Birthdays, Start Time, Bread and Soup, Jobs, End of the Day

Dear Nursery Families,

Birthdays

     We will celebrate 3 summer birthdays next week, 1 fall birthday the following week, and another summer birthday the following week.  In the nursery class, my birthday story tries to be simple, beautiful, and meaningful. I present a puppet show that tells the story of heavenly child's search for just the right parents.  I provide a gift to the birthday child.  As dessert for our snack time, we eat spicy ginger muffins (I will provide recipes) that the birthday child and I baked at either the child's home or my home.   Apart from allowing me to use your oven in preparation and tolerating my mess in your kitchen (which I will try to clean up), you need not do anything else for the birthday celebration.  I provide all baking supplies.  My first two baking home visits last week were delightful.  It was really, really nice to visit a child with such a lovely project to do.  It is hard to imagine trying something other than visiting a child at home to bake birthday muffins.

I've lived without a working oven on multiple occasions.  I am more than glad to have you and your child visit my home for the birthday muffin baking.  My point in transforming the traditional Waldorf School home visit into a baking experience is to free it from all sense that a visit will be a home inspection.

Start Time


It has become clear to me that my sons need me to be present to walk them to class in first grade and kindergarten.  As such, I cannot at the moment offer the possibility of you dropping your child off with me in the woods before 8:30am, the official start of school,  When I did go to the woods early, it did not seem that parents arrived before 8:30am, so I hope this will not be a hardship.

My plan for next week is to drop off my first grader at 8:20 and my kindergarten son at 8:25 (or when the teacher is ready) and then head to the woods at 8:30, our official start time.

That being said, if you are in a pinch to get to work, I will be glad to care for your child before our official start time (if the transition works smoothly).  Please contact me.

I remain convinced that our clearing in the woods is the right place to start.  It seems so busy (wonderfully so) on the main campus of our school that I sense that a start at school would lack clarity and could perhaps inspire more tears (last year in the nursery a number of children found it very hard to say goodbye right at school).  Thank you for taking the morning walk to the teepee to make the transition smoother.

Bread and Soup


Thank you for bringing so many vegetables last Monday.  Children loved to help peeling and chopping.

Because 8th grade musicians visit us on Tuesdays, it occurs to me that it might be best to switch our bread and soup days.  We have finished our work on the soup on Monday, so it is easy to cook soup for an earlier snack on Tuesday, This year I want the children to help knead and bake rolls on the day that we eat them (rather than the day before), and we will be able to do this with less haste and hurry on Wednesdays.

Because so many children loved both baking and eating our bread, bread also seems a good experience to end our week with (I was also impressed, however, with how many children tried our vegetable soup).

This is perhaps a good place to notice that the first weeks or months of school can be very tiring, and nursery children can be particularly tired by Wednesday.

Jobs and Crafts and Manners


Over the years, a number of wise evaluators and mentors have encouraged me to simplify my nursery program--that nursery children do not need the same fine motor and artistic activities that kindergarten children benefit from such as coloring, finger knitting, sewing, and the like.  It is best to provide them opportunities to work on their gross motor skills and begin to work and play cooperatively with others.  I have taken a number of workshops with Kim John Payne on fostering social inclusion (preventing bullying) in school.  In some of these workshops, he encouraged teachers to work on fostering manners in an age appropriate way.  I have observed in some early childhood classrooms in which children can be quite impolite as they correct the manners of others (e.g., interrupting the teacher to tell a child to get elbows off the table or to tell a 2 year old to chew with a mouth closed).  I felt a strong impulse to create a different approach toward manners and courtesy.

A really important element of my nursery day has been to have my assistant and 2 or 3 nursery children bring our snack to administrators or teachers.  The adults are so grateful, and our children get a positive experience of what it means to give.  I feel like we are planting the seeds for manners and inclusiveness.

It also makes for a busy classroom.  Lynne takes 3 children upstairs to the tower while I wash dishes and observe the other children at play.  Children also get turns once in every 8 days (or however many children there are) to play the bells to welcome us to snack time, to be the first child to play, to play finger cymbals to put the room to sleep, to play the lyre to help us with our lullabies, and to play violin to end our day.  This is a lot--I do it because I found over the years that I as teacher and others were promising children, "You'll get your turn another day," without any clear system or way of remembering.  I figure it is better to have things very clear and systematic, that over time this relieves anxiety--even though in early childhood we still strive for the ideal that the teacher starts an activity and children flow to it out of imitation (this happens beautifully when we bake bread or wash dishes).

To balance this potential business, I particularly avoid crafts and tasks that nursery children need to finish.  I feel they get plenty of work and nourishment in playing with other children, participating in my puppet shows, doing their various jobs, helping to prepare snack, and being part of our group.  They will have 2 to 3 years in kindergarten after our nursery year, and I feel that will be the right time for handwork and other projects--I have no objections to sewing and other projects at home.  My decisions in the classroom are meant to balance the busy day and work children are already involved in.  In all things, I try to provide a sense that "There is plenty of time.  No need to rush."

End of the Day


This is to register that I am aware that the time from noon until 12:20pm remains tender.  Once our children who stay for lunch and nap leave at noon, our other children become more somber, wondering why they have not moved on to being with mom or dad.  I will work with my colleagues to see what we can do to make this time of day as positive as possible.

With warmth and light,

William Geoffrey Dolde