Introduction

Sacuanjoche Kindergarten, a Waldorf Steiner school, recognizes that it is a young child’s nature to experience, explore and come to know the world through the senses and by physically ‘doing’. Grasping this premise and using it to guide our work is essential for the practical application of Steiner Waldorf philosophy.

What is the Steiner Waldorf System?

Steiner Waldorf education is a path of self-development. It is also training for responsible and enthusiastic participation in the world. The Steiner Waldorf Curriculum supports the child’s developmental stages, and children experience the curriculum through repetition and rhythm, cultivating a sense of beauty, wonders and self-purpose through the lessons and the environment created within the school. A variety of academic and arts-integrated experiences develop movement and sensory motor skills – skills in perception of self and the outside world. This cultivates trust, social skills, consciousness, and spiritual awareness. The social climate and the student’s behavior contributing to that climate are equally important to the students’ academic progress. Therefore, the individual child is an integral part of the wider school community where adults and children of all ages work together with the older children acting as role models for the younger ones.

Our Objective

At Sacuanjoche Kindergarten we offer a child-centered educational approach that is non-selective, multi-cultural and has an age-specific curriculum. We are dedicated to providing an education that understands, embraces and encourages the development of the child as a whole human being, with a spirit, soul and body. This approach is characteristic of Steiner Waldorf schools, along with high academic standards and lifetime skills.

Our Goals

* To start up a sustainable bilingual Steiner Waldorf Kindergarten in Granada for children from 3-6 year olds, starting August 2006. In January 2008 we want to open our first school-classes, for 7-8 year old children.
* To recognize the inner development of the child and seeks to nourish it with appropriate experiences at each stage through the broad Steiner Waldorf curriculum.
* To foster the child’s experience of rhythm through a balance of artistic, intellectual, practical work and celebrations of the seasons throughout the year.
* To allow social learning in the classroom where sensitivity and awareness of others’ needs are recognized and valued.
* To treat all subjects in the curriculum as interdependent, so that science, art and craft weave a meaningful whole with the human being as the focus.
* To emphasize the human relationship of the child and teacher in classes of diverse backgrounds and mixed abilities.
* To nurture all the facilities of the child, such as the artistic, intellectual and practical, as being complimentary aspects of a spiritual whole.
* To create the opportunity for interested Nicaraguan school-teachers to get additional training and gain experience within the Steiner Waldorf pedagogy. This is a goal in itself, as well as a very important element in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the Steiner Waldorf School in Nicaragua.
* To obtain a bilingual Steiner teacher trained in early childhood. She or he will help start the Kindergarten as well as train a local assistant.
* To promote parental involvement, through seasonal celebrations, as well as work-weekends to improve the school facilities and participate in community projects.
* To provide a study-group for parents and teachers who are interested in Steiner Waldorf philosophy to educate themselves more in anthropology and pedagogy. Also, for a new school like this, it will certainly be important to forge links with more established Steiner Waldorf schools, societies, foundations etc.
* To involve local artists, musicians, carpenters and people of trade, a key to the development and appreciation of each skill.
* To prepare ourselves in the first two years for getting the school accepted by the Ministry of Education, as this is important for the long-term sustainability and acceptance of the school among a wider group of Nicaraguans.

Description of Our Kindergarten:

This kindergarten is set in a warm atmosphere like in a loving home. It embodies activities in imitation of life, because imitation is the young child’s special talent and natural way of learning. The teacher will participate as a model in guided activities, which the children imitate and re-enact in their play. In this kindergarten, the daily rhythm alternates carefully between expanding and contracting activities (like inhaling and exhaling). Rhythm in the days of the week is established through the practical and artistic activities of bread baking, gardening, cooking, watercolor painting, woodworking, bee wax, clay modeling, and other handwork activities. By participating in meaningful tasks, the children develop coordination and cooperative social skills, as well as apply themselves with devotion and joy that will help them to build a strong bridge to later academic challenges. Daily story telling nurtures the imagination and develops the love of literature. The year’s natural rhythms and seasons permeate the class mood and are therefore the basis for songs, poems, games and play by the children.

Logistics:

The Granada Steiner Waldorf Kindergarten is accommodated in an old colonial house with a spacious patio-garden. A spacious and open environment is important for creating a homely, warm, loving atmosphere, as well as to stimulate creativity and play.

The Kindergarten and its patio will be further re-decorated and landscaped by the parents and teachers during work-weekends. During these work-weekends, the children are welcome to participate, so that the entire family work together in creating a living and beautiful frame for the daily play of the children. The contribution of each participant, from the youngest to the oldest, is valuable, and will inspire the children to treat the place with respect.

The Kindergarten will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday. At 8:30 a.m. the daily story-telling starts, which is a moment of no-disturbance (not even from children and parents coming late). Children will help prepare fruit snacks, when possible from organically grown fruits. They will participate in bread-making and preparation of other natural and healthy food, which is enjoyed by the group of children and teachers together at lunch-time. Helping setting the table, serving, as well as cleaning up afterwards are practical activities which encourage and strengthen the awareness of others’ needs as well as the importance of each child’s participation, which in turn is an important element for a true and healthy self-value in the child.

The group will contain a maximum of 20 children (ages 3-6) with a Kindergarten teacher and an assistant. The Kindergarten is bilingual, in that one teacher speaks more English than Spanish, while the assistant speaks more Spanish than English. Songs, riddles, poems, and story-telling are sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. However, at one time, only one language is spoken by one adult, keeping the languages separate.

Toys for the Kindergarten are mainly produced by the parents, teachers as well as the children themselves, from local, natural, non-toxic materials (handmade dolls, wooden dollhouses, wooden blocks, sheets for theater and hiding…).

In order to ensure a mix of children in the kindergarten, from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, the kindergarten board will apply for external funding to set up a scholarship-fund, from which finacially challenged families with an interest in the Steiner Waldorf kindergarten can apply for partial or full scholarships. Furthermore, the board has established contacts with Steiner Waldorf kindergartens and schools from other countries (whether from neighboring countries as Costa Rica, or countries with a long-established Steiner tradition such as the UK or Norway).

We will produce a bi-yearly newsletter with photos of the school and pupils, where we tell about the previous half year and the progress made in the school creation project. In this way, we will report back to the foundations which have funded the school, as well as hoping to create and develop sister-school relationships within the European Steiner Waldorf society.