A movement program that is solidly based on the developmental needs of children can have many school-wide benefits. These include...
In seating a student behind a desk, we as teachers and parents are anticipating that the child is physiologically ready, or soon will become ready, for the year’s tasks. But realistically, every child will struggle with some aspect of the academic environment: it might be a challenge to sit in balance, or to listen quietly, or to muster the fine motor skills for writing. Thus, we must remember that through movement, every child can be helped in some way to reach his or her full potential.
From early childhood through high school, experience has shown that classes of students who are provided with appropriate daily movement activities are able to move ahead more solidly. Benefits of these activities include:
Education for Balance and Resilience
Why do Waldorf Schools devote so much time (and salary lines!) to specialty subjects like Eurythmy, languages, handwork, woodwork, gardening, form drawing, painting, music and games? On top of that, why is the first twenty minutes or so of the daily main lesson devoted to movement and singing activities that seem sort of non-academic… and then why does the noontime usually include up to an hour for lunch and outdoor play? Let’s put a pencil to this question: a typical school week will comprise 32 to 35 hours in school; then subtract a typical 12 hours for specialty classes and 5 hours for lunch/recess. Answer: about half the school week is spent on other than the “Common Core” of math, science and English language skills (although the foreign language classes must be counted in the ‘Academics’ column).
I believe that in looking at almost any such question, our Waldorf movement can be strengthened when we read and re-read Rudolf Steiner’s foundational lectures, and at the same time assiduously look to more modern research and writings to find parallels or further verification. Keeping “up to date” with newer approaches will give us a vocabulary that can help us speak with our wider communities in accessible terminology, and also to avoid the pitfalls of unexamined adherence to Doctor Steiner’s printed lectures from a century ago.
—> Read pdf A full-page size poster of the above graphic is on page 4 of the linked article.
5th Grade Olympiad Information Packet
Aurora Waldorf hosts the regional Waldorf pentathlon for chools in western New York and southern Ontario. Here is a sample of the information packet we send out each year; it includes notes on competition and judging, odes, tunic designs, registration forms, etc.
—> Read more
Educational Support forms
One of the challenges faced by Educational Support Teams, and remedial teachers in general, is maintaining an informative and objective record of observations, recommendations, permissions and goals. The files provided here show the progression of communication used at Aurora Waldorf; they are offered as just one possible example of ways to build and strengthen communications within the faculty, and between the school and parents of students needing support. At AWS, this progression of forms is stored in a separate EST file cabinet, not in the main student records.
—> Read more
Online Forum for Waldorf Teachers
The Waldorf Movement Forum is an online place to share questions and answers, and build bridges between Waldorf movement, class and remedial teachers. —> Take a look
Boys and Girls in Movement
Stereotypes and Archetypes - Balancing Gender Needs in Elementary School Movement
Although boys and girls have many developmental-movement needs in common, they also have important differences in the ways they use movement to structurally organize their perception of and contact with the world. These needs that should be addressed in our Waldorf classrooms, schoolyards and games classes. My goal in this article is to review perspectives on this vital topic, from a number of informative sources; to see how these seemingly disparate sources might be connected; and, I hope, to inspire further research and discussion at your school. —> READ PDF
The “Thinker” Pyramid
Here’s a nice and unusual acrobatic stunt I got from the Ithaca Waldorf circus. The bottom base gets on hands and knees. Others, from heaviest to lightest at top, assume the Thinker statue posture.
Making a paper "sailboat"
This video shows the paper folding instructions for a whole-class remedial activity known as "Sailboat Race." It provides fine motor development (the folding part); training of executive function (waiting to be told what the construction will be); an aid for breathing (you'll see!); and myelination of the brain (crawling).
—> Read more
the third session:
Gym & Developmental
Movement Intensive Week
June/July 2016 at Aurora Waldorf School (Buffalo NY area)
After two successful sessions—in summer 2013 and 2014—we will be taking a break in 2015, and then coming back again in late June/early July 2016. If you would like to be on the email list for notifications about this, please use the Contact Page.
The learning goal of this course is to enrich and enliven teaching approaches, starting with the insights of Rudolf Steiner a century ago and then linking these to more recent research and methods. The emphasis will be on activities for grades 1 to 4, but we will also experience how these transform for older classes. We will examine the foundations of healthy development that occur through movement, and experience how these foundations can be joyfully built through ‘old time’ gym, schoolyard and backyard games once played by children all over the world. Thousands of such activities are to be found in books for gym teachers and recreation directors published between 1910 and 1950.
Each day will include five hours of movement and two hours of supporting pedagogical theory. Sessions will include techniques for identifying needs, planning lessons around individual or class problems, sensory integration, addressing specific academic/developmental goals. Following is an outline of the course content.
Games & Movement Categories:
Rough and Tumble Play… Wrestling Games… Development of Throwing & Catching…
Active/Exercise… Danger/Pursuit… Circle/Musical/Clapping… Party/Quiet/Blindfold… Enrichment Activities and Remedial Sequences…
A Lower-Grades Model for
the Waldorf Circus:
Low- or No-Spotting Gymnastics Skills… Acrobatics… Zoo Exercises… Mat Agilities… Circus Skills… Apparatus & obstacle course… Tumbling Games
Workup Games for Sports
Baseball variations, Tennis, Volleyball, Aussie rules football ...and more
Pedagogical Lectures and Seminars
• A system of movement categories
• Fourfold human being; Twelve senses
• Hope, Love and Faith: applying Rudolf Steiner’s Pedagogical Law
• Postural control in the light of Anthroposophy
• Sixteen keys to developmental movement needs; Learning challenges & mainstream labels
• Developing/promoting a movement program - and how to communicate your goals
Sidebar topics: Competition; Teasing; the Olympics model; Comparative movement needs of boys and girls
Remedial & Artistic Activities
Including shaded drawing and painting handwriting