Course: Early Childhood Education"Waldorf Education is not a pedagogical system but an art - the art of awakening what is actually there within the human being." ~ Rudolf Steiner
The Waldorf early childhood educator works with the young child by creating a warm, beautiful and loving home-like environment, which is protective and secure, and where things happen in a predictable, rhythmic manner. Here she responds to the developing child in two basic ways: First, she engages in domestic, practical, and artistic activities the children can readily imitate (for example, baking, painting, gardening, and handicrafts), adapting the work to the changing seasons and festivals of the year. Secondly, the Waldorf kindergarten teacher nurtures the children’s power of imagination by telling carefully selected stories and by encouraging free play. This free or fantasy play, in which children act out scenarios of their own creation, helps them to experience many aspects of life more deeply. When toys are used, they are made of natural materials. Wood, cotton, wool, silk, shells, stones, pine cones and objects from nature that the children themselves have collected are used in play and to beautify the room. Sensory integration, eye-hand coordination, appreciating the beauty of language, sequencing, and other basic skills necessary for the foundation of academic learning are fostered in the kindergarten. In this truly loving, natural and creative environment, children are provided with a range of activities to prepare them for later learning and for life itself. |
Course Outline
Early Childhood Education 1
Lesson 1: You Are Your Child's First Teacher Lesson 2: Home Life as the Basis for All Learning Lesson 3: Birth to Three: Growing Down and Waking Up Lesson 4: Helping Your Baby's Development Lesson 5: Helping Your Toddler's Development Lesson 6: Rhythm in Home Life Lesson 7: Discipline and Other Parenting Issues Lesson 8: Reflection and Final Paper/Early Childhood Education 1 Early Childhood Education 2
Lesson 1: Nourishing Your Child's Imagination and Creative Play Lesson 2: Developing Your Child's Artistic Ability Lesson 3: Encouraging your Child's Musical Ability Lesson 4: Cognitive Development and Early Childhood Education Lesson 5: Common Parenting Question: From Television to Immunizations Lesson 6: Help for the Journey Lesson 7: Reflection and Final Paper/Early Childhood Education 2 
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What Makes Waldorf Early Childhood Education “Waldorf”?
Is there a Waldorf early childhood curriculum? Are there specific activities—puppet plays, circle games, watercolor painting, for example—that are essential to a Waldorf program? Are there certain materials and furnishings—lazured, soft-colored walls, handmade dolls, beeswax crayons, silk and other natural materials—that are necessary ingredients in a Waldorf setting? What makes Waldorf early childhood education “Waldorf”?
Rudolf Steiner spoke on a number of occasions about the experiences that are essential for the healthy development of the young child. These include:
• love and warmth
• an environment that nourishes the senses
• creative and artistic experiences
• meaningful adult activity to be imitated
• free, imaginative play
• protection of the forces of childhood
• gratitude, reverence, and wonder
• joy, humor, and happiness
• adult caregivers pursuing a path of inner development
Love and Warmth
Children who live in an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who have around them truly good examples to imitate, are living in their proper element. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Love and emotional warmth, rather than any particular early childhood program, create the basis for the child’s healthy development. These qualities should live between the adult caregiver and the child, in the children’s behavior toward one another, and among the adults in the early childhood center. When Rudolf Steiner visited the classes of the first Waldorf school, he often asked the children, “Do you love your teacher?” Children are also served if this love and warmth exist in the relationships between the teachers and the parents, between the early childhood teachers and the rest of the school, and in the surrounding community.
An Environment that Nourishes the Senses
The essential task of the kindergarten teacher is to create the proper physical environment around the children. “Physical environment” must be understood in the widest sense imaginable. It includes not just what happens around the children in the material sense, but everything that occurs in their environment, everything that can be perceived by their senses, that can work on the inner powers of the children from the surrounding physical space. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Early learning is profoundly connected to the child’s own physical body and sensory experience. Everything the young child sees, hears, and touches has an effect. Thus a clean, orderly, beautiful, quiet setting is essential. The physical environment, both indoors and outdoors, should provide varied and nourishing opportunities for self-education—experiences in touch, balance, lively and joyful movement, and also inward listening. The children should experience large-group, small-group, and solitary activities. The teacher, in integrating diverse elements into a harmonious and meaningful environment, provides surroundings that are accessible to the child’s understanding, feeling, and active will. The care, love, and intention expressed through the outer materials and furnishings of the classes are experienced unconsciously by the child. The child experiences the immediate environment as ensouled and nurturing. The adult shapes the temporal environment as well as the spatial. Through a rhythmic schedule, in which the same thing happens at the same time on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the child gains a sense of security and confidence in the world. Also, the different activities of the day should take place in a comfortable flow with smooth transitions.
Creative, Artistic Experience
In order to become true educators, we must be able to see the truly aesthetic element in the work, to bring an artistic quality into our tasks. . . . [I]f we bring this aesthetic element, then we begin to come closer to what the child wills out of its own nature. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
In the early childhood class, the art of education is the art of living. The teacher is an artist in how she perceives and relates to the children and to the activities of daily life. She orchestrates and choreographs the rhythms of each day, each week, and each season in such a way that the children can breathe freely in a living structure. In addition, the teacher offers the children opportunities for artistic experiences in singing and music, in movement and gesture—through eurythmy and rhythmic games—and in creative speech and language—through verses, poetry, and stories. The children model with beeswax, draw, and do watercolor painting. Puppet and marionette shows put on by the teacher are an important element in the life of the kindergarten.
Meaningful Adult Activity as Examples for the Child’s Imitation
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adapt the practical activities of daily life so that they are suitable for the child’s imitation through play. . . . The activities of children in kindergarten must be derived directly from life itself rather than being “thought out” by the intellectualized culture of adults. In the kindergarten, the most important thing is to give children the opportunity to directly imitate life itself. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Children do not learn through instruction or admonition but though imitation. Good sight will develop if the environment has the proper conditions of light and color, while in the brain and blood circulation, the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy sense of morality if children witness moral actions in their surroundings. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Real, meaningful work with a purpose, adjusted to the needs of the child, is in accordance with the child’s natural and inborn need for movement, and is an enormously significant educational activity. The teacher focuses on the meaningful activities that nurture life in the in the classroom “home,” such as cooking and baking, gardening, doing laundry and cleaning, creating and caring for the materials in the immediate environment, and taking care of the bodily needs of the children. This directed attention of the teacher creates an atmosphere of freedom in which the individuality of each child can be active. It is not intended just that the children copy the outer movements and actions of the adult, but that they experience also the inner attitude—the devotion, care, sense of purpose, focus, and creative spirit of the adult.
Free, Imaginative Play
In the child’s play activity, we can only provide the conditions for education. What is gained through play, through everything that cannot be determined by fixed rules, stems fundamentally from the self-activity of the child, The real educational value of play lives in the fact that we ignore our rules and regulations, our educational theory, and allow the child free rein. —Rudolf Steiner, Self Education in the Light of Anthroposophy
In a seemingly contradictory indication, Rudolf Steiner also said: Giving direction and guidance to play is one of the essential tasks of sensible education, which is to say an art of education that is right for humanity. . . . The early childhood educator must school her observation in order to develop an artistic eye, to detect the individual quality of each child’s play. —Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of February 24, 1921 in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Little children learn through play. They approach play in an entirely individual way, out of their entirely individual ways, out of their unique configuration of soul and spirit, and out of their unique experiences of the world in which they live. The manner in which a child plays may offer a picture of how he will take up his destiny as an adult. The task of the teacher is to create an environment that supports the possibility of healthy play. This environment includes the physical surroundings, furnishings, and play materials; the social environment of activities and social interactions; and the inner/spiritual environment of thoughts, intentions, and imaginations held by the adults.
Protection for the Forces of Childhood
Although it is highly necessary that each person should be fully awake in later life, the child must be allowed to remain as long as possible in the peaceful, dreamlike condition of pictorial imagination in which his early years of life are passed. For if we allow his organism to grow strong in this nonintellectual way, he will rightly develop in later life the intellectuality needed in the world today. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
The lively, waking dream of the little child’s consciousness must be allowed to thrive in the early childhood group. This means that the teacher refrains as much as possible from verbal instruction. Instead, her gestures and actions provide a model for the child’s imitation. Familiar daily rhythms and activities provide a context where the need for verbal instruction is reduced. Simple, archetypal imagery in stories, songs, and games provides experiences that the children can internalize but that do not require intellectual or critical reflection or explanation.
An Atmosphere of Gratitude, Reverence, and Wonder
An atmosphere of gratitude should grow naturally in children through merely witnessing the gratitude the adults feel as they receive what is freely given by others, and in how they express this gratitude. If a child says “thank you” very naturally—not in response to the urging of others, but simply through imitating— something has been done that will greatly benefit the child’s whole life. Out of this an all-embracing gratitude will develop toward the whole world. This cultivation of gratitude is of paramount importance. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Out of these early, all-pervading experiences of gratitude, the first tender capacity for love, which is deeply embedded in each and every child, begins to sprout in earthly life.
If, during the first period of life, we create an atmosphere of gratitude around the children, then out of this gratitude toward the world, toward the entire universe, and also out of thankfulness for being able to be in this world, a profound and warm sense of devotion will arise . . . upright, honest, and true. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
This is the basis for what will become a capacity for deep, intimate love and commitment in later life, for dedication and loyalty, for true admiration of others, for fervent spiritual or religious devotion, and for placing oneself wholeheartedly in the service of the world.
Joy, Humor, and Happiness
The joy of children in and with their environment must therefore be counted among the forces that build and shape the physical organs. They need teachers who look and act with happiness and, most of all, with honest, unaffected love. Such a love that streams, as it were, with warmth through the physical environment of the children may be said to literally “hatch out” the forms of the physical organs. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
If you make a surly face so that a child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms the child for the rest of his life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of person you are. —Rudolf Steiner The Kingdom of Childhood
The teacher’s earnestness about her work and her serious striving must be balanced with humor and a demeanor that bespeaks happiness. There must be moments of humor and delight in the classroom every day.
Adult Caregivers on a Path of Inner Development
For the small child before the change of teeth, the most important thing in education is the teacher’s own being. —Rudolf Steiner, Essentials of Education
Just think what feelings arise in the soul of the early childhood educator who realizes: What I accomplish with this child, I accomplish for the grown-up person in his twenties. What matters is not so much a knowledge of abstract educational principles or pedagogical rules. . . . [W]hat does matter is that a deep sense of responsibility develops in [the teacher’s heart and mind] and that this affects her or his worldview and the way she or he stands in life. —Rudolf Steiner, Education in the Face of the Present-Day World Situation, Lecture of June 10, 1920
Here we come to the spiritual environment of the early childhood setting: the thoughts, attitudes, and imaginations living in the adult who cares for the children. This invisible realm that lies behind the outer actions of the teacher has a profound influence on the child’s development. The spiritual environment includes recognition of the child as a threefold being—of body, soul, and spirit—on a path of evolutionary development through repeated Earth lives. This recognition provides a foundation for the daily activities in the kindergarten, and for the relationship between adult and child. Such an understanding of the nature and destiny of the human comes out of the inner life of the adult, the life of the individual Ego. This is a realm that is largely hidden, and hence is difficult to observe directly and to evaluate objectively. Yet ultimately this realm may affect the development of the children most profoundly. It is not merely our outer activity that influence the growing child. What lies behind and is expressed through this outer activity also is crucial. Ultimately, the most profound influence on the child is who we are as human beings—and who we are becoming and how.
Conclusion
The “essentials” described here are qualitative in nature. For the most part, they are not part of a body of concrete “best practices.” Instead, they concern inner qualities and attributes of the teacher that foster healthy development in young children. These qualities can come to expression in a wide variety of ways, according to
• the age range of the children in the group and their individual characteristics;
• the nature of the particular program—a kindergarten, playgroup, or extended care program; and
• the environment and surroundings—urban or rural, home or school or child care center.
Many practices that have come to be associated with Waldorf/Steiner early childhood education—certain daily rhythms and rituals, play materials, songs, stories, even the colors of the walls, the dress of the adults, and the menu for snack—may be mistakenly taken as essentials. The results of such assumptions can be surprising, even disturbing—a “King Winter” nature table appearing in a tropical climate in “wintertime,” or dolls with pink skin and yellow hair in a kindergarten where all the children are brown-skinned and black-haired. Such practices may express a tendency toward a doctrinal or dogmatic approach that is out of touch with the realities of the immediate situation and instead imposes something from “outside.” There is a parallel concern at the other end of the spectrum from the doctrinal or dogmatic. The freedom that Waldorf Education offers each individual teacher to determine the practices of her early childhood program can be misinterpreted to mean that “anything goes,” according to personal preference and style. Here too, there is the danger that the developmental realities and needs of the children are not sufficiently taken into consideration. Each of these one-sided approaches may be injurious to the development of the children. As Waldorf early childhood educators, we are constantly seeking a middle, universally human path between polarities. Rudolf Steiner’s advice to the first Waldorf kindergarten teacher, Elizabeth Grunelius, in the early 1920s, can be paraphrased as follows: "Observe the children. Actively meditate. Follow your intuitions. Work so that all your actions are worthy of imitation." Today, those of us who work with young children in a Waldorf environment are challenged to engage in a constant process of renewal. We must actively observe the children in our care, carry them in our meditations, and seek to work consciously and artistically to create the experiences that will serve their development. Our devotion to this task awakens us to the importance of self-education and transformation in the context of community. Our ongoing study of child and human development, our own artistic and meditative practices, and our work with Anthroposophy, independently and together with others, become essential elements for the practice of Waldorf early childhood education. Here we can come to experience that we are not alone on this journey. We are supported through our encounters with one another other and with our sharing of insights, experience, and knowledge. We are helped also by those beings spiritual beings who are committed to our continued development and to the renewal of culture that Waldorf Education seeks to serve.
Rudolf Steiner spoke on a number of occasions about the experiences that are essential for the healthy development of the young child. These include:
• love and warmth
• an environment that nourishes the senses
• creative and artistic experiences
• meaningful adult activity to be imitated
• free, imaginative play
• protection of the forces of childhood
• gratitude, reverence, and wonder
• joy, humor, and happiness
• adult caregivers pursuing a path of inner development
Love and Warmth
Children who live in an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who have around them truly good examples to imitate, are living in their proper element. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Love and emotional warmth, rather than any particular early childhood program, create the basis for the child’s healthy development. These qualities should live between the adult caregiver and the child, in the children’s behavior toward one another, and among the adults in the early childhood center. When Rudolf Steiner visited the classes of the first Waldorf school, he often asked the children, “Do you love your teacher?” Children are also served if this love and warmth exist in the relationships between the teachers and the parents, between the early childhood teachers and the rest of the school, and in the surrounding community.
An Environment that Nourishes the Senses
The essential task of the kindergarten teacher is to create the proper physical environment around the children. “Physical environment” must be understood in the widest sense imaginable. It includes not just what happens around the children in the material sense, but everything that occurs in their environment, everything that can be perceived by their senses, that can work on the inner powers of the children from the surrounding physical space. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Early learning is profoundly connected to the child’s own physical body and sensory experience. Everything the young child sees, hears, and touches has an effect. Thus a clean, orderly, beautiful, quiet setting is essential. The physical environment, both indoors and outdoors, should provide varied and nourishing opportunities for self-education—experiences in touch, balance, lively and joyful movement, and also inward listening. The children should experience large-group, small-group, and solitary activities. The teacher, in integrating diverse elements into a harmonious and meaningful environment, provides surroundings that are accessible to the child’s understanding, feeling, and active will. The care, love, and intention expressed through the outer materials and furnishings of the classes are experienced unconsciously by the child. The child experiences the immediate environment as ensouled and nurturing. The adult shapes the temporal environment as well as the spatial. Through a rhythmic schedule, in which the same thing happens at the same time on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the child gains a sense of security and confidence in the world. Also, the different activities of the day should take place in a comfortable flow with smooth transitions.
Creative, Artistic Experience
In order to become true educators, we must be able to see the truly aesthetic element in the work, to bring an artistic quality into our tasks. . . . [I]f we bring this aesthetic element, then we begin to come closer to what the child wills out of its own nature. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
In the early childhood class, the art of education is the art of living. The teacher is an artist in how she perceives and relates to the children and to the activities of daily life. She orchestrates and choreographs the rhythms of each day, each week, and each season in such a way that the children can breathe freely in a living structure. In addition, the teacher offers the children opportunities for artistic experiences in singing and music, in movement and gesture—through eurythmy and rhythmic games—and in creative speech and language—through verses, poetry, and stories. The children model with beeswax, draw, and do watercolor painting. Puppet and marionette shows put on by the teacher are an important element in the life of the kindergarten.
Meaningful Adult Activity as Examples for the Child’s Imitation
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adapt the practical activities of daily life so that they are suitable for the child’s imitation through play. . . . The activities of children in kindergarten must be derived directly from life itself rather than being “thought out” by the intellectualized culture of adults. In the kindergarten, the most important thing is to give children the opportunity to directly imitate life itself. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Children do not learn through instruction or admonition but though imitation. Good sight will develop if the environment has the proper conditions of light and color, while in the brain and blood circulation, the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy sense of morality if children witness moral actions in their surroundings. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Real, meaningful work with a purpose, adjusted to the needs of the child, is in accordance with the child’s natural and inborn need for movement, and is an enormously significant educational activity. The teacher focuses on the meaningful activities that nurture life in the in the classroom “home,” such as cooking and baking, gardening, doing laundry and cleaning, creating and caring for the materials in the immediate environment, and taking care of the bodily needs of the children. This directed attention of the teacher creates an atmosphere of freedom in which the individuality of each child can be active. It is not intended just that the children copy the outer movements and actions of the adult, but that they experience also the inner attitude—the devotion, care, sense of purpose, focus, and creative spirit of the adult.
Free, Imaginative Play
In the child’s play activity, we can only provide the conditions for education. What is gained through play, through everything that cannot be determined by fixed rules, stems fundamentally from the self-activity of the child, The real educational value of play lives in the fact that we ignore our rules and regulations, our educational theory, and allow the child free rein. —Rudolf Steiner, Self Education in the Light of Anthroposophy
In a seemingly contradictory indication, Rudolf Steiner also said: Giving direction and guidance to play is one of the essential tasks of sensible education, which is to say an art of education that is right for humanity. . . . The early childhood educator must school her observation in order to develop an artistic eye, to detect the individual quality of each child’s play. —Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of February 24, 1921 in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Little children learn through play. They approach play in an entirely individual way, out of their entirely individual ways, out of their unique configuration of soul and spirit, and out of their unique experiences of the world in which they live. The manner in which a child plays may offer a picture of how he will take up his destiny as an adult. The task of the teacher is to create an environment that supports the possibility of healthy play. This environment includes the physical surroundings, furnishings, and play materials; the social environment of activities and social interactions; and the inner/spiritual environment of thoughts, intentions, and imaginations held by the adults.
Protection for the Forces of Childhood
Although it is highly necessary that each person should be fully awake in later life, the child must be allowed to remain as long as possible in the peaceful, dreamlike condition of pictorial imagination in which his early years of life are passed. For if we allow his organism to grow strong in this nonintellectual way, he will rightly develop in later life the intellectuality needed in the world today. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
The lively, waking dream of the little child’s consciousness must be allowed to thrive in the early childhood group. This means that the teacher refrains as much as possible from verbal instruction. Instead, her gestures and actions provide a model for the child’s imitation. Familiar daily rhythms and activities provide a context where the need for verbal instruction is reduced. Simple, archetypal imagery in stories, songs, and games provides experiences that the children can internalize but that do not require intellectual or critical reflection or explanation.
An Atmosphere of Gratitude, Reverence, and Wonder
An atmosphere of gratitude should grow naturally in children through merely witnessing the gratitude the adults feel as they receive what is freely given by others, and in how they express this gratitude. If a child says “thank you” very naturally—not in response to the urging of others, but simply through imitating— something has been done that will greatly benefit the child’s whole life. Out of this an all-embracing gratitude will develop toward the whole world. This cultivation of gratitude is of paramount importance. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Out of these early, all-pervading experiences of gratitude, the first tender capacity for love, which is deeply embedded in each and every child, begins to sprout in earthly life.
If, during the first period of life, we create an atmosphere of gratitude around the children, then out of this gratitude toward the world, toward the entire universe, and also out of thankfulness for being able to be in this world, a profound and warm sense of devotion will arise . . . upright, honest, and true. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
This is the basis for what will become a capacity for deep, intimate love and commitment in later life, for dedication and loyalty, for true admiration of others, for fervent spiritual or religious devotion, and for placing oneself wholeheartedly in the service of the world.
Joy, Humor, and Happiness
The joy of children in and with their environment must therefore be counted among the forces that build and shape the physical organs. They need teachers who look and act with happiness and, most of all, with honest, unaffected love. Such a love that streams, as it were, with warmth through the physical environment of the children may be said to literally “hatch out” the forms of the physical organs. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
If you make a surly face so that a child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms the child for the rest of his life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of person you are. —Rudolf Steiner The Kingdom of Childhood
The teacher’s earnestness about her work and her serious striving must be balanced with humor and a demeanor that bespeaks happiness. There must be moments of humor and delight in the classroom every day.
Adult Caregivers on a Path of Inner Development
For the small child before the change of teeth, the most important thing in education is the teacher’s own being. —Rudolf Steiner, Essentials of Education
Just think what feelings arise in the soul of the early childhood educator who realizes: What I accomplish with this child, I accomplish for the grown-up person in his twenties. What matters is not so much a knowledge of abstract educational principles or pedagogical rules. . . . [W]hat does matter is that a deep sense of responsibility develops in [the teacher’s heart and mind] and that this affects her or his worldview and the way she or he stands in life. —Rudolf Steiner, Education in the Face of the Present-Day World Situation, Lecture of June 10, 1920
Here we come to the spiritual environment of the early childhood setting: the thoughts, attitudes, and imaginations living in the adult who cares for the children. This invisible realm that lies behind the outer actions of the teacher has a profound influence on the child’s development. The spiritual environment includes recognition of the child as a threefold being—of body, soul, and spirit—on a path of evolutionary development through repeated Earth lives. This recognition provides a foundation for the daily activities in the kindergarten, and for the relationship between adult and child. Such an understanding of the nature and destiny of the human comes out of the inner life of the adult, the life of the individual Ego. This is a realm that is largely hidden, and hence is difficult to observe directly and to evaluate objectively. Yet ultimately this realm may affect the development of the children most profoundly. It is not merely our outer activity that influence the growing child. What lies behind and is expressed through this outer activity also is crucial. Ultimately, the most profound influence on the child is who we are as human beings—and who we are becoming and how.
Conclusion
The “essentials” described here are qualitative in nature. For the most part, they are not part of a body of concrete “best practices.” Instead, they concern inner qualities and attributes of the teacher that foster healthy development in young children. These qualities can come to expression in a wide variety of ways, according to
• the age range of the children in the group and their individual characteristics;
• the nature of the particular program—a kindergarten, playgroup, or extended care program; and
• the environment and surroundings—urban or rural, home or school or child care center.
Many practices that have come to be associated with Waldorf/Steiner early childhood education—certain daily rhythms and rituals, play materials, songs, stories, even the colors of the walls, the dress of the adults, and the menu for snack—may be mistakenly taken as essentials. The results of such assumptions can be surprising, even disturbing—a “King Winter” nature table appearing in a tropical climate in “wintertime,” or dolls with pink skin and yellow hair in a kindergarten where all the children are brown-skinned and black-haired. Such practices may express a tendency toward a doctrinal or dogmatic approach that is out of touch with the realities of the immediate situation and instead imposes something from “outside.” There is a parallel concern at the other end of the spectrum from the doctrinal or dogmatic. The freedom that Waldorf Education offers each individual teacher to determine the practices of her early childhood program can be misinterpreted to mean that “anything goes,” according to personal preference and style. Here too, there is the danger that the developmental realities and needs of the children are not sufficiently taken into consideration. Each of these one-sided approaches may be injurious to the development of the children. As Waldorf early childhood educators, we are constantly seeking a middle, universally human path between polarities. Rudolf Steiner’s advice to the first Waldorf kindergarten teacher, Elizabeth Grunelius, in the early 1920s, can be paraphrased as follows: "Observe the children. Actively meditate. Follow your intuitions. Work so that all your actions are worthy of imitation." Today, those of us who work with young children in a Waldorf environment are challenged to engage in a constant process of renewal. We must actively observe the children in our care, carry them in our meditations, and seek to work consciously and artistically to create the experiences that will serve their development. Our devotion to this task awakens us to the importance of self-education and transformation in the context of community. Our ongoing study of child and human development, our own artistic and meditative practices, and our work with Anthroposophy, independently and together with others, become essential elements for the practice of Waldorf early childhood education. Here we can come to experience that we are not alone on this journey. We are supported through our encounters with one another other and with our sharing of insights, experience, and knowledge. We are helped also by those beings spiritual beings who are committed to our continued development and to the renewal of culture that Waldorf Education seeks to serve.
Early Childhood Education 2 - Lesson 1
Tasks and Assignments for Early Childhood Education 2 - Lesson 1
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Please study the study material/chapters indicated below. Feel free to use additional resources as wanted and needed. Once you feel you are sufficiently acquainted with the subject please complete the following:
1. Describe the "Three Stages of Play" and give examples. 2. Describe constructive play that helps with intellectual development and with the development of imagination. Contrast the descriptions with description of play that does not help and should be avoided. 3. Give examples of stories that nourish the imagination of the child. Submit the completed assignment via the submission form or via email. 
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Study Material for Early Childhood Education 2 - Lesson 1
You Are Your Child's First TeacherCΗΑΡΤΕR 8 - Nourishing Your Child's Imagination and Creative Play
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THREE STAGES OF PLAY
Play has been called "the work of early childhood" and is recognized as activity that is self-directed, coming from the child herself without any external purpose or motive. In early childhood creative play can be seen as unfolding in three stages: play arising from the body, play arising from imagination and imitation, and intentional pretending.
Play Arising from the Body
While your child is first mastering new body skills, most play consists of pure movement without the element of fantasy. A young child loves to run, jump, walk on tiptoe, climb, turn around, or roll on the ground. Like a lamb in springtime or a young colt, your child delights in movement for the sheer joy of it. And such movement is an important part of muscle growth and the acquiring of motor skills. If left unhindered, your child knows best what movements she needs to develop in a healthy way— there is no need for special baby gymnastics.
Anyone who has ever followed a toddler around knows that she is constantly in movement and expends a tremendous amount of energy! Where does this driving force for movement come from? The energy comes from the process of metabolism, manifested through the movement of the limbs. The metabolic/will/limb system is one of three major systems in Steiner's way of looking at the human being; the other two are the nerve/sense/head system and the heart/lung/middle rhythmic system. These three systems all interpenetrate, and all are active and growing throughout childhood. But Steiner recognized that at different ages one or another system may be dominant. Not only is one system growing most actively, but it also has a major influence on how the child experiences the world and on how she learns. The metabolic/will/limb system predominates in the child under the age of seven; the middle rhythmic system dominates during the elementary school years; and the nerve/sense/head system is predominant beginning in adolescence.
Play has been called "the work of early childhood" and is recognized as activity that is self-directed, coming from the child herself without any external purpose or motive. In early childhood creative play can be seen as unfolding in three stages: play arising from the body, play arising from imagination and imitation, and intentional pretending.
Play Arising from the Body
While your child is first mastering new body skills, most play consists of pure movement without the element of fantasy. A young child loves to run, jump, walk on tiptoe, climb, turn around, or roll on the ground. Like a lamb in springtime or a young colt, your child delights in movement for the sheer joy of it. And such movement is an important part of muscle growth and the acquiring of motor skills. If left unhindered, your child knows best what movements she needs to develop in a healthy way— there is no need for special baby gymnastics.
Anyone who has ever followed a toddler around knows that she is constantly in movement and expends a tremendous amount of energy! Where does this driving force for movement come from? The energy comes from the process of metabolism, manifested through the movement of the limbs. The metabolic/will/limb system is one of three major systems in Steiner's way of looking at the human being; the other two are the nerve/sense/head system and the heart/lung/middle rhythmic system. These three systems all interpenetrate, and all are active and growing throughout childhood. But Steiner recognized that at different ages one or another system may be dominant. Not only is one system growing most actively, but it also has a major influence on how the child experiences the world and on how she learns. The metabolic/will/limb system predominates in the child under the age of seven; the middle rhythmic system dominates during the elementary school years; and the nerve/sense/head system is predominant beginning in adolescence.
Thinking, feeling, and willing mature within each of the seven-year cycles, but understanding how the dominance changes from one to another as the child grows can help parents and educators meet the real needs of the developing child.
The metabolic/will/limb system can be called the vital pole because it is the center of vitality—the center for the anabolic processes of assimilating food and turning it into new physical substance. The growth processes are enormously powerful in a young child, whose life and growth forces are so strong that wounds heal almost immediately. Contrast this with elderly people, whose life forces are declining and whose wounds and broken bones mend only with great difficulty.
The movements of a baby and toddler can be seen as an expression of the movement of the energy that is active within the growth and inner processes of her body. The baby kicks her feet in the air and watches the movement; she moves her hands and follows the movement with her eyes. At first her movements lack intentionality and control. Then she loves to drop things and to fling everything out of her crib, taking joy in the development of her own power. For the infant, the mere moving of her limbs is play enough at first, and a manifestation of the happy unfolding of her powers.
In Childhood: A Study of the Growing Soul, Caroline von Heydebrand discusses how the first games of childhood are bound up with the body and have hidden interplay with organic activities, with the swing of the breath, the rhythmic flow of the circulating fluids, and the forming and excreting of substances. "The small child piles up his blocks so as to be able to tumble them down again. This is more important to him at first than to build a house or a tower. He feels the same satisfaction in construction and destruction when playing with blocks as he does in anabolic and catabolic processes of his organism when they are healthy." (1)
Similarly, when a two-year-old scribbles with a large crayon on a piece of paper, you will see spiral, circular movements punctuated by up-and-down movements. The child is expressing the dynamics of his inner being, not trying to make a representational drawing. This aspect of children's art will be discussed more in chapter 9.
Play Arising from Imagination and Imitation
The time when a little child first begins to feel her movements no longer as expressions of energy but as intentional activities within the sphere of her imaginative games varies with every child, but it usually first becomes apparent to the observer between the ages of two and three. The first kinds of play you are likely to see are your child's pretending to eat and drink or talk on the telephone. This type of pretend play comes through the imitation of things the child has done or seen the people around her do. Thus if your child sees you picking up potatoes or balls of yarns and putting them in a basket, she will be happy to copy you and put pinecones or spools in her own basket. Then she will dump them out again, for a child's play has no utilitarian purpose; there is nothing she is trying to accomplish. Your three-year-old may imitate your sweeping by using her own little broom, but she will be completely involved in the gestures of sweeping and unconcerned about picking up any dust.
Without discriminating, a young child takes in everything in her physical and emotional environment. These impressions, which are taken in by the child without filtering or screening, find their expression in play. A child will imitate not only the activity but also the "soul mood" or emotions present when an action was performed. Thus if your daughter observes a worker hammering a nail with great anger, she will copy the movement and the anger; or, if you straighten up the room with annoyance, you will see your annoyance mirrored in the way she handles her toys. We must pay attention both to the quality of our emotions when we are around young children and to the quality of our movements. Once I was throwing together a cake in a great hurry. I told my four-year-old she could help, but I was going so fast I wasn't paying much attention to her. Suddenly I noticed something was wrong. "What's the matter?" I asked. "You're stirring it too fast!" she said through her tears. And she was right—my movements were an affront to her. I apologized and slowed down!
The progression of play from movement to imaginative play can be seen in a young child's relationship to a rocking horse. At first there is no concept of horse, there is just the joy of rhythmical movement. The idea of being a fast rider and "going somewhere" might come next; later the horse will be incorporated into a five-year-old's elaborate scenarios of being a cowboy or taking care of horses or using one to get away from wolves that are chasing him.
The age between three and five years has been called the age of fantasy because all of the intensity that went into learning to stand, walk, speak, and begin to think now finds its expression in imaginative play, which becomes a story without end. Beginning with the sheer joy of movement, your daughter becomes a bunny hopping or a kitty wanting some milk as the imaginative element is added. Then she begins to transform objects from one thing to another in a stream-of-consciousness flow of associations suggested by the objects themselves and her interactions with them. For example, a cylindrical piece of wood may serve as a can of cat food, then it can become a rolling pin for making cookies. The rolling pin now changes into a carton of milk to go with the cookies and a tea party is under way. If you're lucky, you'll be invited.
This kind of play is similar to dreams in the way one object and situation can flow into another, but it represents a high-level use of the child's creative fantasy. Play is the work of the child from age three on, the way in which she unites herself with the world and tries on all of the activities and roles she sees.
Intentional Pretending
When your child is around four and a half or five you will see a new element begin to dominate her play. This new element is intentionality, and it manifests as "let's pretend." Play now tends to be much more socially oriented; it is a group phenomenon in which as much time can be spent in planning "you be the mother and I'll be the sister and you be the dog' as in playing out the actual scene. Now play begins to arise more from within the child herself, and she is beginning to make a picture or mental image of what she wants to do.
The child now not only manipulates objects and concepts by having one thing turn into another, but she also has the self-awareness to plan ahead in pretending to be someone else. By being the mother, the carpenter, or the baker, she is assimilating the world as she experiences it and "living into" the adult world. This is the age when children love bits of cloth and simple costumes to play various roles. Or they will use dolls and table puppets to put on plays that they make up. Their powers of fantasy and intentionality are also clearly revealed when they model with colored beeswax or clay, paint with watercolors, or color with crayons.
EXPERIENCING THE WORLD THROUGH PLAY
Creative play is the way in which children get to know the world, and it has been called the work of early childhood. "There is nothing that human beings do, know, think, hope and fear that has not been attempted, experienced, practiced or at least anticipated in children's play." This opening sentence from Children at Play by Heidi Britz-Crecelius is developed further as she explains the various "worlds" the child experiences through play. (2)
The World of Space, Time, and the Cosmos
The tiny baby plays unconsciously with his hands and feet. Von Heydebrand states, "He stretches out to the moon or to the sunlight dancing on the ceiling, not only because he cannot yet estimate distances but because in the dim dawning of consciousness he has a closer relation to distant spaces than the fully conscious, grown-up person." (3) But he soon learns that although the wooden ring can be caught hold of, the brightly shining moon cannot. His first attempts at grasping objects thus become an adventure in learning about near and far, attainable and unattainable.
The young child is still closely related to the cosmos and delights in play that involves the sun, moon, and stars and their rhythmical movements in the cosmos. Such play includes the image of the circle in all its forms favored by young children: balls, bubbles, balloons, circle games. The ball, a perfect sphere, is a likeness of the earth, the sun, and the "heavenly sphere" that seems to surround the earth. Soap bubbles are delicate balls that float away on the child's own breath. And watching a balloon floating up to heaven can fill a child with delight or great sadness, depending on his temperament.
The World of Nature
It is through play that children come to know the natural world of animals and plants and the timeless elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Getting out of the sandbox and actually digging in the earth puts a child immediately into contact with the soil and a myriad of life forms: many worms, centipedes, pill bugs, and tiny spiders can be discovered. Similarly, teeming life is discovered when the child turns over a stone by the river or sinks down into tall grass. In a country setting, intimate encounters between children and animals and plants occur without our help; in the cities we may have to arrange for such encounters so our children do not remain strangers to nature for the whole of their lives. Climbing trees, picking fruit and flowers, and sowing seeds and watching them sprout are all important experiences for a child.
Air can be played in using kites, flags, pinwheels, windmills, tissue paper parachutes, and large leaves or any light thing tied to a string. Fire is more difficult for children to experience in our age of central heating and trash pickup, but the joys of a campfire are well known, and Britz-Crecelius states that when a fire is built often enough with adults, the prohibition against lighting fires without an adult will be easier to enforce. (4)
Nature is all around us, even in the city. Contact with nature is renewing for adults, but its importance for children should not be underestimated and has been highlighted by the phrases "nature-deficit disorder" and "no child left inside," popularized by Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods. (5) Children are especially nourished by contact with the world of living things because their own life forces are so strong. Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim reminds us that "the child's thinking remains animistic until the age of puberty. His parents and teachers tell him that things cannot feel and act; and as much as he may pretend to believe this to please these adults, or not to be ridiculed, deep down the child knows better." (6)
The Human World
Through play the child interacts first with his parents and those in his immediate family. He can very soon start to help the adults in their work, washing the car or putting away the silverware. Because much of the interesting housework and handiwork that children used to grow into through play is now done by machines, it is all the more important to let children participate in what you are doing whenever possible, as discussed in earlier chapters.
The Special Role of Dolls
Through play the child familiarizes himself with the world and assimilates it, making it his own. His senses become sharpened and he is better able to control the instrument of his body and to relate to nature and his fellow human beings. Play with dolls is important as one of the ways the child can externalize his own inner being. "Through the doll the child finds its own self," Britz-Crecelius states, offering in Children at Play many examples of how involved children can become with a favorite doll, so that adults have to be very careful not to commit the faux pas of denying the reality of such a doll. (7) Parents must treat these attachments with respect and stay alert to which dolls are ''livin' for the child, for it can change with time and circumstances. The favorite doll can become like an alter ego for the child, invested with a bit of the child's own emerging sense of self.
Because a doll plays many varied and complex roles, according to the circumstances, it is easy to understand that the more indistinct and undefined a doll's expression, the less trouble it will cause the imagination of the child. If the doll has a fixed character, it will most often be assigned a specific role in play; it is less useful as a second I than a soft doll with eyes but no mouth, which can easily be happy, sad, or angry.
Constant invisible companions are used by children in much the same way, and Britz-Crecelius states, "The disappearance of an invisible companion, the discarding of a doll, are important steps on the path of the child to itself. If, however, one removes them forcibly and before the child is ready, then one makes it unsure of itself." (8)
Dolls also give children an opportunity to imitate and work out the ways in which parents treat them. For girls, play with dolls is mainly a mother-and-child game, while boys' play with dolls is rarely that. Boys are also less likely to dress and undress their dolls, so their dolls don't need removable clothes and wardrobes as girls' dolls do. However, boys between two and six have a need as great as a girl's need for a doll that can represent a second I, a being the child clasps in his arms when he is beyond himself in order to come to himself again. Many people in our culture are shy of giving dolls to boys or want to make sure they represent "macho" images such as He-Man or G.I. Joe. However, our sons need to be allowed both to be children and to exhibit nurturing behavior just as much as our daughters!
Most psychologists also support boys being encouraged to play with dolls. Bruno Bettelheim states, "If parents feel relaxed about their son's playing with dolls, they will provide him with valuable opportunities for enriching his play life. For them to do so, it is not sufficient that they simply refrain from disparaging such play. Because of the still prevalent attitude that doll play is only for girls, both parents need to have a positive feeling about a boys doll play if he is to be able to take full advantage of it." (9)
We need to put our attention into the quality of the dolls our children have. Not only their expression but also the quality of the material is important. Is the doll cold and hard or soft and huggable? Is the hair platinum and grotesquely matted after a week's play? A soft cloth doll with yarn hair and a neutral expression provides the child with a companion who can change as he or she does. Britz-Crecelius reminds us, "Walk, talk, cry, laugh, eat, drink, wet itself, blush, get a temperature, get brown in the sun—any rag doll, any nice, simple doll can do that in the hands of a child. The mechanical creatures on the toy market can do it much less well, and provoke every older or younger brother into opening them up to have a look—and rightly so! Because these are not dolls, but machines, whose mechanics leave no room for the little bit of the child's soul that seeks to enclose itself there." (10) Even eyes that close are very mechanical, as evidenced by a little girl who said of her simple doll with its wooden head, "My Tommy doesn't always need to go to sleep straight away, he can also lie awake sometimes." (11)
The beautiful doll and the anatomically correct doll can be a hindrance to the inner development of the child. Not only do they leave nothing for the child's imagination to supply, but they also provide more than the young child can hold in awareness. Young children are mostly aware of the head, as evidenced by their drawings. (This will be discussed more in chapter 9.) Giving a child a doll with breasts is projecting her out of her childhood into the teenage world. Barbie dolls and those with "attitude" like Bratz dolls form a multimillion-dollar enterprise that shortchanges the world of the young child.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY IN INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Noted psychologist Bruno Bettelheim defines a young child's play as "activities characterized by freedom from all but personally imposed rules (which are changed at will), by free-wheeling fantasy involvement and by the absence of any goals outside of the activity itself." (12) Not only is self-directed play important for the healthy creative and emotional growth of a child, but it also forms the best foundation for later intellectual growth. Bettelheim continues:
Play teaches the child, without his being aware of it, the habits most needed for intellectual growth, such as stick-to-itiveness, which is so important in all learning. Perseverance is easily acquired around enjoyable activities such as chosen play. But if it has not become a habit through what is enjoyable, it is not likely to become one through an endeavor like schoolwork." (13)
Kindergarten, as first conceived by Friedrich Froebel in the nineteenth century, was a place where children would play, as if in a garden. However, the push to teach to the test has squeezed self-directed play out of kindergartens almost entirely, as described by the Alliance for Childhood in their report Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School. (14) The imaginative play of the young child, in which objects transform from one thing into another, is an ideal foundation for the symbol manipulation involved in later reading. We shouldn't skip the stage of concrete, although fanciful, manipulation of objects in free play by going directly into reading, writing, and math. The years from three to six provide a lifelong foundation for creativity that should not be undervalued or foreshortened.
Just as it is important not to skip steps like crawling in physical development, it is important not to skip play, which allows for the development of a wide range of experiences, so that what is first grasped through action can later be learned anew through thought. Thus when the adolescent studies the laws of levers and mechanics in physics, he will have had the experience of shifting further forward or back on the seesaw, depending on the size of his friend; or the study of trajectories will have had its foundation in throwing balls or skipping stones.
WAYS TO ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILD'S CREATIVE PLAY
Creating an Inviting Environment
Most children today are like descendants of the old woman in the shoe and "have so many toys, they don't know what to do." The spoils of Christmases and birthdays past are most often stuffed onto shelves or thrown together in a toy box or basket, so it is frequently more fun to dump everything out rather than imaginatively play with particular toys. Helle Heckmann, who runs a Waldorf-inspired child care center in Denmark, describes this cross-cultural phenomenon:
The abundance of the children's room must be every parent's or child's worst nightmare. "I'm bored." "I've got nothing to play with"—even though the shelves are full to the brim. Dust-collectors, a useless mess. Where is the love for the teddy bear, the doll, the car? The present which was given in love and did not drown in abundance is hard to find. The child does not need the toys—the toy factories need the child. (15)
So I invite you to contemplate your child's bedroom or play room and see which items don't seem to contribute to imaginative play or are never used in play. The weeding out can be done openly or covertly. Some parents have enlisted enthusiasm for the project by saying to the child, "You have so many things. Let's sort through the ones you don't play with any more and give them to the Goodwill so other children whose parents don't have the money to buy toys for them will be able to have some of yours." Other items can simply disappear into a box for a few weeks, to be brought back if they are missed—or passed on if they are not. One mother told me she sets aside a box of extra toys as a "rainy day box," which she can go to at times when her child really seems ready for new input.
You might also consider your children's toys from an aesthetic point of view. More than seventy years ago Steiner railed against giving children "beautiful dolls" instead of simple ones. But what about all of the grotesque and bizarre toys that todays children play with, which intentionally try to embody "the dark forces"? Does beauty matter? Young children are looking to know the real world, and to maintain the inner conviction that it is good, true, and beautiful. This deep inner conviction needs to remain in their unconscious to be drawn upon as teenagers. Such wellsprings are necessary if teens are to have any kind of idealism and ability to seek solutions to the problems and evil in the world instead of succumbing to nihilism and despair. Dr. Gilbert Childs, a noted British educator, writes that it is as if we are actually surrounding our children with ugliness as a principle. (16) It's something to consider.
Once you've appraised your children's toys and you can begin to see the floor and the shelves, you'll be much more aware of the individual toys. Then you can think about how to arrange them, because the way in which you display a child's toys determines to a large extent whether or not your child will play with them. Remember that much of play is suggested by the objects themselves as they spark associations in the child's imagination. When toys are piled together in a toy box or basket, they aren't inviting to your child, and you'll never have the possibility of your child's playing quietly by himself after waking up, allowing you to get another twenty minutes of sleep.
There are other advantages to creating order in your child's play space by making sure that everything has a "home." Having a place for everything can provide the child with a feeling that there is order in the larger scheme of things. And it is through play that a child develops habits for work. Helping your child use things and put them away not only teaches good habits in the present but can also be of help in the later development of thought processes. Dr. Gilbert Childs writes, "Such tidiness in practical affairs will assist the order of thought processes, so laying the foundations for clear thinking in adult years. Children learn to 'think with their hands,' and doing repetitious activities that are allied to household and human tasks in life strengthens their will-power." (17) Although it may seem like extra work to clean up with your child at the end of each day, arranging toys invitingly on shelves or tables will encourage your child to be self-motivating in his play. Arranging little scenes on tables or shelves will invite the child to "live into" the scene and start to play with it the next day.
Another aid to your child's play is having activity areas, if your home or apartment is large enough. For example, a play kitchen area with a child-size table and chairs and some kind of toy stove and dishes will provide hours of imitative play. Most of the play dishes, pots, and pans sold in toy stores last a few weeks or months before they are broken or dented beyond recognition. Adult items—wooden bowls, small pots, silverware, saucers, and pitchers, for instance—are sturdier and can usually be picked up inexpensively at secondhand stores. Wooden fruit can be found at many import stores, and a jigsaw can be used to cut pieces of bread from a scrap of plywood.
When you set up activity areas, remember that your child will most often want to play fairly close to where you spend most of your time. A play area in a dining room or family room is often used more frequently than a bedroom that is upstairs and far away from the main activities of the family. One such area of great enjoyment is a workbench with a real vise, small hammer, saw, and nails. Children enjoy the activities of hammering and sawing, and they can also make toys such as boats or cars. An old tree stump that can be kept indoors for pounding nails is a great way to engage children's excess energy. A doll corner is a special place where the dolls can be put to bed each night and greeted in the morning. Cradles, baskets lined with cloth, a small high chair, and a drawer for dolls' clothes all add to the play in this area. The kitchen or dining room table can serve as an area for painting, coloring, and crafts; these activities will be discussed more in chapter 9.
A few simple capes, hats, and accessories for dress-up can greatly enhance your child's play. Children love to play dress-up for the sheer joy of putting on and taking off fancy clothes; they also love to transform themselves into characters who can then act out roles in imaginative play—especially if several siblings or friends play together.
Toys for Imaginative Play
The less formed and more archetypal a toy is, the more possibilities it leaves for the child's imagination. In The Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico, a little girl takes leave of the seven dolls she loves so much. The doll "Monsieur Nicholas," who repairs and makes toys, gives her "an oddly turned piece of wood that had not one but many shapes. 'For your firstborn,' he says. 'It is a toy I have made for him that is not any, yet is still all toys, for in his imagination, when he plays with it, it will be whatever he sees in it, or wishes it to be '" (18)
Shapes and forms from nature—gnarled knots from trees, pieces of bark, small pieces of branches, or one-inch rounds from a tree trunk— have that same possibility. This is where a large box or basket filled with "blocks" made from a tree trunk and branches will be used for much more than stacking and knocking down.
"Waldorf-style" dolls and toys and natural craft materials are now readily available from online stores, some of which are listed at the end of this chapter. You can also collect natural objects that can be used in many ways by children. Rocks, shells, pinecones, chestnuts, or walnuts, if made available in small baskets or other containers, will appear as part of the scenery, pieces of food, small animals, or whatever else is needed in the moment's play.
Outdoor Play
In addition to a sandbox, swing, and slide, one of the best outdoor toys for three- and four-year-olds is a climbing dome, also called a jungle gym. Such a small dome is just the right height for these children and will be used for climbing, hanging, sitting on, and playing rocket ship.
Another well-used toy will be a balancing board, which is not yet as narrow as a balance beam. By attaching crosspieces to the underside of both ends, the board can be laid securely across concrete blocks, be secured across two chairs of equal height, or be used in many other ways.
If you can make a small hill in your yard, it will be a constant delight for a young child to climb, run down, march up, sit on, and sled down if you have snow. You can also make use of any natural landscape features you have to encourage the creation of little secret spots behind the hedge, construct simple tree houses together, and otherwise make your yard a magical space for small children.
Trips to the park will be enjoyable for the large climbing and playground equipment that is there, but also try to schedule walks with your child down country roads or through a wooded area. And be sure to walk at the child's pace, allowing ample time for exploration and discovery. I was always amazed at what an eye my daughter had for tiny little things: flowers, bugs, bits of colored paper.
Don't be afraid of the elements. Although most people with children buy appropriate clothing for outdoor play in the snow, few people let their children play in the rain. Waterproof rubber boots, toddler rain pants, and a good rain coat can give your child lots of pleasure stomping through the puddles or playing in the mud. Similarly, be sure to go out when it's windy, letting your child be blown by the wind and fly kites or a large maple leaf attached to a string.
The children in Nøkken, the Waldorf-based child care center in Denmark, are outside for several hours each day in all kinds of weather. "There's no such thing as bad weather," director Helle Heckmann asserts, "only bad clothing." Each day she and her assistants walk with the twenty-four children to a nearby park. She describes how Karoline and Johanne, both one-year-olds, have started stroking a tree together and laughing, continuing undisturbed in this experience for about an hour. At the same time, two older children are making dinner with the mud. She writes:
What makes it so important that Sarah and Magnus can sit in a puddle underneath a tree in which the wind is blowing, and in deep concentration cook dinner? What do they shape when they shape the mud-balls? To me, it is definitely themselves—their inner organs. Mud, soil, sand, and water do not have definite shapes; they have the ability to constantly change. This is exactly what the 3- to 4-yearolds need as an identification with the surrounding world. Getting dirty is a sign of health.
The four elements, earth, water, air and fire, are the basic elements which children are nourished by and from which they grow. No shaped toys—be they wood or plastic—can compete with these materials. The seriousness with which the children play, the deep concentration speaks for itself, and shows how important this "playing" is. Nobody needs to fight about anything—there is plenty of mud for everybody. (19)
When I've done workshops on early childhood, I've sometimes asked participants to introduce themselves and then share an early childhood memory. The overwhelming majority of people remember something to do with nature. Often it's just lying in a field and watching the clouds. Try to let your child experience nature and the seasons of the year. You'll probably find it refreshing and energizing yourself!
Encouraging Play by Modeling Meaningful Activity
We have discussed the strong imitative powers of the young child and his need to reenact his experiences of the world around him through play. One of the reasons that children can't play is that they don't very often see the adults around them engaged in meaningful activity that can be transformed in their play. So put attention into the domestic arts and ways in which your child can copy activities such as sweeping, setting the table, sewing, or fixing toys. As discussed earlier, this is primarily because most of our "work" has become mechanized, so there is nothing to see, and because we mistakenly overvalue direct interaction over letting the child observe and share as we do things.
NOURISHING YOUR CHILD'S IMAGINATIVE PLAY THROUGH STORIES
Play enlivens fantasy, and fantasy kindles and diversifies play. As the child becomes older, this creative imagination develops into the formation of images. This same ability later transforms into creative thinking. Developmental psychologists have confirmed that "the development of imagery in the thinking processes of children is an important part of child development, related to play patterns, to creativity, and to adult achievements." (20)
The faculty of imagination develops simultaneously as memory develops. In the third year, the child begins to develop memory and ideas through the separation of himself from the world in consciousness. As the I comes to experience itself as separate from the world, there is someone present to remember things. At the same time, the child is able to unite his increasingly conscious self with the world through his will in play, and fantasy soon follows. The two simultaneous developmental processes can be diagrammed as follows:
The metabolic/will/limb system can be called the vital pole because it is the center of vitality—the center for the anabolic processes of assimilating food and turning it into new physical substance. The growth processes are enormously powerful in a young child, whose life and growth forces are so strong that wounds heal almost immediately. Contrast this with elderly people, whose life forces are declining and whose wounds and broken bones mend only with great difficulty.
The movements of a baby and toddler can be seen as an expression of the movement of the energy that is active within the growth and inner processes of her body. The baby kicks her feet in the air and watches the movement; she moves her hands and follows the movement with her eyes. At first her movements lack intentionality and control. Then she loves to drop things and to fling everything out of her crib, taking joy in the development of her own power. For the infant, the mere moving of her limbs is play enough at first, and a manifestation of the happy unfolding of her powers.
In Childhood: A Study of the Growing Soul, Caroline von Heydebrand discusses how the first games of childhood are bound up with the body and have hidden interplay with organic activities, with the swing of the breath, the rhythmic flow of the circulating fluids, and the forming and excreting of substances. "The small child piles up his blocks so as to be able to tumble them down again. This is more important to him at first than to build a house or a tower. He feels the same satisfaction in construction and destruction when playing with blocks as he does in anabolic and catabolic processes of his organism when they are healthy." (1)
Similarly, when a two-year-old scribbles with a large crayon on a piece of paper, you will see spiral, circular movements punctuated by up-and-down movements. The child is expressing the dynamics of his inner being, not trying to make a representational drawing. This aspect of children's art will be discussed more in chapter 9.
Play Arising from Imagination and Imitation
The time when a little child first begins to feel her movements no longer as expressions of energy but as intentional activities within the sphere of her imaginative games varies with every child, but it usually first becomes apparent to the observer between the ages of two and three. The first kinds of play you are likely to see are your child's pretending to eat and drink or talk on the telephone. This type of pretend play comes through the imitation of things the child has done or seen the people around her do. Thus if your child sees you picking up potatoes or balls of yarns and putting them in a basket, she will be happy to copy you and put pinecones or spools in her own basket. Then she will dump them out again, for a child's play has no utilitarian purpose; there is nothing she is trying to accomplish. Your three-year-old may imitate your sweeping by using her own little broom, but she will be completely involved in the gestures of sweeping and unconcerned about picking up any dust.
Without discriminating, a young child takes in everything in her physical and emotional environment. These impressions, which are taken in by the child without filtering or screening, find their expression in play. A child will imitate not only the activity but also the "soul mood" or emotions present when an action was performed. Thus if your daughter observes a worker hammering a nail with great anger, she will copy the movement and the anger; or, if you straighten up the room with annoyance, you will see your annoyance mirrored in the way she handles her toys. We must pay attention both to the quality of our emotions when we are around young children and to the quality of our movements. Once I was throwing together a cake in a great hurry. I told my four-year-old she could help, but I was going so fast I wasn't paying much attention to her. Suddenly I noticed something was wrong. "What's the matter?" I asked. "You're stirring it too fast!" she said through her tears. And she was right—my movements were an affront to her. I apologized and slowed down!
The progression of play from movement to imaginative play can be seen in a young child's relationship to a rocking horse. At first there is no concept of horse, there is just the joy of rhythmical movement. The idea of being a fast rider and "going somewhere" might come next; later the horse will be incorporated into a five-year-old's elaborate scenarios of being a cowboy or taking care of horses or using one to get away from wolves that are chasing him.
The age between three and five years has been called the age of fantasy because all of the intensity that went into learning to stand, walk, speak, and begin to think now finds its expression in imaginative play, which becomes a story without end. Beginning with the sheer joy of movement, your daughter becomes a bunny hopping or a kitty wanting some milk as the imaginative element is added. Then she begins to transform objects from one thing to another in a stream-of-consciousness flow of associations suggested by the objects themselves and her interactions with them. For example, a cylindrical piece of wood may serve as a can of cat food, then it can become a rolling pin for making cookies. The rolling pin now changes into a carton of milk to go with the cookies and a tea party is under way. If you're lucky, you'll be invited.
This kind of play is similar to dreams in the way one object and situation can flow into another, but it represents a high-level use of the child's creative fantasy. Play is the work of the child from age three on, the way in which she unites herself with the world and tries on all of the activities and roles she sees.
Intentional Pretending
When your child is around four and a half or five you will see a new element begin to dominate her play. This new element is intentionality, and it manifests as "let's pretend." Play now tends to be much more socially oriented; it is a group phenomenon in which as much time can be spent in planning "you be the mother and I'll be the sister and you be the dog' as in playing out the actual scene. Now play begins to arise more from within the child herself, and she is beginning to make a picture or mental image of what she wants to do.
The child now not only manipulates objects and concepts by having one thing turn into another, but she also has the self-awareness to plan ahead in pretending to be someone else. By being the mother, the carpenter, or the baker, she is assimilating the world as she experiences it and "living into" the adult world. This is the age when children love bits of cloth and simple costumes to play various roles. Or they will use dolls and table puppets to put on plays that they make up. Their powers of fantasy and intentionality are also clearly revealed when they model with colored beeswax or clay, paint with watercolors, or color with crayons.
EXPERIENCING THE WORLD THROUGH PLAY
Creative play is the way in which children get to know the world, and it has been called the work of early childhood. "There is nothing that human beings do, know, think, hope and fear that has not been attempted, experienced, practiced or at least anticipated in children's play." This opening sentence from Children at Play by Heidi Britz-Crecelius is developed further as she explains the various "worlds" the child experiences through play. (2)
The World of Space, Time, and the Cosmos
The tiny baby plays unconsciously with his hands and feet. Von Heydebrand states, "He stretches out to the moon or to the sunlight dancing on the ceiling, not only because he cannot yet estimate distances but because in the dim dawning of consciousness he has a closer relation to distant spaces than the fully conscious, grown-up person." (3) But he soon learns that although the wooden ring can be caught hold of, the brightly shining moon cannot. His first attempts at grasping objects thus become an adventure in learning about near and far, attainable and unattainable.
The young child is still closely related to the cosmos and delights in play that involves the sun, moon, and stars and their rhythmical movements in the cosmos. Such play includes the image of the circle in all its forms favored by young children: balls, bubbles, balloons, circle games. The ball, a perfect sphere, is a likeness of the earth, the sun, and the "heavenly sphere" that seems to surround the earth. Soap bubbles are delicate balls that float away on the child's own breath. And watching a balloon floating up to heaven can fill a child with delight or great sadness, depending on his temperament.
The World of Nature
It is through play that children come to know the natural world of animals and plants and the timeless elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Getting out of the sandbox and actually digging in the earth puts a child immediately into contact with the soil and a myriad of life forms: many worms, centipedes, pill bugs, and tiny spiders can be discovered. Similarly, teeming life is discovered when the child turns over a stone by the river or sinks down into tall grass. In a country setting, intimate encounters between children and animals and plants occur without our help; in the cities we may have to arrange for such encounters so our children do not remain strangers to nature for the whole of their lives. Climbing trees, picking fruit and flowers, and sowing seeds and watching them sprout are all important experiences for a child.
Air can be played in using kites, flags, pinwheels, windmills, tissue paper parachutes, and large leaves or any light thing tied to a string. Fire is more difficult for children to experience in our age of central heating and trash pickup, but the joys of a campfire are well known, and Britz-Crecelius states that when a fire is built often enough with adults, the prohibition against lighting fires without an adult will be easier to enforce. (4)
Nature is all around us, even in the city. Contact with nature is renewing for adults, but its importance for children should not be underestimated and has been highlighted by the phrases "nature-deficit disorder" and "no child left inside," popularized by Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods. (5) Children are especially nourished by contact with the world of living things because their own life forces are so strong. Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim reminds us that "the child's thinking remains animistic until the age of puberty. His parents and teachers tell him that things cannot feel and act; and as much as he may pretend to believe this to please these adults, or not to be ridiculed, deep down the child knows better." (6)
The Human World
Through play the child interacts first with his parents and those in his immediate family. He can very soon start to help the adults in their work, washing the car or putting away the silverware. Because much of the interesting housework and handiwork that children used to grow into through play is now done by machines, it is all the more important to let children participate in what you are doing whenever possible, as discussed in earlier chapters.
The Special Role of Dolls
Through play the child familiarizes himself with the world and assimilates it, making it his own. His senses become sharpened and he is better able to control the instrument of his body and to relate to nature and his fellow human beings. Play with dolls is important as one of the ways the child can externalize his own inner being. "Through the doll the child finds its own self," Britz-Crecelius states, offering in Children at Play many examples of how involved children can become with a favorite doll, so that adults have to be very careful not to commit the faux pas of denying the reality of such a doll. (7) Parents must treat these attachments with respect and stay alert to which dolls are ''livin' for the child, for it can change with time and circumstances. The favorite doll can become like an alter ego for the child, invested with a bit of the child's own emerging sense of self.
Because a doll plays many varied and complex roles, according to the circumstances, it is easy to understand that the more indistinct and undefined a doll's expression, the less trouble it will cause the imagination of the child. If the doll has a fixed character, it will most often be assigned a specific role in play; it is less useful as a second I than a soft doll with eyes but no mouth, which can easily be happy, sad, or angry.
Constant invisible companions are used by children in much the same way, and Britz-Crecelius states, "The disappearance of an invisible companion, the discarding of a doll, are important steps on the path of the child to itself. If, however, one removes them forcibly and before the child is ready, then one makes it unsure of itself." (8)
Dolls also give children an opportunity to imitate and work out the ways in which parents treat them. For girls, play with dolls is mainly a mother-and-child game, while boys' play with dolls is rarely that. Boys are also less likely to dress and undress their dolls, so their dolls don't need removable clothes and wardrobes as girls' dolls do. However, boys between two and six have a need as great as a girl's need for a doll that can represent a second I, a being the child clasps in his arms when he is beyond himself in order to come to himself again. Many people in our culture are shy of giving dolls to boys or want to make sure they represent "macho" images such as He-Man or G.I. Joe. However, our sons need to be allowed both to be children and to exhibit nurturing behavior just as much as our daughters!
Most psychologists also support boys being encouraged to play with dolls. Bruno Bettelheim states, "If parents feel relaxed about their son's playing with dolls, they will provide him with valuable opportunities for enriching his play life. For them to do so, it is not sufficient that they simply refrain from disparaging such play. Because of the still prevalent attitude that doll play is only for girls, both parents need to have a positive feeling about a boys doll play if he is to be able to take full advantage of it." (9)
We need to put our attention into the quality of the dolls our children have. Not only their expression but also the quality of the material is important. Is the doll cold and hard or soft and huggable? Is the hair platinum and grotesquely matted after a week's play? A soft cloth doll with yarn hair and a neutral expression provides the child with a companion who can change as he or she does. Britz-Crecelius reminds us, "Walk, talk, cry, laugh, eat, drink, wet itself, blush, get a temperature, get brown in the sun—any rag doll, any nice, simple doll can do that in the hands of a child. The mechanical creatures on the toy market can do it much less well, and provoke every older or younger brother into opening them up to have a look—and rightly so! Because these are not dolls, but machines, whose mechanics leave no room for the little bit of the child's soul that seeks to enclose itself there." (10) Even eyes that close are very mechanical, as evidenced by a little girl who said of her simple doll with its wooden head, "My Tommy doesn't always need to go to sleep straight away, he can also lie awake sometimes." (11)
The beautiful doll and the anatomically correct doll can be a hindrance to the inner development of the child. Not only do they leave nothing for the child's imagination to supply, but they also provide more than the young child can hold in awareness. Young children are mostly aware of the head, as evidenced by their drawings. (This will be discussed more in chapter 9.) Giving a child a doll with breasts is projecting her out of her childhood into the teenage world. Barbie dolls and those with "attitude" like Bratz dolls form a multimillion-dollar enterprise that shortchanges the world of the young child.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PLAY IN INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Noted psychologist Bruno Bettelheim defines a young child's play as "activities characterized by freedom from all but personally imposed rules (which are changed at will), by free-wheeling fantasy involvement and by the absence of any goals outside of the activity itself." (12) Not only is self-directed play important for the healthy creative and emotional growth of a child, but it also forms the best foundation for later intellectual growth. Bettelheim continues:
Play teaches the child, without his being aware of it, the habits most needed for intellectual growth, such as stick-to-itiveness, which is so important in all learning. Perseverance is easily acquired around enjoyable activities such as chosen play. But if it has not become a habit through what is enjoyable, it is not likely to become one through an endeavor like schoolwork." (13)
Kindergarten, as first conceived by Friedrich Froebel in the nineteenth century, was a place where children would play, as if in a garden. However, the push to teach to the test has squeezed self-directed play out of kindergartens almost entirely, as described by the Alliance for Childhood in their report Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School. (14) The imaginative play of the young child, in which objects transform from one thing into another, is an ideal foundation for the symbol manipulation involved in later reading. We shouldn't skip the stage of concrete, although fanciful, manipulation of objects in free play by going directly into reading, writing, and math. The years from three to six provide a lifelong foundation for creativity that should not be undervalued or foreshortened.
Just as it is important not to skip steps like crawling in physical development, it is important not to skip play, which allows for the development of a wide range of experiences, so that what is first grasped through action can later be learned anew through thought. Thus when the adolescent studies the laws of levers and mechanics in physics, he will have had the experience of shifting further forward or back on the seesaw, depending on the size of his friend; or the study of trajectories will have had its foundation in throwing balls or skipping stones.
WAYS TO ENCOURAGE YOUR CHILD'S CREATIVE PLAY
Creating an Inviting Environment
Most children today are like descendants of the old woman in the shoe and "have so many toys, they don't know what to do." The spoils of Christmases and birthdays past are most often stuffed onto shelves or thrown together in a toy box or basket, so it is frequently more fun to dump everything out rather than imaginatively play with particular toys. Helle Heckmann, who runs a Waldorf-inspired child care center in Denmark, describes this cross-cultural phenomenon:
The abundance of the children's room must be every parent's or child's worst nightmare. "I'm bored." "I've got nothing to play with"—even though the shelves are full to the brim. Dust-collectors, a useless mess. Where is the love for the teddy bear, the doll, the car? The present which was given in love and did not drown in abundance is hard to find. The child does not need the toys—the toy factories need the child. (15)
So I invite you to contemplate your child's bedroom or play room and see which items don't seem to contribute to imaginative play or are never used in play. The weeding out can be done openly or covertly. Some parents have enlisted enthusiasm for the project by saying to the child, "You have so many things. Let's sort through the ones you don't play with any more and give them to the Goodwill so other children whose parents don't have the money to buy toys for them will be able to have some of yours." Other items can simply disappear into a box for a few weeks, to be brought back if they are missed—or passed on if they are not. One mother told me she sets aside a box of extra toys as a "rainy day box," which she can go to at times when her child really seems ready for new input.
You might also consider your children's toys from an aesthetic point of view. More than seventy years ago Steiner railed against giving children "beautiful dolls" instead of simple ones. But what about all of the grotesque and bizarre toys that todays children play with, which intentionally try to embody "the dark forces"? Does beauty matter? Young children are looking to know the real world, and to maintain the inner conviction that it is good, true, and beautiful. This deep inner conviction needs to remain in their unconscious to be drawn upon as teenagers. Such wellsprings are necessary if teens are to have any kind of idealism and ability to seek solutions to the problems and evil in the world instead of succumbing to nihilism and despair. Dr. Gilbert Childs, a noted British educator, writes that it is as if we are actually surrounding our children with ugliness as a principle. (16) It's something to consider.
Once you've appraised your children's toys and you can begin to see the floor and the shelves, you'll be much more aware of the individual toys. Then you can think about how to arrange them, because the way in which you display a child's toys determines to a large extent whether or not your child will play with them. Remember that much of play is suggested by the objects themselves as they spark associations in the child's imagination. When toys are piled together in a toy box or basket, they aren't inviting to your child, and you'll never have the possibility of your child's playing quietly by himself after waking up, allowing you to get another twenty minutes of sleep.
There are other advantages to creating order in your child's play space by making sure that everything has a "home." Having a place for everything can provide the child with a feeling that there is order in the larger scheme of things. And it is through play that a child develops habits for work. Helping your child use things and put them away not only teaches good habits in the present but can also be of help in the later development of thought processes. Dr. Gilbert Childs writes, "Such tidiness in practical affairs will assist the order of thought processes, so laying the foundations for clear thinking in adult years. Children learn to 'think with their hands,' and doing repetitious activities that are allied to household and human tasks in life strengthens their will-power." (17) Although it may seem like extra work to clean up with your child at the end of each day, arranging toys invitingly on shelves or tables will encourage your child to be self-motivating in his play. Arranging little scenes on tables or shelves will invite the child to "live into" the scene and start to play with it the next day.
Another aid to your child's play is having activity areas, if your home or apartment is large enough. For example, a play kitchen area with a child-size table and chairs and some kind of toy stove and dishes will provide hours of imitative play. Most of the play dishes, pots, and pans sold in toy stores last a few weeks or months before they are broken or dented beyond recognition. Adult items—wooden bowls, small pots, silverware, saucers, and pitchers, for instance—are sturdier and can usually be picked up inexpensively at secondhand stores. Wooden fruit can be found at many import stores, and a jigsaw can be used to cut pieces of bread from a scrap of plywood.
When you set up activity areas, remember that your child will most often want to play fairly close to where you spend most of your time. A play area in a dining room or family room is often used more frequently than a bedroom that is upstairs and far away from the main activities of the family. One such area of great enjoyment is a workbench with a real vise, small hammer, saw, and nails. Children enjoy the activities of hammering and sawing, and they can also make toys such as boats or cars. An old tree stump that can be kept indoors for pounding nails is a great way to engage children's excess energy. A doll corner is a special place where the dolls can be put to bed each night and greeted in the morning. Cradles, baskets lined with cloth, a small high chair, and a drawer for dolls' clothes all add to the play in this area. The kitchen or dining room table can serve as an area for painting, coloring, and crafts; these activities will be discussed more in chapter 9.
A few simple capes, hats, and accessories for dress-up can greatly enhance your child's play. Children love to play dress-up for the sheer joy of putting on and taking off fancy clothes; they also love to transform themselves into characters who can then act out roles in imaginative play—especially if several siblings or friends play together.
Toys for Imaginative Play
The less formed and more archetypal a toy is, the more possibilities it leaves for the child's imagination. In The Love of Seven Dolls by Paul Gallico, a little girl takes leave of the seven dolls she loves so much. The doll "Monsieur Nicholas," who repairs and makes toys, gives her "an oddly turned piece of wood that had not one but many shapes. 'For your firstborn,' he says. 'It is a toy I have made for him that is not any, yet is still all toys, for in his imagination, when he plays with it, it will be whatever he sees in it, or wishes it to be '" (18)
Shapes and forms from nature—gnarled knots from trees, pieces of bark, small pieces of branches, or one-inch rounds from a tree trunk— have that same possibility. This is where a large box or basket filled with "blocks" made from a tree trunk and branches will be used for much more than stacking and knocking down.
"Waldorf-style" dolls and toys and natural craft materials are now readily available from online stores, some of which are listed at the end of this chapter. You can also collect natural objects that can be used in many ways by children. Rocks, shells, pinecones, chestnuts, or walnuts, if made available in small baskets or other containers, will appear as part of the scenery, pieces of food, small animals, or whatever else is needed in the moment's play.
Outdoor Play
In addition to a sandbox, swing, and slide, one of the best outdoor toys for three- and four-year-olds is a climbing dome, also called a jungle gym. Such a small dome is just the right height for these children and will be used for climbing, hanging, sitting on, and playing rocket ship.
Another well-used toy will be a balancing board, which is not yet as narrow as a balance beam. By attaching crosspieces to the underside of both ends, the board can be laid securely across concrete blocks, be secured across two chairs of equal height, or be used in many other ways.
If you can make a small hill in your yard, it will be a constant delight for a young child to climb, run down, march up, sit on, and sled down if you have snow. You can also make use of any natural landscape features you have to encourage the creation of little secret spots behind the hedge, construct simple tree houses together, and otherwise make your yard a magical space for small children.
Trips to the park will be enjoyable for the large climbing and playground equipment that is there, but also try to schedule walks with your child down country roads or through a wooded area. And be sure to walk at the child's pace, allowing ample time for exploration and discovery. I was always amazed at what an eye my daughter had for tiny little things: flowers, bugs, bits of colored paper.
Don't be afraid of the elements. Although most people with children buy appropriate clothing for outdoor play in the snow, few people let their children play in the rain. Waterproof rubber boots, toddler rain pants, and a good rain coat can give your child lots of pleasure stomping through the puddles or playing in the mud. Similarly, be sure to go out when it's windy, letting your child be blown by the wind and fly kites or a large maple leaf attached to a string.
The children in Nøkken, the Waldorf-based child care center in Denmark, are outside for several hours each day in all kinds of weather. "There's no such thing as bad weather," director Helle Heckmann asserts, "only bad clothing." Each day she and her assistants walk with the twenty-four children to a nearby park. She describes how Karoline and Johanne, both one-year-olds, have started stroking a tree together and laughing, continuing undisturbed in this experience for about an hour. At the same time, two older children are making dinner with the mud. She writes:
What makes it so important that Sarah and Magnus can sit in a puddle underneath a tree in which the wind is blowing, and in deep concentration cook dinner? What do they shape when they shape the mud-balls? To me, it is definitely themselves—their inner organs. Mud, soil, sand, and water do not have definite shapes; they have the ability to constantly change. This is exactly what the 3- to 4-yearolds need as an identification with the surrounding world. Getting dirty is a sign of health.
The four elements, earth, water, air and fire, are the basic elements which children are nourished by and from which they grow. No shaped toys—be they wood or plastic—can compete with these materials. The seriousness with which the children play, the deep concentration speaks for itself, and shows how important this "playing" is. Nobody needs to fight about anything—there is plenty of mud for everybody. (19)
When I've done workshops on early childhood, I've sometimes asked participants to introduce themselves and then share an early childhood memory. The overwhelming majority of people remember something to do with nature. Often it's just lying in a field and watching the clouds. Try to let your child experience nature and the seasons of the year. You'll probably find it refreshing and energizing yourself!
Encouraging Play by Modeling Meaningful Activity
We have discussed the strong imitative powers of the young child and his need to reenact his experiences of the world around him through play. One of the reasons that children can't play is that they don't very often see the adults around them engaged in meaningful activity that can be transformed in their play. So put attention into the domestic arts and ways in which your child can copy activities such as sweeping, setting the table, sewing, or fixing toys. As discussed earlier, this is primarily because most of our "work" has become mechanized, so there is nothing to see, and because we mistakenly overvalue direct interaction over letting the child observe and share as we do things.
NOURISHING YOUR CHILD'S IMAGINATIVE PLAY THROUGH STORIES
Play enlivens fantasy, and fantasy kindles and diversifies play. As the child becomes older, this creative imagination develops into the formation of images. This same ability later transforms into creative thinking. Developmental psychologists have confirmed that "the development of imagery in the thinking processes of children is an important part of child development, related to play patterns, to creativity, and to adult achievements." (20)
The faculty of imagination develops simultaneously as memory develops. In the third year, the child begins to develop memory and ideas through the separation of himself from the world in consciousness. As the I comes to experience itself as separate from the world, there is someone present to remember things. At the same time, the child is able to unite his increasingly conscious self with the world through his will in play, and fantasy soon follows. The two simultaneous developmental processes can be diagrammed as follows:
You can nourish the development of your child's imagination by providing nourishing images from stories the child hears and limiting images the child receives from television, computer games, videos, and movies.
The Difference between Auditory and Visual Images
Images a child hears actively engage his own imaginative or picture-making processes. A good storyteller knows that she is weaving a cloak of magic around the listeners as she describes the characters and the unfolding action. Once I overheard my eleven-year-old say to her friend, "I like to read books without pictures best, because then I can picture them any way I want to." Perhaps this is one of the reasons why movie renditions of books we have read are never quite as satisfying as the originals.
Images we make of things we have read or heard are easy to transform in our imaginations or daydreams because we have already given them life by creating them with our mind's eye. Images we see, however, have a tremendous sticking power and are very difficult to change because they come to us already completed. Who can think of the Seven Dwarves without seeing Happy, Sleepy, Doc, and the entire retinue as Disney portrayed them? I was surprised when my two older children talked to each other about cartoons they had seen five years earlier, before we had gotten rid of the television set. But then I realized that I could still call up images from television programs I had seen when I was a child.
Television and movies don't have as strong an effect on adults as they do on children. For me, seeing E.T. was sort of like eating cotton candy— it didn't make too deep an impression on me—so I was amazed when a year later my children still remembered Elliot's brother's name! Not only do images from television and the movies make a deep impression on the young child, who is all sense organ, but their power also means that these images will be repeated in play as the child tries to digest and assimilate what he has taken in. Even an older child (and many an adult!) will continually talk about a movie right after having seen it in an attempt to digest it.
Because the images from television and the movies are so powerful and change so quickly, children often do not understand the story line and are left imitating the rapid movements and the other elements that make the strongest impression: chasing, shooting, crashing, and so on.
Also, because children are kept passive while watching television, they have all the more need to race about when they are finished. Young children's natural state is movement.
Images from television always reminded me of those automatic reflex responses that bypass the brain, like pulling back your finger from a hot stove before realizing what has happened. In a similar way, images from television and the movies seem to bypass the child himself and come out in frenzied movement, without the child having transformed them into his own unfolding story. As a preschool and kindergarten teacher, I observed a dramatic difference in the quality of play of children who did not watch television. Their inside play was much more imaginative and more likely to have a story line than that of other children, who were more likely to run around and attempt to catch one another. When a child arrived at preschool wearing a Batman T-shirt, the play immediately turned into chasing one another. I then asked the parents not to send their children in clothing with insignias so that imaginative play could find a little space in which to grow and flower.
Some parents are afraid that if they don't let their children watch television they will be seen as social misfits. On the contrary, they are often welcomed. After my children had been involved with Waldorf education for a couple of years, a neighbor said to me, 'We love to have Faith over. She's so creative." Needless to say, I was pleased.
Children who do not watch television will still play games with their friends involving TV or movie characters, whose nature they can easily pick up from the plastic figures. But when everyone was playing characters from Star Wars, for example, the internal process of play was very different in the child who had not seen the film. The imagination was more active and original in the child who was not relating to the fixed visual images from the screen.
The Importance of Oral Language and Storytelling
In his book A Is for Ox, Professor Barry Sanders develops the thesis that true literacy, and the ability to reflect upon one's self and one's actions, which it encourages, can only be based upon a firm foundation of oral language. His book provides a fascinating and cogent argument why, as he states, "The teaching of literacy has to be founded in a curriculum of song, dance, play, and joking, coupled with improvisation and recitation. Students need to hear stories, either made up by the teacher or read out loud. They need to make them up themselves or try to retell them in their own words. Teachers need to provide continual instruction in the oral arts—from primary school, through the upper grades, and on into college." (21) He also shows that this continuing emphasis on the spoken word in schools needs to be built upon the oral foundation provided by the parents in the home, through conversation, singing, nursery rhymes, and stories.
It is significant that Sanders mentions lullabies and nursery rhymes, which are valuable for the rhythmical qualities of language in which they bathe the child. Some are built on tongue twisters or riddles, delighting a child with their playful sounds and associations. Others introduce the child to the concepts, values, and traditions of our normal waking consciousness.
In addition to nursery rhymes, three-year-olds especially love stories that are built on repeating phrases, such as "This Is the House That Jack Built" or "Little Tuppens," which is a story about what the mother hen must ask of each animal so that the oak tree will give her an acorn cup for some water for little Tuppens, who is coughing. Other simple repetitious tales with which you are probably familiar include "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," "The Little Red Hen," and "The Little Gingerbread Boy."
To encourage the transition from nursery rhymes to stories, parents are always encouraged to read to their children, so the children will be exposed to books and to reading. Having parents who read and older siblings who have successfully learned to read increase a child's eagerness to do the same. However, there is also a great deal of value in telling stories to your children. Not only do the children gain listening skills, but they also appreciate the fact that you are doing something creative with them. When you tell a story, you weave a magic web in which the listeners become engrossed, and there is nothing between you and the children to distract your attention or theirs. By telling a story rather than reading it, you are also free to note the effect the story might be having on the child.
With two- and barely three-year-olds, your stories can be simple descriptions of the world that your child experiences. For example, if he likes to feed the ducks in the park, you might make up something like:
Mrs. Duck called her five baby ducklings to follow her into the water. Across the river they swam, because they saw Jimmy and his mother had come with the bag of bread crumbs. Jimmy threw some of the bread into the water, and "splash" went all the ducks as they snapped up the bread. Jimmy laughed to see how hungry they were. When all the bread was gone, Mrs. Duck and her ducklings swam away and Jimmy and his mother went home for nap.
Everyday events are great adventures for a toddler, and he loves to live through them again and again in story. It is important to describe things in a natural way, letting your words bring to mind what the child has experienced. Introducing ideas from fairy tales, such as an "enchanted stream" or a "poison well," would only confuse a young child who is still taking in the direct experience of the water itself. Telling simple stories from everyday life in a slow, deliberate way with a musical tone of voice will delight a two-year-old. A lot of what your two-year-old appreciates is the special time with you and the soothing quality of your voice, which can bring up images or create a mood of security or fun with its rhythms and rhymes.
Children who are three years and older love to hear stories from your own childhood. 'When I was a little girl my mother worked at an olive cannery where they had great big barrels where the olives floated in salty water to make them taste good to eat. And there among the barrels my mother found a little gray kitten. . . . Well, what do you think we named her?" These stories, which have their basis in your experiences, can also stimulate your imagination, so that you start telling a whole made-up series of stories about the adventures of the kitten named Olive. Imagination isn't just for kids!
In stories for young children, although the animals might be personified (like Mrs. Duck), it is best if they are still true to their natures and their lives in the natural world, which the child is coming to know and love. Cartoon characters represent an adult level of sophistication that goes beyond the world of early childhood.
Children also love to hear stories about themselves, especially about when they were babies (now that they are so grown up!). They like to hear about things they said and did, the time they went to grandma's house, and so on.
When is your child old enough for stories? Obviously it takes a certain maturity of language development for a child to listen to a story. Until that time children are still totally immersed in experiencing things themselves. Take your cues from your child and start with very short stories, as described above, gradually working up to longer ones with repetition, and then into simple fairy tales.
The Inner Meaning of Fairy Tales
When the child is about four years old, you will find he is fascinated by fairy tales that are told or read. A simple story like "Sweet Porridge," from the Brothers Grimm collection, will delight even a three-year-old. They enjoy hearing of the little pot, so full of abundance, which overflows until stopped by the right phrase. At this age the children themselves have a sense of life's eternal abundance, which one child expressed when her mother told her that she did not have enough time to take her out to play: "But Mother, I have lots of time. I'll give you some." (22) A simple story such as "The Star Child" can later be followed by longer ones such as "Goldilocks" and "The Three Little Pigs." Some fairy tales are so rich and complex that they can nourish children up to the age of eight or even nine.
Most parents today are unfamiliar with original fairy tales as literature, having grown up with only the cartoon or Disney versions or stories retold by someone who took great liberties with them. Such renditions are of questionable value, and I found that reading the Brothers Grimm or British fairy tales in their original, unedited versions was an entirely different experience. As I became open to their possible inner meanings and read them with new eyes, I found a great wealth in their images.
Fairy tales have gone in and out of fashion over the centuries. During the age of rationalism, they were dismissed as nonsense and were a dying oral tradition when Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, among others, made their collections by visiting village storytellers in the late 1800s. The title of their well-known collection of stories in German is Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), which indicates their original nature as tales or "little reports" that were commonly repeated in the home and told to children. The tales rarely had to do with fairies, and instead they seemed to talk about a world that was somehow strongly connected to our inner life, even if it was different from our everyday experience.
Today there is renewed interest in fairy tales through the work of psychologists such as Carl Jung and Bruno Bettelheim, and writers such as Rudolf Steiner. Jung speaks of fairy tales as projections of the collective unconscious in an attempt to explain their cross-cultural similarities. Rudolf Steiner states that fairy tales are like "readings" or reports from the childhood of humanity, a time when people participated in a dreamlike, experiential consciousness that radiated feeling and was filled with images. This preceded the development of our scientifically critical, observant, awake consciousness that is filled with ideas. (23) Both Jung and Steiner agree that all of the characters in a fairy tale represent elements within each individual, aspects of our own selves and our destinies here on earth. Prince and princess, animus and anima, spirit and soul—all are metaphors for our own striving to achieve a sense of union of the parts of ourselves, represented by the marriage at the end of many tales.
Some object to fairy tales on the grounds that they are too Eurocentric, they lack appropriate female role models, or they are too violent. With a little extra effort, however, tales from other cultures and those with an active female lead can be found. Harder to find are those in which the hera (the feminine form of hero) is female and the journey is a woman's journey (no dragon killing here!). There is often violence in fairy tales, and certainly a Hollywood rendition of a story can scare a young child and give him nightmares. However, when fairy tales are told in a melodic voice, without emotional dramatization, the moral pattern of the fairy tale emerges. In the journal Ethics in Education, Diana Hughes states that fairy tales speak directly to the natural morality in the child and to his or her sense of moral order in the world. When the good wins and the evil is punished, a child is visibly satisfied. (24) Through the adventures
consuming, fairy tales are usually a source of reassurance and comfort to a child. A subtler theme in several stories is that when one recognizes the potential for evil, it loses its potency. For example, once Rumpelstiltskin and his equivalent, Tom-Tit-Tot, have been correctly named, they lose their power and their temper. (25)
Bettelheim states, "It is not the fact that virtue wins out at the end which promotes morality, but that the hero is most attractive to the child, who identifies with the hero in all struggles." (26) There is not a fairy tale known that doesn't end with resolution and the successful growth of the hero or heroine. Steiner pointed out that the world of the fairy tale and the world of the young child are essentially the same: both worlds share moral absolutes, mobility of imagination, and limitless possibilities for transformation. (27) Bettelheim states that fairy tales can often help children resolve fears and build feelings of competence. (28) Neil Postman, in The Disappearance of Childhood, praises Bettelheim's demonstration that the importance of fairy tales "lies in their capacity to reveal the existence of evil in a form that permits children to integrate it without trauma." (29)
If you have trouble with a fairy tale or its images, skip that one and choose another, but don't change parts of it as you go along. The "true" fairy tales are artistic wholes in which actions and descriptions are very precise. They should be told as accurately as possible, without emotional dramatization. The report of the witch locking up Hansel and later getting pushed into the oven by Gretel will not frighten a child if you are not in conflict about the story!
To the extent that we as adults can "live into" the inner richness of a fairy tale, we and our children will be the more nourished by it. As a result, it is best if you do not give explanations to a child or ask him, 'Why did Goldilocks go into the house? How do you think she felt when she woke up and saw the three bears?" Fairy tales should not be reduced to the intellectual or emotional level. They do not need any explanation or rationalization to be appreciated by the child. Just as humanity has passed through various stages of consciousness, so children are passing through these same stages. For this reason, they live with the fairy tale images and are warmed and fulfilled by them again and again. When we tell a fairy tale with an inner understanding and appreciation of its deeper meaning, it is as if the young child feels, "Ah! You understand, too!"
Sharing Fairy Tales with Young Children
First, it is important that you be comfortable with a fairy tale and at least open to and appreciative of its deeper meaning. If a particular story pushes your buttons, don't share that one with your children. Rather, choose a fairy tale that speaks to you, one you can meditate on and try to penetrate to its mood and inner meanings. You can become familiar with various approaches to the interpretation of fairy tales by reading some of the books listed at the end of this chapter, but ultimately you will need to let the fairy tale speak to you directly. Try reading it to yourself every night before you go to bed. By taking it into your sleep, you will gradually gain insight into it.
One way to match fairy tales to the age of the child is to look at a story's degree of complexity. In almost every fairy tale there is either a problem that must be solved or a confrontation with evil. The milder the problem, the more appropriate the tale for younger children. Conversely, the greater the evil, the more appropriate the tale is for older children. (30)
Similarly, there are often several trials of varying complexity. In "The Three Little Pigs," the pigs are too smart for the wolf three times before they finally overcome him. The tasks the pigs face are really not very scary and are addressed with a fair amount of humor, making this tale well loved by most four-year-olds. In contrast, the sister in "The Seven Ravens" must journey to the sun, the moon, and the stars in order to free her brothers; this is a tale for five- and six-year-olds. Even more complex tales, such as "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," are appropriate for school-age children. If a fairy tale is widely known in society, children are often ready for it at an earlier age. Also, if a storyteller particularly loves a fairy tale, she can often tell it successfully to younger children. With children of mixed ages (such as three- to six-year-olds in a Waldorf mixed-age kindergarten or homeschooling situation), stories can be told successfully even if they are appropriate for only some of the children; the rest will listen as if carried along by the other children. Udo de Haes points out that you needn't worry about toddlers in a family hearing stories that are being read to an older brother or sister. In such cases the toddler will be most interested in sitting close to his parent and listening to the cadences of his or her voice and will not pay the same kind of attention to the tale as the child to whom the story is addressed. (31)
When stories and fairy tales are translated into cartoons or movies, they lose their evocative quality and are often too powerful or too inane for young children. However, when stories are presented to children using table puppets or silk marionettes, the experience can have a very calming and healing effect. Even more simply, telling a story in nature and illustrating it with a little puppet that comes out of your pocket or who is "found" behind a piece of bark can be totally delightful; Suzanne Down's newsletters and puppetry kits, listed below, can introduce you to this magical world of puppetry in early childhood.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Story Anthologies to Get You Started
About Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales
Puppets and Puppet Plays
Curative Stories
Books to Inspire Creative Play
Play, Storytelling, and Sharing Nature
Waldorf in the Home. The website www.waldorfinthehome.com provides articles and nearly two hundred DVDs and CDs of keynote presentations and workshops by leading Waldorf educators, including:
Toys for Creative Play
So many wonderful sources are available online! Here are a few of our favorites:
NOTES
Bibliography - You Are Your Child's First Teacher
The Difference between Auditory and Visual Images
Images a child hears actively engage his own imaginative or picture-making processes. A good storyteller knows that she is weaving a cloak of magic around the listeners as she describes the characters and the unfolding action. Once I overheard my eleven-year-old say to her friend, "I like to read books without pictures best, because then I can picture them any way I want to." Perhaps this is one of the reasons why movie renditions of books we have read are never quite as satisfying as the originals.
Images we make of things we have read or heard are easy to transform in our imaginations or daydreams because we have already given them life by creating them with our mind's eye. Images we see, however, have a tremendous sticking power and are very difficult to change because they come to us already completed. Who can think of the Seven Dwarves without seeing Happy, Sleepy, Doc, and the entire retinue as Disney portrayed them? I was surprised when my two older children talked to each other about cartoons they had seen five years earlier, before we had gotten rid of the television set. But then I realized that I could still call up images from television programs I had seen when I was a child.
Television and movies don't have as strong an effect on adults as they do on children. For me, seeing E.T. was sort of like eating cotton candy— it didn't make too deep an impression on me—so I was amazed when a year later my children still remembered Elliot's brother's name! Not only do images from television and the movies make a deep impression on the young child, who is all sense organ, but their power also means that these images will be repeated in play as the child tries to digest and assimilate what he has taken in. Even an older child (and many an adult!) will continually talk about a movie right after having seen it in an attempt to digest it.
Because the images from television and the movies are so powerful and change so quickly, children often do not understand the story line and are left imitating the rapid movements and the other elements that make the strongest impression: chasing, shooting, crashing, and so on.
Also, because children are kept passive while watching television, they have all the more need to race about when they are finished. Young children's natural state is movement.
Images from television always reminded me of those automatic reflex responses that bypass the brain, like pulling back your finger from a hot stove before realizing what has happened. In a similar way, images from television and the movies seem to bypass the child himself and come out in frenzied movement, without the child having transformed them into his own unfolding story. As a preschool and kindergarten teacher, I observed a dramatic difference in the quality of play of children who did not watch television. Their inside play was much more imaginative and more likely to have a story line than that of other children, who were more likely to run around and attempt to catch one another. When a child arrived at preschool wearing a Batman T-shirt, the play immediately turned into chasing one another. I then asked the parents not to send their children in clothing with insignias so that imaginative play could find a little space in which to grow and flower.
Some parents are afraid that if they don't let their children watch television they will be seen as social misfits. On the contrary, they are often welcomed. After my children had been involved with Waldorf education for a couple of years, a neighbor said to me, 'We love to have Faith over. She's so creative." Needless to say, I was pleased.
Children who do not watch television will still play games with their friends involving TV or movie characters, whose nature they can easily pick up from the plastic figures. But when everyone was playing characters from Star Wars, for example, the internal process of play was very different in the child who had not seen the film. The imagination was more active and original in the child who was not relating to the fixed visual images from the screen.
The Importance of Oral Language and Storytelling
In his book A Is for Ox, Professor Barry Sanders develops the thesis that true literacy, and the ability to reflect upon one's self and one's actions, which it encourages, can only be based upon a firm foundation of oral language. His book provides a fascinating and cogent argument why, as he states, "The teaching of literacy has to be founded in a curriculum of song, dance, play, and joking, coupled with improvisation and recitation. Students need to hear stories, either made up by the teacher or read out loud. They need to make them up themselves or try to retell them in their own words. Teachers need to provide continual instruction in the oral arts—from primary school, through the upper grades, and on into college." (21) He also shows that this continuing emphasis on the spoken word in schools needs to be built upon the oral foundation provided by the parents in the home, through conversation, singing, nursery rhymes, and stories.
It is significant that Sanders mentions lullabies and nursery rhymes, which are valuable for the rhythmical qualities of language in which they bathe the child. Some are built on tongue twisters or riddles, delighting a child with their playful sounds and associations. Others introduce the child to the concepts, values, and traditions of our normal waking consciousness.
In addition to nursery rhymes, three-year-olds especially love stories that are built on repeating phrases, such as "This Is the House That Jack Built" or "Little Tuppens," which is a story about what the mother hen must ask of each animal so that the oak tree will give her an acorn cup for some water for little Tuppens, who is coughing. Other simple repetitious tales with which you are probably familiar include "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," "The Little Red Hen," and "The Little Gingerbread Boy."
To encourage the transition from nursery rhymes to stories, parents are always encouraged to read to their children, so the children will be exposed to books and to reading. Having parents who read and older siblings who have successfully learned to read increase a child's eagerness to do the same. However, there is also a great deal of value in telling stories to your children. Not only do the children gain listening skills, but they also appreciate the fact that you are doing something creative with them. When you tell a story, you weave a magic web in which the listeners become engrossed, and there is nothing between you and the children to distract your attention or theirs. By telling a story rather than reading it, you are also free to note the effect the story might be having on the child.
With two- and barely three-year-olds, your stories can be simple descriptions of the world that your child experiences. For example, if he likes to feed the ducks in the park, you might make up something like:
Mrs. Duck called her five baby ducklings to follow her into the water. Across the river they swam, because they saw Jimmy and his mother had come with the bag of bread crumbs. Jimmy threw some of the bread into the water, and "splash" went all the ducks as they snapped up the bread. Jimmy laughed to see how hungry they were. When all the bread was gone, Mrs. Duck and her ducklings swam away and Jimmy and his mother went home for nap.
Everyday events are great adventures for a toddler, and he loves to live through them again and again in story. It is important to describe things in a natural way, letting your words bring to mind what the child has experienced. Introducing ideas from fairy tales, such as an "enchanted stream" or a "poison well," would only confuse a young child who is still taking in the direct experience of the water itself. Telling simple stories from everyday life in a slow, deliberate way with a musical tone of voice will delight a two-year-old. A lot of what your two-year-old appreciates is the special time with you and the soothing quality of your voice, which can bring up images or create a mood of security or fun with its rhythms and rhymes.
Children who are three years and older love to hear stories from your own childhood. 'When I was a little girl my mother worked at an olive cannery where they had great big barrels where the olives floated in salty water to make them taste good to eat. And there among the barrels my mother found a little gray kitten. . . . Well, what do you think we named her?" These stories, which have their basis in your experiences, can also stimulate your imagination, so that you start telling a whole made-up series of stories about the adventures of the kitten named Olive. Imagination isn't just for kids!
In stories for young children, although the animals might be personified (like Mrs. Duck), it is best if they are still true to their natures and their lives in the natural world, which the child is coming to know and love. Cartoon characters represent an adult level of sophistication that goes beyond the world of early childhood.
Children also love to hear stories about themselves, especially about when they were babies (now that they are so grown up!). They like to hear about things they said and did, the time they went to grandma's house, and so on.
When is your child old enough for stories? Obviously it takes a certain maturity of language development for a child to listen to a story. Until that time children are still totally immersed in experiencing things themselves. Take your cues from your child and start with very short stories, as described above, gradually working up to longer ones with repetition, and then into simple fairy tales.
The Inner Meaning of Fairy Tales
When the child is about four years old, you will find he is fascinated by fairy tales that are told or read. A simple story like "Sweet Porridge," from the Brothers Grimm collection, will delight even a three-year-old. They enjoy hearing of the little pot, so full of abundance, which overflows until stopped by the right phrase. At this age the children themselves have a sense of life's eternal abundance, which one child expressed when her mother told her that she did not have enough time to take her out to play: "But Mother, I have lots of time. I'll give you some." (22) A simple story such as "The Star Child" can later be followed by longer ones such as "Goldilocks" and "The Three Little Pigs." Some fairy tales are so rich and complex that they can nourish children up to the age of eight or even nine.
Most parents today are unfamiliar with original fairy tales as literature, having grown up with only the cartoon or Disney versions or stories retold by someone who took great liberties with them. Such renditions are of questionable value, and I found that reading the Brothers Grimm or British fairy tales in their original, unedited versions was an entirely different experience. As I became open to their possible inner meanings and read them with new eyes, I found a great wealth in their images.
Fairy tales have gone in and out of fashion over the centuries. During the age of rationalism, they were dismissed as nonsense and were a dying oral tradition when Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, among others, made their collections by visiting village storytellers in the late 1800s. The title of their well-known collection of stories in German is Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales), which indicates their original nature as tales or "little reports" that were commonly repeated in the home and told to children. The tales rarely had to do with fairies, and instead they seemed to talk about a world that was somehow strongly connected to our inner life, even if it was different from our everyday experience.
Today there is renewed interest in fairy tales through the work of psychologists such as Carl Jung and Bruno Bettelheim, and writers such as Rudolf Steiner. Jung speaks of fairy tales as projections of the collective unconscious in an attempt to explain their cross-cultural similarities. Rudolf Steiner states that fairy tales are like "readings" or reports from the childhood of humanity, a time when people participated in a dreamlike, experiential consciousness that radiated feeling and was filled with images. This preceded the development of our scientifically critical, observant, awake consciousness that is filled with ideas. (23) Both Jung and Steiner agree that all of the characters in a fairy tale represent elements within each individual, aspects of our own selves and our destinies here on earth. Prince and princess, animus and anima, spirit and soul—all are metaphors for our own striving to achieve a sense of union of the parts of ourselves, represented by the marriage at the end of many tales.
Some object to fairy tales on the grounds that they are too Eurocentric, they lack appropriate female role models, or they are too violent. With a little extra effort, however, tales from other cultures and those with an active female lead can be found. Harder to find are those in which the hera (the feminine form of hero) is female and the journey is a woman's journey (no dragon killing here!). There is often violence in fairy tales, and certainly a Hollywood rendition of a story can scare a young child and give him nightmares. However, when fairy tales are told in a melodic voice, without emotional dramatization, the moral pattern of the fairy tale emerges. In the journal Ethics in Education, Diana Hughes states that fairy tales speak directly to the natural morality in the child and to his or her sense of moral order in the world. When the good wins and the evil is punished, a child is visibly satisfied. (24) Through the adventures
consuming, fairy tales are usually a source of reassurance and comfort to a child. A subtler theme in several stories is that when one recognizes the potential for evil, it loses its potency. For example, once Rumpelstiltskin and his equivalent, Tom-Tit-Tot, have been correctly named, they lose their power and their temper. (25)
Bettelheim states, "It is not the fact that virtue wins out at the end which promotes morality, but that the hero is most attractive to the child, who identifies with the hero in all struggles." (26) There is not a fairy tale known that doesn't end with resolution and the successful growth of the hero or heroine. Steiner pointed out that the world of the fairy tale and the world of the young child are essentially the same: both worlds share moral absolutes, mobility of imagination, and limitless possibilities for transformation. (27) Bettelheim states that fairy tales can often help children resolve fears and build feelings of competence. (28) Neil Postman, in The Disappearance of Childhood, praises Bettelheim's demonstration that the importance of fairy tales "lies in their capacity to reveal the existence of evil in a form that permits children to integrate it without trauma." (29)
If you have trouble with a fairy tale or its images, skip that one and choose another, but don't change parts of it as you go along. The "true" fairy tales are artistic wholes in which actions and descriptions are very precise. They should be told as accurately as possible, without emotional dramatization. The report of the witch locking up Hansel and later getting pushed into the oven by Gretel will not frighten a child if you are not in conflict about the story!
To the extent that we as adults can "live into" the inner richness of a fairy tale, we and our children will be the more nourished by it. As a result, it is best if you do not give explanations to a child or ask him, 'Why did Goldilocks go into the house? How do you think she felt when she woke up and saw the three bears?" Fairy tales should not be reduced to the intellectual or emotional level. They do not need any explanation or rationalization to be appreciated by the child. Just as humanity has passed through various stages of consciousness, so children are passing through these same stages. For this reason, they live with the fairy tale images and are warmed and fulfilled by them again and again. When we tell a fairy tale with an inner understanding and appreciation of its deeper meaning, it is as if the young child feels, "Ah! You understand, too!"
Sharing Fairy Tales with Young Children
First, it is important that you be comfortable with a fairy tale and at least open to and appreciative of its deeper meaning. If a particular story pushes your buttons, don't share that one with your children. Rather, choose a fairy tale that speaks to you, one you can meditate on and try to penetrate to its mood and inner meanings. You can become familiar with various approaches to the interpretation of fairy tales by reading some of the books listed at the end of this chapter, but ultimately you will need to let the fairy tale speak to you directly. Try reading it to yourself every night before you go to bed. By taking it into your sleep, you will gradually gain insight into it.
One way to match fairy tales to the age of the child is to look at a story's degree of complexity. In almost every fairy tale there is either a problem that must be solved or a confrontation with evil. The milder the problem, the more appropriate the tale for younger children. Conversely, the greater the evil, the more appropriate the tale is for older children. (30)
Similarly, there are often several trials of varying complexity. In "The Three Little Pigs," the pigs are too smart for the wolf three times before they finally overcome him. The tasks the pigs face are really not very scary and are addressed with a fair amount of humor, making this tale well loved by most four-year-olds. In contrast, the sister in "The Seven Ravens" must journey to the sun, the moon, and the stars in order to free her brothers; this is a tale for five- and six-year-olds. Even more complex tales, such as "East of the Sun and West of the Moon," are appropriate for school-age children. If a fairy tale is widely known in society, children are often ready for it at an earlier age. Also, if a storyteller particularly loves a fairy tale, she can often tell it successfully to younger children. With children of mixed ages (such as three- to six-year-olds in a Waldorf mixed-age kindergarten or homeschooling situation), stories can be told successfully even if they are appropriate for only some of the children; the rest will listen as if carried along by the other children. Udo de Haes points out that you needn't worry about toddlers in a family hearing stories that are being read to an older brother or sister. In such cases the toddler will be most interested in sitting close to his parent and listening to the cadences of his or her voice and will not pay the same kind of attention to the tale as the child to whom the story is addressed. (31)
When stories and fairy tales are translated into cartoons or movies, they lose their evocative quality and are often too powerful or too inane for young children. However, when stories are presented to children using table puppets or silk marionettes, the experience can have a very calming and healing effect. Even more simply, telling a story in nature and illustrating it with a little puppet that comes out of your pocket or who is "found" behind a piece of bark can be totally delightful; Suzanne Down's newsletters and puppetry kits, listed below, can introduce you to this magical world of puppetry in early childhood.
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Story Anthologies to Get You Started
- The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm and Margaret Hunt (The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library).
- Fearless Girls, Wise Women and Beloved Sisters: Heroines in Folktales from Around the World, edited by Kathleen Regan (W.W. Norton & Co.).
- Great Children's Stories: The Classic Volland Edition, illustrated by Frederick Richardson (Rand McNally).
- The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World, by Ethel Johnston Phelps (Holt, Rinehart & Co.).
- Spindrift. Stories and songs gathered by British Waldorf kindergarten teachers. Available from www.steinercollege.edu.
About Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales
- A Is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age, by Barry Sanders (Pantheon). A fascinating analysis of the importance of the oral tradition in developing a sense of self, and the crises facing youth and society today.
- Lifeways: Working with Family Questions, edited by Gudrun Davy and Bons Voors (Hawthorn Press). Contains two chapters on the inner meaning of fairy tales.
- The Tao and Mother Goose, by Robert Carter (Theosophical Publishing House).
- The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, by Bruno Bettelheim (Knopf).
- The Wisdom of Fairy Tales, by Rudolf Meyer (Floris Books). Interpretations working out of the indications of Rudolf Steiner.
Puppets and Puppet Plays
- Juniper Tree Puppets. Shares the magical world of Suzanne Down through monthly story newsletters, books, puppet-making kits, workshops, and trainings. At www.junipertreepuppets.com.
- A Lifetime ofJoy, by Bronja Zahlingen. A treasury of verses, finger games, stories, and plays for puppets and marionettes. Available from www.waldorfearlychildhood.com.
- Toymaking with Children, by Freya Jaffke (Floris). Instructions for making table puppets and many more soft and hard toys found in Waldorf kindergartens.
Curative Stories
- Healing Stories for Challenging Behavior, by Susan Perrow (Hawthorn Press). More than fifty stories that address everything from bullying to jealousy of a new baby, plus a guide to making your own stories.
- Why the Setting Sun Turns Red, by Eugene Schwartz (Association of Waldorf Schools of North America). Seven stories illustrating the imaginative and objective approach taken by a Waldorf teacher to questions of discipline with kindergarten through high school—aged children.
Books to Inspire Creative Play
- Children at Play: Using Waldorf Principles to Foster Child Development, by Heidi Britz-Crecelius (Inner Traditions). Describes how the child comes to know the world through play. Highly recommended.
- The Children's Year, by Stephanie Cooper et al. (Hawthorn Press). Directions for soft dolls, knitted animals, and many other toys to make with children.
- Earth, Water, Fire, Air, by Walter Kraul (Floris). Play that encourages exploration of the four elements.
- Earthways, by Carol Petrash (Gryphon House). Simple environmental activities for young children.
- Making Dolls, by Sunnhild Reinckens (Floris). Richly illustrated instructions for making several types of soft Waldorf dolls.
- The Power of Play, by David Elkind (DaCapo). More on the importance of play.
- Toymaking with Children, by Freya Jaffke (Floris). Instructions for making dolls, knitted animals, wooden trestles, and many more soft and hard toys found in Waldorf kindergartens.
- Work and Play in Early Childhood, by Freya Jaffke (Floris). Discusses the pillars of rhythm and repetition, example, and imitation. Beautiful pictures from Waldorf kindergartens.
Play, Storytelling, and Sharing Nature
Waldorf in the Home. The website www.waldorfinthehome.com provides articles and nearly two hundred DVDs and CDs of keynote presentations and workshops by leading Waldorf educators, including:
- "Creating a KinderGarden for Young Children," by Betty Peck "Creating Play Spaces for Young Children," by Simone Demarzi
- ''The Greening of Story," by Suzanne Down "The Hidden Depth in Fairy Tales," by Thesa Kallinikos
- "Letting Stories Teach," by Eugene Schwartz
- "Nurturing Love and Reverence for Nature with Our Children," by Nancy Poer
- "The Rebirth of Play," by Joan Almon
- "Re-Creating Play," by Joan Almon
- "Sharing Stories with Children," by Daena Ross
- "Sharing the Joy of Nature and Flow Learning," by Joseph Cornell
Toys for Creative Play
So many wonderful sources are available online! Here are a few of our favorites:
- Bella Luna Toys (www.bellalunatoys.com)
- A Child's Dream Come True (www.achildsdream.com)
- Community Playthings (www.communityplaythings.com)
- Juniper Tree Puppets (www.junipertreepuppets.com)
- Nova Natural (www.novanatural.com)
- Palumba (www.palumba.com)
- The Puppenstube (www.thepuppenstube.com)
- A Toy Garden (www.atoygarden.com)
- Weir Dolls and Crafts (www.weirdollsandcrafts.com)
NOTES
- Caroline von Heydebrand, Childhood: A Study of the Growing Soul (London: Anthroposophic Publishing Co., 1946), p. 60.
- Britz-Crecelius, Children at Play, p. 7.
- Caroline von Heydebrand, "The Child at Play," in Education as an Art: Rudolf Steiner and Other Writers, ed. Paul M. Allen (Blauvelt, NY: SteinerBooks/ Multimedia Publishing, 1970), p. 89.
- Britz-Crecelius, Children at Play, p. 32.
- Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2008).
- Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975), p. 46.
- Britz-Crecelius, Children at Play, pp. 79—101.
- Ibid., p. 92.
- Bruno Bettelheim, "The Importance of Play," Atlantic Monthly, March 1987, P. 40.
- Britz-Crecelius, Children at Play, p. 97.
- Ibid.
- Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, p. 37.
- Ibid., p. 36.
- See www.allianceforchildhood.org and their report, Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School (College Park, MD: Alliance for Childhood, 2009).
- Helle Heckmann, "Imagination Surpasses Reality—Also When It Comes to Toys," unpublished handout at her lecture, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 1998.
- Dr. Gilbert Childs and Sylvia Childs, Your Reincarnating Child (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1995), p. 89.
- Ibid., p. 107.
- Quoted in Britz-Crecelius, Children at Play, p. 81.
- Heckmann, "Imagination Surpasses Reality."
- Dr. Karen N. Olness, "Little People, Images and Child Health," American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 27, no. 3 (January 1985).
- Barry Sanders, A Is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 243.
- Joan Almon, "Choosing Fairy Tales for Young Children," Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter, Fall 1985, p. 7.
- See Helmut von Kügelgen, "Fairy Tale Language and the Image of Man," Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter, Fall 1986, and Rudolf Steiner, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1943).
- Diana Hughes, "Fairy Tales: A Basis for Moral Education," Ethics in Education 6, no. 4 (March 1987): 11.
- Ibid., p. 12.
- Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment, p. 9.
- Hughes, "Fairy Tales," p. 11.
- Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment.
- Neil Postman, The Disappearance of Childhood (New York: Dell Publishing, 1982), pp. 93-94.
- Almon, "Choosing Fairy Tales for Young Children."
- Udo de Haes, The Young Child, p. 52.
Bibliography - You Are Your Child's First Teacher