Programs

2011-2012 Classes

Parent/Toddler Classes
18 mos. to 3 yrs. 6 mos.
Tues. -or- Wed.
9:45 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.

3-Day Preschool
3 yrs. to 4 yrs. 9 mos.
Monday – Wednesday
9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

5-Day Kindergarten
4 yrs. 9 mos. to 6 yrs.
Monday – Friday
9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Grades One and Two
Monday – Friday
9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Parent/Toddler
The parent/toddler class provides an opportunity for the parents and their children to come together once a week in a warm, home-like environment. It offers the heart-felt rhythm and beauty of Waldorf early childhood education. The whole child is taught through creative play, song and movement, storytelling and handwork, while the parent is given a place to regain peace and strength in a natural, communal environment.

Preschool & Kindergarten
Waldorf preschool and kindergarten classes are an extension of the family experience, an intermediary step for the child between the home and formal schooling. The goal is to provide a warm, calm, secure, aesthetic environment in which the imagination and creativity of the child will flourish.

The quality of the Waldorf physical environment is integral to its goals for the children. The feeling of warmth and security is largely created by using natural materials: woods, cotton, wool in the construction of the décor and toys. The curtains transmit a warm glow into the room. Ideally, the walls and floor of the room are of natural wood. In this warm environment are placed toys, which the children can use to imitate and transform the activities that belong to everyday adult life. In one corner stands a wooden scale and baskets for children to pretend they are grocery shopping; a pile of timber stands ready to be constructed into a playhouse, a boat, or a train; a rocking horse invites a child to become a rider; homemade dolls lie in wooden cradles surrounded by wooden frames and cloths the children can use to create a pretend family and play house. Pinecones and flowers are artistically dispersed. Lovely watercolors adorn the walls. The effect of this beautiful arrangement of decorations and toys is the feeling of stepping out of the business and clutter of modern life into a sanctuary where one can breathe easily, relax, and play according to the impulses of one’s heart.

The 3 R’s are reverence, repetition and rhythm. Structured group activities consist of finger plays, singing in three languages, reciting poems, and doing body movements known as eurythmy. Fairy tales are told to the children on successive days, culminating in the tale as a puppet show offered to the children by the teacher or as a play with costumes acted out by the children with the teacher narrating. Art and crafts consist of water coloring with the three primary colors to impart a true appreciation of the nature of color, sculpting with beeswax, drawing with beeswax crayons, finger knitting and baking.

It has been noted that the fantasy play of children who attend the Waldorf kindergarten changes. Their fantasies are often of being the lion and the shepherd, of being the characters from the fairy tales told to them each week. The children become more respectful of one another, move with greater self-assurance and grace, and are much more open in their creative selfexpression. This kind of growth, this kind of unfolding of the imagination and creativity through free play, art, drama, music, oral recitation and dance are essential to our time.

Grades Program
Maple Village School now offers first and second grades in a combined class.  Each year we will add at least one grade until we have the full eight grades.

During the elementary school years, the educator’s task is to transform all that the child needs to know about the world into the language of the imagination, a language that is as accurate and as responsible to reality as intellectual analysis is in the adult.  When seen through the imagination, nature, the world of numbers, mathematics, geometrical form, and the practical work of the world are food and drink to the soul of the child.  Whatever speaks to the imagination and is deeply experienced stirs and activates the feelings and is remembered and learned.  For information on Waldorf grades curriclum, visit  http://www.whywaldorfworks.org/02_W_Education/grades1_8.asp