Kindergarten Curriculum
Science: Gardening, cooking, and outdoor nature observation are the key components of the science curriculum that is integrated into the kindergarten day. Children take walks to observe and enjoy the outdoors. Children grind wheat and make bread and prepare a vegetable soup for snack times. General healthy hygiene is practiced with hand washing, dishwashing and other regular household chores done at appropriate times during the school day.
Language Arts: Teachers emphasize speech and pronunciation, vocabulary, and listening skills through the mediums of singing, story telling, poems, memorizing rhymes and verses, and dramatic performances. Language arts are enhanced through speech, songs and verses done by the children in combination with specific movement, games and patterns. These exercises encourage coordination, concentration, crossing the mid-line barriers and other preparation for successfully comprehending and reading language.
Social Skills: Social skills are fostered in every activity by learning to live, work, and play in a group. Sharing and taking turns is learned. Children help to care for belongings in organized “clean-up times”. They learn to care for each other in simple tasks like setting the table for snack and lunch, serving food, and meal clean up. There is a specific rhythm to each day that is duplicated weekly. This rhythm helps to instill in children an inner discipline for work and play. Conflicts and disputes are resolved with the help of the classroom teachers, and lead to personal growth and development.
Music: Music is an integral part of the Waldorf classroom. The children sing in circle time, during transitions of activities, during some handwork, bread baking, cleaning, and during story time. The pentatonic mode is used in singing, and with chimes and lyres as the teacher tells stories, or prepares the mood for rest time and transitions to take place.
Art: Art is an integral part of the Waldorf classroom. The children engage in craft making, drawing, and painting with watercolor, modeling with beeswax, and sewing. There are specific periods for beeswax, drawing and painting during the week. Craft making is often done during the morning “free play “ time and children can engage in it or not.
Math: Math is integrated into the kindergarten day. Stories and finger play are designed with a mathematical basis. Children learn patterns of organization playing with shells, stones and beans. They develop sense of patterns and design in making simple crafts like necklaces, finger knitting, and sewing simple dolls. Counting is used in the circle games as well as in the simple chores of setting and clearing the table, and preparing for guided activities like cooking, sewing, finger knitting, painting and drawing.
PE / Health: PE and health are integrated into the kindergarten day. Children have daily recess outdoors for one hour. The also do some work in the outdoor gardens and plant indoors. The Kindergartens take frequent hikes – usually daily, weather permitting. Children practice proper hygiene with structured hand and dishwashing times, helping to clean chairs and table, and helping with the classroom laundry and ironing (supervised of course). Children learn on how to grind flour and bake bread, as this snack is prepared every Wednesday. Children bring in vegetables from home and make soup every Thursday. Parents are encouraged to cook with their children and to only send healthy and wholesome food to school with their children for snack and lunch. Children are not allowed sugary foods or candy at school. |
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