Inside the kindergarten we have an environment that is designed for creative, imitative play. We have houses and dens built from wooden clothes horses, with cloths draped over them as walls and roofs, we also have fleece mats that the children can move to have soft places to curl up and play on. The children love our large wooden blocks that are used to build castles, boats, elaborate slides or skate parks, or anything else that has taken a child’s fancy. With these the children are learning about construction, sharing, turn-taking and balancing as well as their individual experiences they learn from in their play.

 

Smaller resources such as shells and conkers are stored in baskets on shelves accessible to the children, and are used in imaginative ways during creative play. We have a collection of handmade puppets, animals and dolls that are regularly played with.

 

For the children who want to be busy with something other than play, we always have crayons and paper available for mark making and drawing. There are also daily teacher led activities. In keeping with the principles of Waldorf early years education where children learn through imitation, the adults are always busy with a meaningful activity, which the children can join in with.

 

An example of a weekly rhythm is that on Monday we have wet on wet watercolour painting.  On Tuesdays we chop vegetables to make soup, which is shared by all at snack time. On Wednesday we have baking where all the children will bake something to take home. Thursday is walk day and Friday is our day for cleaning, polishing and mending. 

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