Inspire your creativity through an exploration of archetypal empowerment this summer! Throughout the ages, archetypes of soul and spirit have moved through humanity and shaped living realities. Our conscious understanding of the qualities and capacities that these hold offers immense enrichment for the soul. When we invite the wisdom of the archetypes, we embrace the wholeness of humanity - and are able to choose and create stories and puppet plays that bring a healing impulse to our children and communities. Join us for this short series of in-depth presentations designed to inspire an inner journey through imaginative dimensions. More ...

As far as we know, Rudolf Steiner gave indications for form drawing on three occasions. Each time he presented new elements out of which with some imagination one could build a structure of teaching  material for the first five elementary grades - to the  moment when the actual teaching of geometry begins.  His indications illuminate entirely different aspects of form drawing, but these do not exclude one another. One should study them together, then one realizes that they do supplement one another. Rudolf Steiner gave the first elements of form drawing in 1919 in Stuttgart. in his basic courses for teachers he spoke for the first time about form drawing  and described it as a means of educating the temperaments. With the participants. who were to be the teachers of the first Waldorf School. he worked out forms and colors for the various temperaments and led each of these over into its opposite. Rudolf Steiner suggests that on the very first day of school the teacher should have the children do certain color exercises, also have them draw a straight line and a curved line on the blackboard. He stresses the value, the pedagogical importance, of this  exercise. This simple line drawing and its repetition the next day make a lasting impression upon the children. From the point of view of form drawing it is noteworthy that Rudolf Steiner lays out at once from the very beginning, for the children to create and experience, the two polaric principles of form: the straight, radiating line and the curved line, the first as an expression of thinking, the second as an expression of the will, seen from the point of view of the soul. Learn Form Drawing via this online course. More ...

August 3–14 | One or Two Week Options
Monday–Thursday: 8:00 AM–3:30 PM
Friday: 8:00 AM–1:00 PM

Designed for those with prior Waldorf training or experience, this program focuses on strengthening classroom skills, artistic capacities, and inner development.

Each day includes shared music, eurythmy, and anthroposophical study alongside specialized workshops.

Week One (August 3-7) Offerings:

• Waldorf Literacy Methods
• Early Childhood Development
• Becoming Healing Educators
• Music & Recorder Teaching

Week Two (August 10-14) Offerings:

• Waldorf Mathematics
• Storytelling & Gesture
• Responsive Teaching Strategies
• Biography & Inner Work
• Blackboard & Crayon Artistry
• Vocal Development

More info ...

Dear Friends,

Thank you for taking the time to peruse the April News. Thank you to our contributors! I hope you all had wonderful Spring festivals! Now we turn to Earth Day, which has been celebrated on April 22nd, every year since it began, in 1970, the year I was a senior in high school. A climate activist and a congressman joined forces and challenged people to stand up for the environment with the same force they had used in the anti-war demonstrations. The result: 20 million people took to the streets to protest Earth pollution.(The tipping point was a huge oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara!) Earth day has been celebrated every year since then. Many environmental laws were passed and the EPA was established by President Nixon in response to this movement! It has a fascinating history!

Now, 56 years later, it seems like all that work is at risk! What can we do now? I have been working on a Mother Earth puppet for a puppet show I am preparing for our May online workshop, where we will create a ring of fairies, from the story: ”A Maypole Dream”. It is a daunting task to create an Earth Mother figure. How many of you have tried it? It would be nice to see your examples. Humbled, I worked on this figure many times. Although she is not finished, and may never be, it is a wonderful journey to try to find expression for the living being of the earth. Wouldn’t this be a refreshing way to celebrate Earth Day, to create Mother Earth puppets? Please send in your pictures for our May News!

• Earth Day - Marjorie
• In Memoriam ~ Cherry Short-Lee - Shared by Janene Ping
• Sharings
  • Easter in the Devon Christian Community - Joyce Reilly
  • Puppetry at the 100 Years Celebration of Waldorf Kindergartens in Dornach -Janene Ping
  • Third Grade Puppetry Projects - Jennifer Aguirre
  • The Ugly Duckling, a developing puppet show - Mary Fisher
• More Online Collaborative Circles and Puppetry and Storytelling Workshops
• Calendar of Events

May your puppets spark ever more joy in the world! Warmly, Marjorie

More ...

​A Maypole Dream by Marjorie Rehbach and Christine Nietert

An Illustrated Story for Young and Old

When the bright colors of spring failed to appear after winter one year, the fairies wanted to find them and bring them back to earth. How did they manage? Walking through the woods, one spring morning, the story of “A Maypole Dream” appeared, as a gift, to the author. It is a tale which brings gratitude for the nature spirits back into our celebrations of the miracles of the seasons. The book contains this story and beautiful illustrations, and can be enjoyed by young and old – all those who love the weaving colored ribbons of the Maypole dance! More ...

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Kelly Meyerhoff and staff photographer Mark Hoffman visited Thoreau College students twice this winter in Viroqua, Wisconsin, United States.

Students are taught to notice nature at Thoreau College, a small experimental school in western Wisconsin that operates very much offline. Assigned readings are in the form of books or paper handouts. Phones are banned during classes, meals, meetings and field trips.

The first field trip of the spring semester, five days of camping, came in mid-February. The temperature hovered above freezing during the days and dipped into the teens at night.

Anson Bond, a student from New Orleans, maintains a fire Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, during winter camping, part of a program offered by Thoreau College near Lafarge, Wisconsin. The college, founded in 2015, offers gap semester programs offering hands-on experiences in folk arts, homesteading skills, outdoor expeditions and other programs. The school is in nearby Viroqua, Wisconsin.

The students' week was filled with a full spectrum of emotions: Impatience, because cooking meals over fire took longer than in a kitchen. Satisfaction, because food hits differently when hungry and cold. Curiosity, when they found ... more ...

A Maypole Dream by Marjorie Rehbach and Christine Nietert

An Illustrated Story for Young and Old

When the bright colors of spring failed to appear after winter one year, the fairies wanted to find them and bring them back to earth. How did they manage? Walking through the woods, one spring morning, the story of “A Maypole Dream” appeared, as a gift, to the author. It is a tale which brings gratitude for the nature spirits back into our celebrations of the miracles of the seasons. The book contains this story and beautiful illustrations, and can be enjoyed by young and old – all those who love the weaving colored ribbons of the Maypole dance!

Paperback book. $14.95 (USD) per copy plus shipping. Copyright by Sophia Institute Publishing (Standard Copyright License). 2nd Edition. Publisher: Sophia Institute Publishing. Published 2022. Language: English. Pages: 24. Paperback. Interior Ink: Full color. Dimensions (inches): 8.5 wide x 11 tall. More ...

​It is an oft-repeated and a justifiable opinion, with regard to all the realms of human spiritual life, that man's greatest riddle here in our physical life is man himself. And we may truly say that a large part of our scientific activity, of our reflection, and of much besides in man's life of thought, is applied to the solving of this human riddle, to discerning a little wherein the essence of human nature consists. Natural science and spiritual science try to solve from different sides this great riddle comprised in the word Man. In the main, all the more profound natural scientific research seeks to attain its final goal by bringing together all the processes of nature, and so forth, in order to comprehend the external laws. And all spiritual science seeks the sources of existence for the sake of comprehending, of fathoming, man's being and destiny. If then, on the one hand, it is unquestioned that in general man's greatest riddle is man himself, we may say that in relation to life this expression may have a still deeper significance, in that it is necessary on the other hand to emphasize what each of us feels upon meeting another person: namely, that fundamentally each single person is in turn an enigma for others and for himself because of his special nature and being. Ordinarily, when we speak of this human enigma, we have in mind man in general, man without distinction regarding this or that individuality; and certainly many problems appear for us when we wish to understand human nature in general. But today we have not to do with the general riddles of existence, but rather with that enigma, not less significant for life, which each person we meet presents to us. For how endlessly varied are human beings in their deepest individual essence!

When we survey human life we shall have to be especially attentive to this riddle which each person presents, for our entire social life, our relation of man to man, must depend more upon how in individual cases we are able to approach with our feeling, with our sensibility, rather than merely with our intelligence, that individual human enigma which stands before us so often each day, with which we have to deal so often. How difficult it is regarding the people we meet to come to a clear knowledge of the various sides of their nature, and how much depends in life upon our coming to such clear knowledge regarding those people with whom we come in touch. We can of course only approach quite gradually the solution of the whole riddle of the human individual, of which each person presents a special phase, for there is a great gap between what is called human nature in general and that which confronts us in each human individual.

Spiritual science, or as we call it more recently, Anthroposophy, will have a special task precisely regarding this individual enigma — man. Not only must it give us information about what man is in general, but it must be, as you know, a knowledge which flows directly into our daily life, into all our sensibilities and feelings. Since our feelings and sensibilities are unfolded in the most beautiful way in our attitude toward our fellow men, the fruit of spiritual science, of spiritual scientific knowledge, will be revealed the most beautifully in the view we take of our fellow men because of this knowledge.

When in life a person stands before us, we must always, in the sense of this spiritual science, or Anthroposophy, take into consideration that what we perceive outwardly of the person is only one part, only one member, of the human being. To be sure, an outer material view of man regards as the whole man what this outer perception and the intellect connected with it are able to give us. Spiritual science shows us, however, that the human being is something very, very complicated. And often, when one goes more deeply into this complexity of human nature, the individual is then also seen in the right light. Spiritual science has the task of showing us what the innermost kernel of the human being is; what we can see with the eyes and grasp with the hands is only the outer expression, the outer shell. And we may hope to come to an understanding of the external also if we are able to penetrate into the spiritual inner part.

In the great gap between what we may call human nature in general and what confronts us in each individual, we see nevertheless many homogeneous characteristics in whole human groups. To these belong those human qualities which today form the subject of our consideration, and which we usually call the temperament. We need only utter the word ‘temperament’ to see that there are as many riddles as men. Within the basic types, the basic colorings, we have such a multiplicity and variety among individuals that we can indeed say that the real enigma, of existence is expressed in the peculiar basic disposition of the human being which we call temperament. And when the riddles intervene directly in practical life, the basic coloring of the human being plays a role. When a person stands before us, we feel that we are confronted by something of this basic disposition. Therefore it is to be hoped that spiritual science is able to give also the necessary information about the nature of the temperaments. For though we must admit that the temperaments spring from within, they nevertheless express themselves in the whole external appearance of the individual. By means of an external observation of nature, however, the riddle of man is not to be solved; we can approach the characteristic coloring of the human being only when we learn what spiritual science has to say about him.

Lecture IV of Anthroposophy in Everyday Life. The Mystery of the Four Temperaments. A lecture by Rudolf Steiner given in Karlsruhe, Germany on January 18, 1909.

Study the Four Temperaments at Sophia Institute ... ​Sophia Institute online course: The Four Temperaments

from Studio Red Architects

We are proud to share photos of the recently completed Great Oak Waldorf School in Tomball.

Nestled in a 10-acre woods, these six round houses will be the first buildings on their new campus. These buildings provide classroom space for their early childhood program.

With immediate access to the woodland environment, they facilitate outdoor play in nature, a fundamental aspect of their curriculum.

This was truly a unique project and we loved creating it.

Learn more about Great Oak School here.