Child Garten Waldorf Inspired Kindergarten

* WALDORF KINDERGARTEN WORK *

Into my will

Let there pour strength

Into my feeling

Let there flow warmth

Into my thinking

Let there shine light

That I may nurture these children

With enlighten purpose

Caring with hearts' love

And bringing wisdom

Into all things

- Rudolf Steiner

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“Where is the book in which the teacher can read about what teaching is? The children themselves are this book. We should not learn to teach out of any book other than the one lying open before us and consisting of the children themselves.

- Rudolf Steiner, Human Values in Education

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Four temperaments

Steiner considered children's cognitive, emotional and behavioral development to be interlinked. Steiner adapted the idea of the classic four temperaments

1) melancholic 2) sanguine 3) phlegmatic 4) choleric

For pedagogical use in the elementary years. Steiner indicated that teaching should be differentiated to accommodate the different needs that these psychophysical types represent.

Cholerics are risk takers

Phlegmatics take things calmly

Melancholics are sensitive or introverted

Sanguines take things lightly.

Today Waldorf teachers may work with the notion of temperaments to differentiate their instruction. Activities may be planned taking into account the temperaments of the students^.

Steiner also believed that teachers must consider their own temperament and be prepared to work with it positively in the classroom, that temperament is emergent in children, and that most people express a combination of temperaments rather than a pure single type.