotions and intentions.”

The Benefits of Play-Based Education

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“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”
~ Albert Einstein

Why play-based learning?

The right brain develops first and does so by the time children are 3-4 years of age. The left brain, on the other hand, doesn’t fully come online until children are approximately seven years old; hence the first seven years being recognized as such a critical period in child development.  Play-based education fits the developmental needs of children.

The left brain’s functionality is one of language, numeracy, literacy, analysis and time. It is the logical, calculating, planning, busy-bee part of us that keeps us anchored in the pragmatic world, and in past and future. The right brain, on the other hand, is responsible for empathy, intuition, imagination and creativity. It is where we wonder, dream, connect and come alive. Through the right brain we dwell in the space of no-time, in being absolutely present and our boundless sense of being. Being is primary; hence the right brain developing first; hence, human being, not human doing.

The play-based approach

Children are naturally motivated to play. A play-based program builds on this motivation, using play as a context for learning. In this context, children can explore, experiment, discover and solve problems in imaginative and playful ways.

A play-based approach involves both child-initiated and teacher-supported learning. The teacher encourages children’s learning and inquiry through interactions that aim to stretch their thinking to higher levels. Teachers take an active role in guiding children’s interactions in the play. Children are supported in developing social skills such as cooperation, sharing and responding to ideas, negotiating, and resolving conflicts.

Play also supports positive attitudes to learning. These include imagination, curiosity, enthusiasm, and persistence. The type of learning processes and skills fostered in play cannot be replicated through rote learning, where there is an emphasis on remembering facts.

The skilled early childhood teacher highly values and nurtures the child’s fundamental creative and imaginative nature with countless opportunities and environments for exploration and play. Play can provide children with the opportunity to develop social, emotional, physical and creative skills in addition to cognitive ones. Preschool and kindergarten programs that strike a healthy balance between stimulating work and engaging play prepare the child for success in primary school and beyond. They empower these individuals to go beyond functioning in a competitive world to making valuable changes in that world.

Social-emotional skills

Children with stronger social skills do better in school, in the workplace, and in life. Child-directed play and modeling of helping behaviors are key to the development of social skills and need be prioritized in early education. We agree with the research that indicates that social skill development should be an intentional outcome of all educational experiences for children from preschool through elementary school. Getting along with others, being helpful and cooperative, and demonstrating empathy certainly make for better community. Additionally, a child’s early skills with building positive relationships with peers and with adults are correlated with positive life outcomes overall.

Research on the brain demonstrates that play is a scaffold for development, a vehicle for increasing neural structures, and a means by which all children practice skills they will need in later life. Because play often involves physical activity, it is encourages the development and refinement of children’s gross and fine motor skills and their body awareness. As children vigorously and joyfully use their bodies in physical exercise, meaningful work and unstructured play, they simultaneously refine and develop skills that enable them to feel confident, secure, and self-assured.

Executive function

Planning, self-awareness, and self-control—what psychologists refer to as “executive functions”—predict positive school and life outcomes. Studies show that children develop executive functions through experience. Children use components of executive functions when they make decisions and interact with peers in everyday classroom settings. For example, they use planning to generate ideas for what to play, while working memory and inhibitory control help with remembering and following the rules of play. As children get older, they will need an efficient working memory to process all of the information that they encounter in the upper grades.

The need for developing skills of complex problem solving, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration are essential for 21st century learning. These skills are built and enhanced by learning through play across the lifespan.

How does play-based education build the foundations for learning?

Play-based education embodies a plethora of activities integrated in the day that encourage school readiness, build academic capacities and create a lifelong love of learning.

An important literacy skill for reading is acquisition of language, as shown by children’s vocabulary and capacity to articulate their thoughts. The depth of a preschooler’s language skills—like early conceptual mathematics—is more predictive of long-term reading than simple measures of early literacy like letter recognition.

Hands-on experiences in art, science, and making – such as cooking, playing with sand and sticks and natural materials, painting, knitting and building –are terrific, and developmentally appropriate, ways for young children to build their fine motor coordination and the musculature for later writing.

A powerful indicator and predictor of long-term success with mathematics—and with other academic domains—is early conceptual mathematics. By helping children see mathematics in the world around them, using rich mathematical language as we work with children, building a growth mindset in mathematics by modeling our own use and learning of mathematics we create strong foundations for mathematical capacities.

Resources on play and play-based education

Play-based learning for children is encouraged by educators

Reimagining School Readiness

Play-based Learning Can Set Your Child up for Success at School and Beyond

Play is Essential for All Children

The Right Brain Develops First – Why Play is the Foundation for Academic Learning

The Play Debate: Do Preschoolers Need More Free Time?

The Play Debate: Shouldn’t Preschoolers Work More at School?

The Play Debate: Primary and Beyond

This is the One Skill Your Child Needs for the Jobs of the Future

The Death of Recess in America 

Play in Children’s Development, Health and Well-Being

phone: 610.933.3635  |  email: admissions@kimberton.org

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Children and Chores

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The Benefits of Chores

When it comes to assigning housework to children, there’s some debate. Many parents want to preserve childhood for as long as possible, letting the “kids be kids” and enjoy plenty of playtime while they’re still young. Others may see children as less capable, preferring to finish the housework as quickly and efficiently as possible. These arguments make sense, but they also overlook the many positive benefits of giving kids chores.

Our daily lives are full of moments where we can connect, empower and teach our children. All the chores that may feel like drudgery to us as adults are often a delight to the young child. A dish tub full of bubbles, a basket full of laundry, a floor needing sweeping or a window sill asking for a dusting. All of these tasks offer endless opportunities for our families as a whole.

Meaningful Work

For the young child the gift of being entrusted with meaningful work builds their self-esteem, develops lifelong capabilities and life skills and bonds the family by distributing the work of the household. Young children naturally want to take part in the world around them. Research indicates that those children who do have a set of chores have higher self-esteem, are more responsible, and are better able to deal with frustration and delay gratification, all of which contribute to greater success in school.

Understanding Process

If we as adults can be present and open to their help then we will give the gift of purposeful work to the children in our care. It requires our presence because often in this busy world mundane tasks are overlooked or at best rushed thru to completion. Think of all the daily conveniences that are used almost daily in our homes: the dishwasher, the washer/dryer, the vacuum, etc. These serve a purpose but also deprive our children from seeing the cyclical process of things.

When we wash dishes by hand we can see the full process. The plate going in dirty, the need for us to scrub it clean, to rinse it, to dry it. These cycles are important for young children to witness and take part-in. It’s important to consciously choose to perform these tasks in our homes offering the gift of participating in the full process to our children.

Working Mindfully

When we are conscious and present we are able to engage with both our child and the work at hand. The demands of the modern world surely can distract: the ping of an email, the buzz of our phone, our laptops open for work, the TV on in the background; these all call us out of the moment. Minimizing our distractions in our home helps to create a sanctuary and allows us to remain focused. Our children will observe when we choose to complete these tasks mindfully and with joy. It is much like a meditation practice where we become conscious of our thoughts and choose to remain present as we work. This allows us to fully engage with what we’re doing and who we’re doing it with.

Being Present

This presence is a natural state of being for the young child. When we show up and work with joy our children learn to do the same. Viewing our household chores as a meditative practice makes our work a spiritual endeavor and bonds us with our children in the only moment they know: The Present!

By Molly Brett
Kimberton Waldorf Preschool Teacher
Parent Child Program Teacher

Resources:

Happy Children Do Chores – NY Times
Benefits of Chores – Center for Parenting Education
Mindful Simplicity:  Decluttering and Cleaning
5 Ways To Be More Present With Your Child – Huffington Post
Why Kids Should Have Chores

When is the Right Time to Read, Spell and Write?

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There is a widely-held belief that if we just start teaching children to write, read, and spell in preschool, they will become better writers, readers, and spellers by the time they reach the first and second grades. This is, however, not true. The truth is that children only should be taught to write, read, and spell when their neurological pathways for writing, reading, and spelling have fully formed. There are many neuropsychologists, developmental specialists, occupational therapists and teachers who are concerned that our current trend in this country of pushing “academics” in preschool and kindergarten may increase attentional problems and visual processing types of learning disabilities.

The Proprioceptive System

In order for children to be able to sit still, pay attention, and remember abstract shapes, like letters and numbers, they first need to have developed their proprioceptive system.

The proprioceptive system is strengthened by physical movements, like sweeping with a broom, pushing a wheelbarrow, carrying groceries, emptying the trash, pulling weeds, or hanging from monkey bars. When children do these types of activities they stimulate pressure receptors within their muscles, tendons, and joints, thereby allowing their minds to make a map of the location of these various pressure receptors within the body. A connection is made between the mind of children and the various parts of their physical body. In this way children develop a sense of where their body is in space (proprioception), and even if their eyes are closed, the children will be able to feel or sense the location of muscles, joints and tendons within their trunk, arms, legs, fingers, and toes. In addition, as the children move their arms, legs, hands, and feet forwards, backwards, up, down, left and right, they will start to gain a sense of the spaces around them. Now, when these children look at the shapes of letters and numbers, their eyes will follow and track the lines and curves. The memory of these movements will then imprint upon their mind. They will have the capacity to make mental pictures or images of these numbers and letters. They will easily remember the correct orientation of numbers like 2 and 3 when they are writing.

Reading, Spelling, and Writing

Our current educational system is teaching children to read in a way that doesn’t make sense developmentally. Children in preschool and kindergarten are expected to memorize letters and words before their minds have developed the necessary pathways to identify letters, easily read words, and comprehend what they are reading. We are asking these young children to read, when the only part of their brain that is developed and available for reading words is the right hemisphere.

The right hemisphere first develops for reading, usually around four to seven years of age. This right part of the brain allows children to recognize words by sight. It enables children to focus on the first and last letters in a word and the overall length and shape of the word. It allows children to guess at words without paying much attention to spelling or matching sounds to letters (phonics). In contrast, the reading center in the left brain and the connecting bridge-like pathway between the left and the right brain don’t start developing until seven to nine years of age. It is this reading center in the left brain that allows children to match sounds to letters and enables them to sound out words phonetically. Now they can remember more accurately how words are spelled.

Because the reading center in the right brain sees abstract forms like letters and numbers as pictures, it makes sense to first teach children to read by relating the shapes of letters to actual pictures that children can relate to and draw. For example, the letter “M” can be represented by two mountain peaks with a valley in between. As teachers we can tell children that the sound “M” is the first sound one hears when saying the word “mountains.” Other examples might include drawing a king out of the letter “K,” a bunny out of the letter “B,” or waves out of a “W.” What doesn’t make developmental sense is expecting children to just memorize the abstract shape of the letter “F,” or memorize phrases like “F” as in the word FOX, “B” as in the word BOY, or “C” as in the word CROCODILE. These words do not make any visual sense to the reading center in the right brain. The letter “F” doesn’t look like a FOX, the letter “B” doesn’t look like a BOY, and the letter “C” does not look like a CROCODILE.

When we push young children to read when they only have access to their right hemisphere for reading, we create learning problems for them in the future. Since children using the reading center of the right hemisphere look at the first and last letters of a word, the length of that word, and then make a guess, they will look at a word like “STAMP” and may guess that the word is “STOP” or “STUMP.” If you show them the word, “TGOEHTER” they may read the word as “TOGETHER,” but will not realize that the word is misspelled. Words like “FRIEND,” “FIND,” and “FOUND,” as well as “FILLED,” “FILED,” and “FLOOD,” will all seem the same.

It takes a lot of mental effort to read words using only sight memory. Sight memory was meant to be used for only small words. Children who are reading using only their right hemisphere often are exhausted after reading just a few paragraphs, and can only parrot back words or sentences by memory. In addition, their minds are busy deciphering each word and therefore are not free to create the pictures and actual scenes associated with the words they are reading. This limits their overall comprehension. This may lead to difficulty being able to summarize, condense, or comprehend ideas very easily.

For all of these reasons, many experts are recommending that reading should be taught in school only after children have developed both their right and left reading centers. This will enable children to use sight memory for small words and the more efficient method of phonics for larger words. In addition, children need to have developed the “bridge” pathway that connects the two reading centers together. When children have developed this connection between the right and left cerebral hemispheres (bilateral integration), they can access both the right and left reading centers of their brain at the same time, and therefore can decide at any given moment whether to read a word by sight, if the word is short (a right hemisphere activity), or sound out the word phonetically if the word is long (a left hemisphere activity).

A physical sign that children have developed bilateral integration and can now read both by sight memory and phonics is shown by their ability to do cross-lateral exercises such as crossing the midline in form drawings, knitting or cross-lateral skipping which require both brain hemispheres to communicate. Children who can simultaneously access their reading centers in the right and left hemispheres of their brain will read easily and will create visual images and pictures in their mind related to the content of what they are reading and will have an easier time understanding the meaning behind the stories and books they are reading.

First grade is the time to introduce form drawing, learn the capital letters (as pictures that children can draw), and practice cursive writing. As the majority of children in the classroom strengthen their proprioceptive skills and integrate their right and left hemispheres (as evidenced by their ability to stand on one foot with their eyes closed, remember the shapes that are drawn on their backs, jump rope forward and backwards by themselves, and easily perform the cross lateral skip), then children are ready to read and write.

It is time to remove the desks from kindergartens and preschools. Our preschools and kindergartens need to fill their curriculums with play consisting of lots of sensory integration activities that will strengthen fine motor movements, visual motor abilities, balance, muscle tone, proprioception, as well as strengthen children’s social and emotional development. Activities like imaginary play, climbing, running, jumping, hopping, skipping, walking the balance beam, playing circle games, singing, playing catch, doing meaningful chores, painting, coloring, playing hand-clapping games, doing string games, and finger knitting will strengthen their minds for learning. Children need these healthy, harmonious, rhythmic, and noncompetitive movements to develop their brains. For it is the movements of their body that create the pathways in their mind for reading, writing, spelling, mathematics, and creative thinking.

Adapted from an article by Susan Johnson, M.D., a Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrician in Colfax, California.

Want to get your kids into college? Let them play

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Every day where we work, we see our young students struggling with the transition from home to school. They’re all wonderful kids, but some can’t share easily or listen in a group.

Some have impulse control problems and have trouble keeping their hands to themselves; others don’t always see that actions have consequences; a few suffer terribly from separation anxiety.

We’re not talking about preschool children. These are Harvard undergraduate students whom we teach and advise. They all know how to work, but some of them haven’t learned how to play.

Parents, educators, psychologists, neuroscientists, and politicians generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to preparing very young children for school: play-based or skills-based.

These two kinds of curricula are often pitted against one another as a zero-sum game: If you want to protect your daughter’s childhood, so the argument goes, choose a play-based program; but if you want her to get into Harvard, you’d better make sure you’re brushing up on the ABC flashcards every night before bed.

We think it is quite the reverse. Or, in any case, if you want your child to succeed in college, the play-based curriculum is the way to go.

In fact, we wonder why play is not encouraged in educational periods later in the developmental life of young people — giving kids more practice as they get closer to the ages of our students.

Why do this? One of the best predictors of school success is the ability to control impulses. Children who can control their impulse to be the center of the universe, and — relatedly — who can assume the perspective of another person, are better equipped to learn.

Psychologists calls this the “theory of mind”: the ability to recognize that our own ideas, beliefs, and desires are distinct from those of the people around us. When a four-year-old destroys someone’s carefully constructed block castle or a 20-year-old belligerently monopolizes the class discussion on a routine basis, we might conclude that they are unaware of the feelings of the people around them.

The beauty of a play-based curriculum is that very young children can routinely observe and learn from others’ emotions and experiences. Skills-based curricula, on the other hand, are sometimes derisively known as “drill and kill” programs because most teachers understand that young children can’t learn meaningfully in the social isolation required for such an approach.

How do these approaches look different in a classroom? Preschoolers in both kinds of programs might learn about hibernating squirrels, for example, but in the skills-based program, the child could be asked to fill out a worksheet, counting (or guessing) the number of nuts in a basket and coloring the squirrel’s fur.

In a play-based curriculum, by contrast, a child might hear stories about squirrels and be asked why a squirrel accumulates nuts or has fur. The child might then collaborate with peers in the construction of a squirrel habitat, learning not only about number sense, measurement, and other principles needed for engineering, but also about how to listen to, and express, ideas.

The child filling out the worksheet is engaged in a more one-dimensional task, but the child in the play-based program interacts meaningfully with peers, materials, and ideas.

Programs centered around constructive, teacher-moderated play are very effective. For instance, one randomized, controlled trial had 4- and 5-year-olds engage in make-believe play with adults and found substantial and durable gains in the ability of children to show self-control and to delay gratification. Countless other studies support the association between dramatic play and self-regulation.

Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person’s shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient for intellectual and social-emotional success.

The real “readiness” skills that make for an academically successful kindergartener or college student have as much to do with emotional intelligence as they do with academic preparation. Kindergartners need to know not just sight words and lower case letters, but how to search for meaning. The same is true of 18-year-olds.

As admissions officers at selective colleges like to say, an entire freshman class could be filled with students with perfect grades and test scores. But academic achievement in college requires readiness skills that transcend mere book learning. It requires the ability to engage actively with people and ideas. In short, it requires a deep connection with the world.

For a five year-old, this connection begins and ends with the creating, questioning, imitating, dreaming, and sharing that characterize play. When we deny young children play, we are denying them the right to understand the world. By the time they get to college, we will have denied them the opportunity to fix the world too.

Article by Erika Christakis and Nicholas Christakis – Originally published at CNN.com

Erika Christakis, MEd, MPH, is an early childhood teacher and former preschool director. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. Together, they serve as Masters of Pforzheimer House, one of the undergraduate residential houses at Harvard College. CNN article

Let ‘Em Out! The Many Benefits of Outdoor Play In Kindergarten

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For the typical American kindergartner, unstructured free play during the school day consists of 20 to 30 minutes of recess, and perhaps some time at indoor “stations” — perhaps creating with building blocks, costumes, or musical instruments. But what if there was more? What if the answer to “what did you do in school today?” was, “I climbed a tree, played in the mud, built a fire”?

Let ‘Em Out! The Many Benefits of Outdoor Play In Kindergarten