Waldor F

i have heaps to say about the Waldorf philosophies... but i'm too lazy. anyway, this is how i was raised, i went to a waldorf kindergarten. anyone else ever had experience with this interesting way of teaching?

alrighty, i'd like to delve deeper into this subject, something i feel is greatly responsible for molding and shaping the person i've become today.

WaldorF is a fascinating way to grow. in my kindergarten (which i attended ages 4 to 8), i met some really cool kids. my teachers were so sweet, especially my canadian Darlene and german Christiana, whom i still try to keep contact with every once in a while. at my school i learned to fingerweave, knit (i knit clothes for my dolls), make fruit salad! (each day we all would bring a different fruit and make fruit salad and oatmeal), make soup (lentil soup.. mm mm), make bread (every day, wheat bread, and we could shape it however we liked), watercolour (no white on the page, all colour. no specific shapes, just blening colour.. extremely calming but fun)... we'd sit in circles and sing songs and play little games; our teachers would take turn reading us stories, and then sometimes we acted them out with our little cloth dolls and puppets.

reading and spelling skills we attained through questioning our reading material, and math was learned through our cooking. beautifully simplistic, but it gave me my roots in the academic 'essentials'.

waldorf is about freedom, and while it is very structured it was designed to teach children how to get the most out of life, mainly through the arts. i'm so thankful that i could experience this form of teaching/learning, for it is so simplistic and perfect in my eyes.

i've got this rad button.. it says "WaldorF is a School, Not a Salad."

                          -moth

Some friends of mine went to a waldorf school for a while and they really loved it. Then, for some reason their parents made them go to public school... They were placed 2 grade levels lower then the other kids their age because they didn't learn the same stuff at the waldorf school... they just learned different stuff there... stuff that they don't teach in public school. Anyway, now I am trying to get them to quit school.

JesseBorges

From eighteen months to about five or six years old, I was raised in a Waldorf kindergarten/playgroup/community, and I loved it! It's a gentle, natural, enlightening way for children to grow, I think.. They believe in simple toys (in other words, no fire-zapping-Doctor-Death action figures at age two...) made from wood and soft cloths and handmade woolen dolls.... They firmly believe that art should be at the center of learning. Free watercolor painting was something that we did frequently, and it was creative and calming. We had St. Michelmas ceramonies, and Maypole dances....puppet shows and long stories.. The Waldorf principle shows the importance of magic and imagination, and stresses that children should NOT be forced to grow up too fast. All in all, an enlightening experience. My mother tells me that she was shocked when the mothers around her started taking their kids out of the Waldorf group (when they hit "school age", around six) and putting them straight into *public school* from there! At that point, the group in our New Orleans area was shifting so much, that my parents decided to take me out. After a short-lived episode of trying preschool, we concluded that homeschooling was the best option, and I haven't done anything remotely public-school related since then! Our whole family still believes that the Waldorf method is fantastic, even though we're not closely involved in it anymore. Do yourself a favor and read some Rudolf Steiner. (he's the founder of Waldorf education)

                         ~/Landis/~

they're having an open house next week at a waldorf school nearby. i was interested in going, but it said that you have to be an adult with a baby in your arms. huh? i don't really understand that rule.

my mom pointed out to me that waldorf isn't really for everyone. i agree that for people who have enough money for it and won't be labeled as "dumb" if they don't learn how to read and write by a certain age can benefit from it, but people who don't have a lot of money and are already disadvantaged in the school systems and beyond could be set farther back. i suppose it's sort of like unschooling in general, then.

otherwise it sounds like a creative and interesting method of teaching.

(mari)