728x90
my iParenting
From Our Sponsors
e-newsletters
Sign up to receive our free weekly e-newsletters

new terms of use
new privacy policy
award-winning products
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families.
Home › Articles › Preschool Prep › Preschool Prep Series

Preschool Prep Series

The Waldorf Method

By Tara Swords

Pages:  1  2  3  4  

Georgia Klenn was never content with traditional schooling. She taught seventh-grade math while pursuing a degree in education, and was so dissatisfied that she cried nearly every night.

"We did a block on percentiles," Klenn says. "If I gave them the formula, they could plug into the formula and get an answer. But when I gave them a word problem and they had to think for themselves, they couldn't do it."

Frustrated, Klenn knew she didn't want to spend her life programming children to recite memorized facts. She wanted them to think. So when she heard of a style of teaching called the Waldorf method, she knew it was the answer. "Even before I had kids, I read about it and started crying," she says. "I thought, 'I wish I taught that way.' It's absolutely incredible."

Defining Waldorf
Waldorf Children The Waldorf method that so intrigued Klenn was founded by a man named Dr. Rudolph Steiner in the early part of the 20th century. He believed very strongly that education should not only engage the minds of children, but the bodies and spirits as well. These elements are not treated as separate; the Waldorf method is designed to educate all of them in concert.

"[Children] are 'sense' beings," says Waldorf teacher Steve Johnson. "They smell and see and taste a great deal and we try to appeal to that." That philosophy was enough to convince Klenn to enroll her son, Zachary, in a Waldorf school, where he's been learning from Johnson for most of the past six years.

The Waldorf Classroom
When Zachary turned 4, Klenn started him in the Great Oaks School in Evanston, Ill., and started volunteering there herself. In his early childhood classroom, Zachary and the other children participated in activities aimed at making them comfortable in their own bodies. They baked bread, made soup, sang songs, tended a garden, danced and played dress-up and make-believe. Johnson says all these activities aren't merely play; they have a very specific purpose.


Pages:  1  2  3  4  


Want to see more?