Download the Article: Eurythmy Room Design

by Reg Down

Waldorf Schools are continuing to experience growth and development as awareness of the need for meaningful forms of education increases. Associated with this growth is a rising demand for eurythmists, as well as a need to construct or remodel spaces suitable for a healthy and thriving eurythmy program. How this space is designed can have a huge impact on the children, the teaching, and the health and well-being of the teacher.

Download the article: Fact Sheet for Healthy Play

The Alliance for Childhood promotes policies and practices that support children's healthy development, love of learning, and joy in living. Their public education campaigns bring to light both the promise and the vulnerability of childhood. They act for the sake of the children themselves and for a more just, democratic, and ecologically responsible future. This fact sheet for healthy play outlines the benefits of play and what parents can do to help their child play.

Keywords: early childhood, play

click here for a pdf of the article

by Eileen Hutchins
Originally published in Child and Man (UK), Vol 5, #2 Winter 1968

THE attitude towards music, painting and rhythmical movement as school subjects has very much changed during the last 50 years. A few decades ago these were not part of the normal curriculum but were extras for pupils particularly gifted or for those not capable of academic work. Today most educationalists have come to the view that the arts play an essential part in education. But they are now too often regarded as opportunities for self-expression rather than as studies with their own necessary disciplines. And in general there is little connection between them and the standard school subjects.

Download the article: Fine motor skills and subtle thinking - Findings from kindergarten and primary school

by Sebastian Suggate
Published in Erziehungskunst, Waldorf Education Today http://www.erziehungskunst.de

Both the progressive educator Maria Montessori and the German philosopher Martin Heidegger saw the hand as an instrument of intelligence. This thought, that movement is essential to the thinking also plays an important role in the education of Rudolf Steiner. Recently numerous empirical findings have also supported this fascinating idea.

One of the first achievements of the small child concerns motor development. As soon as the body has developed a little and gained in strength, expectant mothers notice small movements, sometimes as early as the fifth month of pregnancy, which are often experienced as butterflies in the stomach.

Even at birth newborns have so-called primary reflexes which have to be repressed in the course of development. For example, newborns have the strength to hold their body weight when gripping with both hands. Or directly after birth it appears as if they could swim in water (swimming reflex). But these primary or survival reflexes are lost soon after birth.