A Walk Through the Woods
of Waldorf: A Parent's
Perspective on the Early
Childhood Experience

Link to Article

Nursery and Kindergarten

"There is no solid research demonstrating that early academic training is superior to the more traditional, hands-on model of early education."

–David Elkind, child psychologist and author of the groundbreaking books The Hurried Child and Miseducation.

Nursery and Kindergarten Programs

Our young nursery and mixed-age nursery-kindergarten classes provide a bridge between home life and school. The Butterfly nursery generally includes children from two-and-a-half to four years old. Our Nursery-Kindergarten classes include children from three-and-a-half to six years old. For children between the age of three-and-a-half to four years old, teachers and parents will share observations and insights to determine a fitting placement.

We form our classes to meet to the needs of individual children and the groups as a whole. Children benefit from staying with the same teacher and class for more than one year. In the Butterfly class, this continuity becomes possible when children move from the Rosebud and Dewdrop parent & child programs to the three-day nursery. After that, children stay two to three years in our kindergarten classes.

Our three-day Butterfly Young Nursery program runs from 8:30-12:30 M-W.
We offer four day (M-TH) and five day (M-F) Kindergarten programs that run from 8:30-12:30. We also offer an aftercare program until 5:50 for nursery and kindergarten students.

"I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true for human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are so solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age."

--Henry David Thoreau, as cited by Jack Petrash in Understanding Waldorf Education: Teaching from the Inside Out