Parent & Child and Kindergarten
Activities
Our activities emphasise developing skills through experience. Here is a brief description of the significance of these experiences.
Creative Play Time: The school atmosphere provides a warm, secure and aesthetically pleasing environment where a child’s imagination and creativity can flourish. Free creative play is considered the best preparation for self-realization in adult life. While teachers prepare for snack or make a doll, the children play and give free rein to their imaginations with a wide variety of natural toys and materials.
Learning Outcome: Development of the imagination, problem solving, social interaction with peers, and carrying tasks to completion are just some skills developed during creative play.
Early Childhood Education Philosophy
A typical day for a Waldorf child follows a rhythm that breathes. This stretches from quietly and attentively listening to a story in the Parent & Child class; to participating in a magical walk in the woods during circle time for the kindergarten. There are moments during the day where children will be applying deep focus and concentration, or ‘breathing in’. Those moments are balanced by ‘breathing out’ in activities like open-ended play, games, and artistic classes such as handwork, woodwork, drawing, and painting. This balance optimizes learning, diminishes stress and fatigue, and allows the children to move through their day in a healthy way.
Snack Time
A small group of older children take on the responsibility to help teachers with preparation for snack time. They set up the table and count bowls, cups and napkins while younger children observe, longing for their turn to come, which it will when they are older. The children also take turns to clean up after themselves and tidy the room.
Learning Outcome: This provides a good transition example of home to school life. It also teaches social interaction, how to follow directions, the science of cooking and cleaning, and personal responsibility.
Circle / Story Time
The class comes together to sing songs, recite versus or listen to a story told by a teacher.
Learning Outcome: The ability to sit and listen to an adult for a sustained period is developed at this time. Repeating and remembering verses builds memory. The story told by the teacher also exposes children to the beauty of language, which supports literacy skills and builds the person-to-person relationship between teacher and child.
Artistic Activity
Crayon work and simple crafts for younger children. Wet-on-wet water coloring, beeswax modeling, drawing, sewing and finger knitting are part of the weekly activities for older children and are carried out in small groups.
Learning Outcome: These activities encourage children’s natural sense of beauty and color, and foster visual learning skills. The artistic technique will continue to build on in primary years. They also develop the ability to focus on a task given to them for a gradually lengthening period of time.
Outdoor Play & Gardening and Farm Outing
Children are free to run, skip, climb, use their imagination, and experience the outdoor world in all seasons. Garden House farm provides an opportunity for children to learn gardening skills with hands-on experience planting and observing the growth of their vegetables. Outdoor time happens daily in all weather, and older groups have Outing Day every Wednesday.
Learning Outcome: Outdoor play and exploration nurtures large motor skills, imagination, creativity, and social skills, and creates an awareness of the processes of life. All you can think of any skill not fostered during outdoor activities.
Classes
Pre-school & Kindergarten
(2.5 – 7 years)
Our pre-school and kindergarten provide a balanced, comprehensive program for children that weaves activity and free creative play through a daily, weekly and seasonal rhythm and nurtures inner vitality. We offer 3 or 5 day programs which support the transition from home to school with a gentle routine that helps children feel secure and confident.
3 days or 5 days
Our pre-school and kindergarten provide a balanced, comprehensive program for children that weaves activity and free creative play through a daily, weekly and seasonal rhythm and nurtures inner vitality. We offer 3 or 5 day programs which support the transition from home to school with a gentle routine that helps children feel secure and confident.
5 days
The mixed-age (3.5 – 7 years), full-day classes provide various activities which strengthen the children’s abilities through being involved with the entire process of activities from the preparation to the cleanup. The children learn to take responsibility for and pride in the work that they do; whether it is making snack, arranging the materials for painting, or doing handwork or woodwork. The mixed-age nature of the class gives children the opportunity to enter as a younger child and learn from the older children in the group and it gives the older children the opportunity to be a leader and to care for younger children. The teachers are sensitive to arranging age-appropriate work for all children. The children have many language learning opportunities in Mandarin and English through complex stories and circles which help to foster their attention span and their understanding of the nature and the culture in which they live. Children have in the past transitioned well from Garden House to a variety of local, international and Waldorf primary schools.
Parent & Child
(1-3 years)
We offer children a rich environment for exploration and play and offer parents support in creating a healthy home life to lay a solid foundation of learning in this early stage. Through meeting together in a group with parents and carers, together with our experienced Early Childhood Waldorf teachers, a warm and loving community is formed.The beauty of the changing seasons creates a natural rhythm as we move through the year with songs, verses, activities and stories.
Get to Know Garden House
We would highly recommend that, whenever possible, all parents/guardians visit us before beginning the admissions process. It is a wonderful way for us to meet our prospective children and their families, and for new families to get a sense of Waldorf education. School tours are available weekly (by appointment); please contact our Admissions Officer at admission@gardenhouse.edu.hk or 2358-1177.