“This is an outstanding school where the teachers love and respect each child and treat them accordingly. The school environment is calm peaceful and beautiful. Children realize their full potential here, as whole human beings.”
Early Childhood Programing
Tamarack offers several options for young students to enroll in our early childhood program for children age 4 (on or before May 31st) through age 6:
3 mornings (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays)
3 full days (Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesday)
5 mornings
5 full days
The morning program is from 8AM - 12:30PM. This allows the children to engage in creative play, circle, snack, outside play, and lunch before going home.
Tamarack offers three combined-age kindergartens (4 year olds - 6 year olds). These classrooms prepare children for elementary school by alternating between free play and planned group activities, such as watercolor painting, baking, storytelling, and beeswax modeling. An array of materials is always on hand for creative play.
Our Waldorf early childhood certified teachers lead the students through songs, finger plays, and games of challenging speech work, movement and rhythm – all precursors to healthy development in writing, reading and math at the grade school level. Each class has one full time lead teacher as well as an assistant in the classroom throughout the day.
Here is a sample of a daily rhythm found in Tamarack’s early childhood classrooms.
Rhythm/Routines
Just as the child lives in a rhythmical life of waking and sleeping, we also work with a regular rhythm for our daily and weekly activities. These include: music and verse, accompanied by movement and gesture; stories; the practical activities of gardening, cooking, sewing; and the artistic activities of drawing, modeling, and watercolor painting. Rhythm allows the children to expand out into the world through play and then to come together in a more focused activity, such as morning circle or story time. Rhythm brings a feeling of well-being, stability, comfort, and joy. It also creates a balance between playing out of their own initiative and working together. The daily and weekly rhythm fits into the wider rhythm of the year, with its changing seasons and festivals.
Environment
Young children are open to every impression from their environment. Their imitation is a sign of their capacity to live deeply into all that surrounds them. It is through imitation that young children learn. We strive to provide an environment worthy of imitation, where they can play imaginatively and creatively. We give children natural materials for nurturing their senses and awakening their fantasies. This exercising of healthy fantasy in the early years is important for creativity and imagination in the intellectual life in later years.
For more information on fostering the power of imagination, read this blog post.
“Play is the work of childhood.”
Play
Play can be viewed as one of the main foundations of Tamarack’s early childhood program. Play is not purely fun but there is evidence of the profound learning that occurs and is necessary for social, emotional and academic development. When adults allow children the space and time for immersive, creative play, we provide them with opportunities to discovery the limitless possibilities that the world offers.
Learn more about the importance of play here.
Article: Learning Through Play
Study: Less-structured time in children's daily lives predicts self-directed executive functioning
Story
Storytelling is a powerful artform. A story can be a learning tool, to teach about season changes or help children to navigate social challenges. In Waldorf education stories are also viewed as a therapeutic tool to help children when they need extra emotional support or a teacher might use a story to help a class overcome some behavioral issues. Often stories are told during a specific time during the day or their might be a need for an impromptu story. Stories will often be told and retold as the teacher deems necessary. Here are some more resources about storytelling in our curriculum.
Baking and Cooking
Baking and cooking is an important part of the Tamarack early childhood experience.Often, class teachers will have a weekly rotation or rhythm to the snacks. A regular weekly rhythm of the same snacks on the same days of each week helps children orient themselves in time and know what to expect on a given day. In class, if a child asked, “What’s today?” the answer is often, “It’s Rice with Tamari/Barley Bun/Baked Oatmeal day.”
This is a sample menu from the Sunshine Garden:
Monday: Rice (made with full-fat coconut milk) topped with tamari
Tuesday: Barley buns with dairy or vegan butter
Wednesday: Roasted vegetables (that families bring) and oyster crackers
Thursday: Multi-grain crackers and nut butter, or trail mix
Friday: Baked oatmeal
Ms. Faith, Ms. Halle, and Ms. Monica, our early childhood teachers recorded a conversation about cooking and baking in the Waldorf early childhood classroom. Here is a link to their conversation.
Work
Although the child is given time to play and explore both inside the classroom and out there is also time spent helping the child to engage in the work of the classroom and self care. Children learn important life skills such as tidying an area after they are done playing, setting the table and also cleaning up after snacks and meals, mending, folding, putting on and taking off of outside clothing and shoes, placing them in their proper place, learning how to tie shoes, and other important skills. This helps them seem themselves as active participants in their community and allows them to feel more independent. Having the older children in the kindergarten to show the younger children how things are done also helps to develop leadership skills.
Here is a link to a video on incorporating real life activities into the classroom.
But what about the academics?
Waldorf schools want the early childhood classroom to be a place of exploration and discovery as well as a place for children to work to understand and develop their social and emotional skills. They are figuring out where they stand in their world and how to communicate with those around them. Having a strong sense of these skills will make them successful when they are developmentally ready to learn the academic skills.
There is a lot of research that has shown the benefits to holding off formal academic instruction until closer to age 7. Here are a few resources that help support this.
Why forcing kids to do things ‘sooner and faster’ doesn’t get them further in school.
Finnish Kids Don't Learn To Read In Kindergarten. They Turn Out Great Anyway.
Stanford researchers show we’re sending many children to school way too early.