2024 - 2025 Kindergarten Main Lesson with Ms. Smith
IN ORDER TO BEGIN KINDERGARTEN, THE STUDENT MUST HAVE TURNED 4 OR 5 BY MAY 1ST OF THAT YEAR. LOTUS & IVY KINDERGARTEN IS A MIXED-AGE PROGRAM ON A TWO-YEAR ROTATION.
In our Lotus & Ivy play-based mixed-age Kindergarten, we strive to preserve early childhood innocence and natural wonder by creating a secure, inviting, and joyful environment where each child is met with respect, warmth, and emotionally supportive interest. We believe that imitating the beautiful, meaningful, and authentic supports healthy development, enabling each child to go forth in life with curiosity, initiative, and purpose. Our activities are centered around imaginative play, arts and crafts, seasonal activities, snack preparation, nature exploration, and rich stories. Early learning is profoundly connected to the child’s own physical body and sensory experiences, and everything the young child sees, hears, and touches has an effect. In our kindergarten’s loving and creative atmosphere, young children acquire the confidence and discipline they will need for the challenging academic work of grade school. Pre-literacy and pre-math skills are infused into many of our activities, setting the groundwork for the academic years ahead; however, it is essential to note that we do not teach formal reading, including letter recognition, until Class 1.
“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” ~ William Butler Yeats
Our curriculum is centered on the following research, and we feel these articles will also be beneficial to families at home:
“Improving Children’s Health through Play: Exploring Issues and Recommendations” by Joan Almon, A Collaboration between Alliance for Childhood and US Play Coalition.
Resources on play from NAEYC
From the Online Waldorf Library, “Why Children Need to Play in School.”
Our well-structured and consistent daily, weekly, and seasonal classroom rhythm includes different activities of an artistic or practical nature, which provide a familiar and predictable environment to support the healthy development of children as they move wholeheartedly into experiential learning. Additionally, through our suggested weekly “kindness tasks,” our students are encouraged to practice gratitude, kindness, and social responsibility by helping care for their environment and others within and beyond their homes. The encouragement of social skills, appreciation for food, and manners further extend a child’s social intelligence, which is needed to help them become healthy, successful adults.
Through the repetition of our five daily affirmations, such as “I’ve got great ideas,” “It’s ok to ask for help,” and “I can do a lot more than I think I can,” our kindergarten students internalize positive phrases about themselves that help to shape and strengthen their own inner voice so it can become their reality.
CIRCLE TIME, SEASONAL STORIES, & ART (TUESDAYS)
During circle, the class is led through a movement “journey” of seasonal songs, poems, fingerplays, fine and gross motor gestures, and healthy sensory movement that nourishes the senses. These elements build language skills and provide the basis for mathematics through counting games, rhymes, and rhythm. Rich, pictorial language and rhythmic movement are meant to feed the life of the imagination, strengthen the child’s growing memory, increase spatial awareness, and encourage healthy brain development. We repeat the same circle every week for several weeks. Through this repetition, the children gradually learn the verses and songs, thus building their memory, vocabulary, and skills in modeling movements and gestures.
In addition, students gain strength, stamina, dexterity, and agility by bringing movement into artistic expression. A further contribution to healthy language development is our practice of oral storytelling, which embraces the inner fantasy and creativity within all of us. While actively listening to stories, the experience of envisioning mental imagery is evoked within a child, memory is developed, and a sense of language’s wonder, beauty, and expressiveness is cultivated. These elements are crucial in developing a child’s future reading comprehension. During a weekly seasonal nature story, imaginative beeswax modeling is encouraged to further improve finger strength and fine motor control. Art invites the child to explore color and possibility while fostering a sense of accomplishment. There is an artist inside each of us, which can emerge with joyful practice and patience. Children are introduced to endless color possibilities in a Waldorf kindergarten through wet-on- wet watercolor painting. This experiential painting method is dreamy and mostly formless, allowing the child to fully experience the vibrant rainbow of hues that can be mixed from only three paint colors—yellow, cyan blue, and magenta. Rather than painting specific forms, images reveal themselves and are transformed as the paints “dance” across the paper, igniting the imagination and wonder of color discovery.
Students participate in watercolor painting and beeswax crayon drawing in alternating weeks. Natural beeswax crayons not only smell nice, but they create vibrant colors that offer a very different experience from synthetic crayons. The children are encouraged to illustrate what they like, but older students often choose to copy the teacher’s drawing, which is frequently inspired by the nature story they just heard.
GAMES & HANDCRAFT ACTIVITIES (WEDNESDAYS)
Daily full-body movement is essential in developing, stimulating, and nourishing a child’s lower senses (balance, self-movement, life sense, and touch.) For example, during circle, games, and beanbag exercises, students move up/down, forward/backward, left/right, turn around, jump, stand on tiptoe, crawl, etc., to develop and enhance their balance and proprioception. A child’s middle senses (smell, taste, vision, and warmth) are nurtured through practical activities such as cooking and handwork. Properly nurturing these lower and middle senses is vital for the healthy development of the higher senses (hearing, language, thought, and ego), which is needed for future academic learning.
Lotus & Ivy’s handcraft curriculum, developed by an experienced Waldorf-trained teacher, helps children see how their hands can create lovely, useful things while encouraging imaginative curiosity and creativity. The children will participate in meaningful, practical work such as seasonal crafts, hand-sewing, simple nature crafting, and finger knitting. Some of our projects will take several classes to complete, requiring patience and concentration, small muscle development, and hand-eye coordination. These foundational skills are essential for reading, writing, and future academics.
BEANBAGS, PUPPETRY, & SNACK PREPARATION (THURSDAYS)
Our teachers support and model healthy “will activity” by providing opportunities for the child to develop their physical body and work with their hands. Beanbag movement is incorporated into our class each week, which helps students integrate their midlines, balance, and proprioception. Puppetry is a common storytelling method in Waldorf schools that visually draws the listener into a magical story world. Using simple characters and natural objects that take on a life of their own as they are moved with careful intention, puppetry calls upon the child’s inner imagination and visualization to add their own details to the scene as the story unfolds. In our current media-soaked culture, children are often overwhelmed with powerful, quickly shifting images and intense impressions that confuse young minds and their senses. But when stories are calmly acted out in front of the child without intense dramatization, the child can more easily follow a story as it plays out step by step before their eyes. In short, puppetry has a very calming and healing effect on children.
Our puppet shows are created from carefully chosen stories from cultures around the world that are rich with vocabulary, syntax, imagery, and metaphors and depict archetypal human experiences that help guide a child’s moral compass. These stories also help develop a child’s ability to relate to others on a social level and understand and overcome challenges. We repeat the same puppet show weekly for a month. Children learn through imitation, and often, after seeing a puppet show, a child’s imagination is sparked, and they feel motivated to create their own puppet show using available materials they find around their home, allowing the child to process their feelings tangibly through their own puppet play to make sense of stories they have heard or created from their own heart.
Through simple snack preparation, our students participate in diligent work that has value and purpose. Children naturally love to help in the kitchen, and their ability to imitate at this age is remarkable. It is a wonderfully satisfying sensory experience for a child to smell, touch, and taste different ingredients to prepare a healthy, imaginative snack or delicious soup that their family can appreciate and enjoy. Learning to use a knife or a peeler safely requires focus and helps to develop fine motor skills.
WEEKLY/MONTHLY/SEASONAL RHYTHMS
Children work best with a rhythm of alternating periods of concentration and expansion, much like inhaling and exhaling. Children crave a daily rhythm that is predictable and consistent because it frees up the brain space and will for good work, and it helps children to steady their emotional responses. Simply put, the child can relax because they know what’s coming next. This early experience of regularity is the seed for self-discipline in the future. Just as each day has a rhythm, each week and each year’s season also has consistent rhythms. Our stories, circles, crafts, and activities will be guided by seasonal rhythms, bringing a sense of wonder and reverence for nature to the children.
OUTSIDE PLAY & GARDENING
Outdoor play allows children to fully engage their senses, not only providing them the opportunity to use their imaginations, develop critical thinking skills, stretch their muscles, and practice their motor skills, but daily time outdoors also allows for problem-solving, transformation, flexible thinking, and the opportunity to take risks. The kindergarten child learns about nature best through first-hand experiences and discovery. Gardening through the seasons is a beautiful and enriching experience for children, and families are encouraged to garden as part of their at-home activities. Decorating your home with homegrown flowers and eating the vegetables your child grows for snacks allows them to see the fruits of their labor for themselves.
EXPECTATIONS
Your child’s kindergarten teacher will suggest optional weekly activities for students to work on outside class time. Our classes are recorded and may be watched later by students who cannot attend a class. The recordings are not sold or shared with anyone outside of the class. Our kindergarten class size is limited to 14, allowing the teacher to get to know each student. Because our mixed-age kindergarten enrolls 4- to 6-year-olds, students may spend more than one year in kindergarten. To enroll in our kindergarten program, students must have turned four or five years old by May 1. To meet Lotus & Ivy’s Class 1 cut-off, a rising first-grade child must be six by May 1. Because many new skills are introduced and practiced in kindergarten, a grown-up must readily support the students learning during class each day, especially on Wednesdays and Thursdays when more in-depth projects and cooking activities are scheduled.
What Parents are Saying about Ms. Smith’s Kindergarten Main Lesson!
"Ms. Smith is like having an interactive Mr. Rogers for a Kindergarten Teacher. She is encouraging, patient, fun, and her passion for education shines through her work.”
"We did our intro meeting with Ms. Smith back in July 2022. She was interested in our family, our son, our story. I knew right away that she would be a great kindergarten teacher for our 5-year-old. We were planning to travel abroad for about 4-5 months and wanted some daily continuity, both teacher and classmates, so our son felt grounded. Ms. Smith was the pillar of this continuity, and we are very happy with our decision. I'd highly recommend these classes to any parent looking to support their child with skills around emotional intelligence and creativity."
"If you are looking for a teacher for your child who gives her everything and teaches from the heart, look no further. Ms. Smith is one of those rare gems who embodies just that. Through celebrating the seasons and different festivals across the world, Ms. Smith instills a wonder, curiosity, and excitement about life that is contagious. Her joyful presence to those learning and watching sets a precedent for the children to follow, through her imaginative and well-thought-out classes, which are relaxed and fun! Not to mention the wealth of resources and wisdom she shares with her class families. Through the sometimes-challenging times of being a mama, I have felt truly supported by her presence, even if it is across the other side of the world! We are looking forward to participating in our second year of Ms. Smith’s classes with Lotus & Ivy already!”
"Our experience in Kindergarten has been everything we hoped it would be. It has been a place for our daughter to find nourishment and growth. It was a place of peace and joy for her and for me as well. I really got to just make space for her and support her instead of feeling like I needed to help her do all the things. We couldn’t have asked for a better experience.”
“When one thinks of the ideal Waldorf Kindergarten teacher for their child, she is it and then some. She is so amazing at nurturing joy, wonder, and curiosity. Our daughter adores her and often imitates her lessons and mannerisms. We are so fortunate to have her help guide our little one. She exudes joy in everything she does.”