Early Childhood Curriculum

Laying the Foundation for Lifelong Learning

The first seven years of life are a time of profound formative growth. In Waldorf education, this period is understood as one of physical development, sensory integration, and imitation. It is not a time to accelerate academics, but to cultivate security, wonder, and the foundational capacities upon which later intellectual and emotional life will rest.

At Waldorf School of the Peninsula, our early childhood programs offer a developmentally aligned, play-based environment grounded in rhythm, beauty, and meaningful work. These years establish the roots from which future capacities in literacy, numeracy, empathy, and resilience will unfold.

Children and an adult are participating in a dance or game activity inside a room with a carpeted floor and wooden furniture. Some children are standing with arms raised, moving in a circle, while others watch or participate.

What Happens in a Waldorf Early Childhood Classroom?

Each classroom is a carefully prepared environment that nourishes the senses and reflects the beauty of the natural world. Warm colors, soft lighting, and open-ended materials made from natural substances invite calm and purposeful activity. Teachers carry out their daily tasks with presence and care, modeling uprightness and attentiveness. Through imitation, the young child absorbs gesture, language, and inner orientation.

The day follows a predictable rhythm, alternating between breathing out (free play, outdoor activity) and breathing in (circle time, story, shared work). This rhythm supports a sense of trust, wellbeing, and integration.

Daily activities include:

  • Bread baking and snack preparation

  • Seasonal songs, verses, and finger games

  • Watercolor painting and beeswax modeling

  • Practical life activities such as sweeping, gardening, and tidying

  • Puppet stories and oral storytelling

These are not just enrichment activities; they are the work of early childhood and serve as the foundation for healthy physical, emotional, and cognitive development.

A young child with black hair and bangs is painting with blue watercolor on white paper, using a brush held in their right hand. There is a small dish of blue paint beside the paper on a wooden table.
A young girl with short, light brown hair is sitting at a wooden table, holding pink yarn and knitting or crocheting. There is a ball of pink yarn on the table, and other children working on crafts are visible in the background.

The Central Role of Play

In Waldorf pedagogy, play is recognized as the primary mode through which the young child comes to know the world. It is through play that the child transforms sensory impressions into understanding, builds imaginative capacity, and develops initiative.

Different modes of play — movement play, imaginative play, object play, and social play — nourish distinct aspects of the growing human being. Through sustained imaginative play with open-ended materials such as logs, cloths, stones, and crates, children engage in a metamorphic process. A piece of wood may serve as a loaf of bread one day and become a little dog the next. This capacity for transformation is the basis of symbolic thinking and later abstract reasoning.

Outdoors, nature play supports the child’s growing awareness of self in relation to the natural world and to others. In the context of shared imaginative play, children practice cooperation, compromise, and problem-solving, foundational social-emotional skills that cannot be taught directly but arise organically in lived experience.

Two young girls sitting under a wooden shelter made of planks, smiling and playing with a small pot, on a wood chip ground outdoors.
A young boy with red hair climbing a wooden ramp on a playground, holding a rope for support.

The Path from Movement to Thinking

Waldorf education acknowledges that the development of thinking is grounded in the development of the body. The senses, the limbs, and the will are the first instruments through which the child engages with the world.

Before academic learning can be taken up meaningfully, the child must develop:

  • Postural control, balance, and coordination

  • Integration of the sensory systems

  • Spatial orientation and body awareness

  • The capacities for imitation, attention, and memory

  • Trust in their environment and confidence in their own agency

These are not “school readiness” skills in the conventional sense; they are the inner architecture of future learning. The cultivation of these foundations through rich movement, meaningful work, and artistic activity allows academic capacities to arise naturally, in time.

Girl dressed in a fancy white dress and a flower crown, holding a pink blanket in a playroom with wooden furniture, toy kitchen, and play tents.
Two young children, dressed in warm clothes and hats, are pushing small wheelbarrows filled with pumpkins on a playground sidewalk.

Why No Screens? Why No Worksheets?

Our early childhood classrooms are intentionally screen-free and free of academic workbooks. This is not a rejection of technology, but an affirmation of the child’s developmental needs.

Young children thrive on real experiences. Their neurological development is supported through movement, repetition, human interaction, and engagement with the natural world. Screens, passive media, and abstract tasks can interfere with this organic unfolding and displace essential opportunities for play, imitation, and activity.

Equally important, screens and passive media usurp imaginative development by feeding children pre-generated worlds rather than allowing them to build those worlds themselves. When children create their own imaginary landscapes—turning a wooden block into a castle, a stick into a magic wand, or a cardboard box into a spaceship—they exercise the very capacity for creativity and original thinking that will serve them throughout life.

Our curriculum emphasizes both the real and the imagined: bread dough, watercolor, pinecones, wool, seasonal stories, and purposeful movement alongside ample time and space for children to inhabit worlds born from their own imagination; each of which calls forth the child’s innate capacities in a developmentally appropriate way.

Three young children playing with wooden figurines on a table, with a pink canopy overhead and wooden furniture in the background.

Our Programs

Parent-Child Classes (ages 1 – 3)

Parent-Child classes offer a gentle introduction to Waldorf Education for parents and their little ones. We focus on the “Three Rs” – Rhythm, Reverence, and Repetition – which so perfectly nourish and support the foundational senses of the young child. Each morning will be a joyful journey through outdoor and indoor play and exploration, preparation and sharing of food around the table, and seasonal songs, stories, and crafts. Parents build a practice of sustained peaceful observation time each week and share conversations on topics such as sleeping and waking, eating, communication, and healthy boundaries.

Preschool (ages 2 1/2 – 4 1/2 by June 1)

Our Preschool provides a warm and home-like environment for the 2 1/2 and 4-year-olds’ first steps into school. This gentle transition is a graceful journey guided with tenderness and reverence by our teachers.

A rich play-based program nourishes the magic of childhood by allowing children to explore the world through all their senses, stimulating their creativity through free play and storytelling, and developing both their motor skills and burgeoning sense of confidence through the practical arts.

Mixed-Age Kindergarten (ages 4 1/2 – 6+ by June 1)

In our mixed-age kindergarten, children ages four to six learn through imaginative play, purposeful work, storytelling and puppet plays, and artistic and practical activities such as watercolor painting, beeswax modeling, seasonal crafts, and baking. The kindergarten is typically attended for two years, forming a unified experience that may be thought of as encompassing both a transitional kindergarten (TK) and kindergarten year within the same classroom.

This two-year rhythm allows for deepening relationships between child, teacher, and parent, enabling more attuned support of each child’s individual developmental path. The mixed-age grouping also enriches the social fabric of the class. Older children naturally take up roles of quiet leadership and responsibility, often guiding younger peers through example and care. In turn, the younger children are inspired by the older children’s capacities and find reassurance in their presence. Within this social dynamic, a culture of cooperation, imitation, and mutual respect unfolds.

As children return for a second year of kindergarten, they are often more inwardly settled, with greater capacity for sustained engagement, complex imaginative play, and self-initiated activity. This extended time in the kindergarten environment supports the gradual maturation of the foundational senses and allows the child to meet the coming tasks of formal schooling with confidence and ease.

In the winter of the second year, each child is observed and assessed through a comprehensive first grade readiness process, which considers the whole child, physically, socially, and developmentally.

Through joyful participation in the life of the kindergarten, children develop healthy sensory integration, imaginative flexibility, confidence in themselves, and awareness of others. They build the inner readiness that allows the transition into academic learning to unfold naturally. When they enter first grade, they bring with them the capacity to engage with letters and numbers not only with their intellect, but with their whole being; through movement, rhythm, memory, and will.