Early Childhood Education & the Waldorf School Plan

the long version

Introduction The aim of this publication is to report on work with preschool children in nursery and kindergarten, which has been carried out for many years along the lines of the Waldorf school methods of education inaugurated by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the great Austrian philosopher, educator and founder of the Goetheanum College in Switzerland. He personally led the development of the original Waldorf School from its opening in 1919 until his death in 1925. He has given us a key to understanding the natural laws of a child’s development. Rudolf Steiner gave a rich contribution for early childhood education in lectures and educational conferences. A series of quotations appears at the end of this Monograph to help in the understanding of this approach. Living with and working to apply his principles has made it possible to develop methods for arranging a nursery and a kindergarten as places where children can freely develop within their own world, delivered from the impact of certain harmful influences of our highly intellectual age. These methods have proven themselves a real answer to the needs of very young children. They are applicable anywhere, as they are based on what is universally and fundamentally human. This publication does not claim to be complete in any of its chapters. It is written for the purpose of saying only what is necessary to convey essentials and therefore leaves many details to the ever fresh initiative of the individual teachers and parents. Contents Principles for the Education of Pre-School Children Activities in Nursery and Kindergarten The Child at Home The Layout of a Kindergarten Equipment Indoors Equipment Outdoors Selected Quotations Concluding Remarks About the Author Elizabeth Grunelius was asked by Rudolf Steiner to open a kindergarten class in 1920 at the first Waldorf school in Stuttgart, Germany, when she was about 25 years old and a graduate of a teacher training course.