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| Cookie's flower crown for the May Day celebration |
When I casually informed Cookie's preschool teacher that she would miss school during our trip to Hawaii, I wasn't expecting her response.
Huh?!
Missing orange is apparently a big deal.
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It's been six years since we wandered into Waldorf education. Exhausted with an active two-year-old and another child growing in my belly, I'd hear my friends rave about the local Waldorf's parent-child class. "The teacher is amazing," they said, blissfully, "we sit in a circle, and it's just so nice and nurturing." They weren't able to explain much more and I didn't ask. It sounded weird, maybe also boring, and besides, with just one year in our new city, I felt more comfortable in my personal wreck of motherhood than opening myself up to something new. What does a smocked stranger with pockets full of colored silks know about my parenting issues?As Cookie's due date neared, however, I
We entered our first parent-child class, and... it was weird.
Only in a Waldorf school will you find teachers in 1960s costume, who never speak their instructions but rather sing them, to a room of twenty quiet young children, with not a plastic truck or Barbie or sticker for using the potty in sight.
Only in a Waldorf school will you eat toasted millet- millet!- sprinkled with sesame seeds and nutritional yeast- nutritional yeast!- , wiping your hands not on disposable paper but always real linen, and join a table of two-year-olds expertly drinking hot tea.
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| Cookie's preschool door |
Only in a Waldorf classroom will you see that each age group has a signature shade of pastel on its walls. Our early education group was pink because of it's "gently active and supportive quality. A loving, innocent color, decidedly feminine in character. Therefore, it is a natural color choice for the daily embracing of this age group." -https://www.waldorftoday.com/2010/12/color-in-the-waldorf-school-van-james/
In that pink glow of Nug's parent-child class, we felt the Waldorf weirdness. Sitting around a low table at snack time we ate oatmeal, slowly, in determined silence. Confused about the lack of plastic baby dolls, Nug played with wood discs and yarn. We colored Easter eggs not with dye but by wrapping them in onion skins. We sang obscure seasonal songs about harvests far removed from our city life. During the puppet show, I would sit tensely in anticipation of Nug's illicit wandering; otherwise, I searched the room awkwardly for "handiwork" that was required of me. I wondered silently where that "bliss" was, and counted down the minutes until I was free from the stifling heat of that warm pink glow.
"It's a cult," I'd moan to W, dreading the two hours of uncomfortable silence and unspoken rules. The environment felt counter to my instincts. Where were the legos? The noise and the graham cracker crumbs? The finger paint art hanging on the walls? Tired of guessing, I finally spoke to the teacher. "Can I talk at the table?" I asked, honestly confused. "Am I supposed to play with my child?" "Must I be engaged in 'work'?" Her answers helped and we stuck with it, the outdoor playground time giving me just enough familiarity and breath to hold on. And, by this time, Cookie was born, so the weekly outing became this postpartum mom's life raft to the outside world.
Then, three months in, we moved out of state. Scrambling to find a preschool in our new city, I called the only place I knew: Waldorf.
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Nug spent two years in Waldorf preschool, and Cookie is finishing her second and final year now. While still at times bizarre (ahem, eurythmy- video example above), our years of Waldorf have been absolutely enriching. Waldorf has taught me the importance of simplicity, nature, song, and loving firmness. It guided me through potty training, gave me permission to clean out the playroom mercilessly, and built the confidence to feed my kids vegetable soup.
Waldorf schools offer a developmentally appropriate, experiential, and academically rigorous approach to education. They integrate the arts in all academic disciplines for children from preschool through twelfth grade to enhance and enrich learning. Waldorf education aims to inspire life-long learning in all students and to enable them to fully develop their unique capacities. -https://www.waldorfeducation.org/waldorf-education
Our teachers have been involved, helpful, insightful, and warm, as they supported the progress of our kids' evolving plate of anxieties (separation, playground, pooping in the toilet, three-way friendships, and on). As feminists, we loved the focus on a female Mother Earth rather than a male God. Our nightly dinner blessing, albeit shortened, is ripped from Waldorf preschool: Thank you Mother Earth for this bounty.* Our kids played outside everyday, even in wind and rain, and went on long nature walks weekly. They tipped over stumps to watch pill bugs scurry, then fed snack scraps to the school chickens before coming inside to make crafts from real items like flowers, beeswax, wool and felt. They came home with mystical stories about the seasons. For birthdays they were given a special silk cape and felted crown and ate fruit salad with hand-whipped cream. They believe(d) in fairies. My Aunt was right when she said Waldorf preschool was magical.
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| Our nature-loving kids |
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| Camping, April |
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Cookie has nine days of preschool left, and our time at Waldorf will be over. With both feet soon to be planted in public school, I am wistful to leave the wholesome Waldorf garden (literally- in what other school parking lot would you find broccoli debris rather than Snickers wrappers?!). Plenty of families do continue in Waldorf education (in our town you can attend through high school), but we decided to give our kids a public school experience. The reasons are too complex to explain here, and I have certainly had moments of regret, but in the end feel strongly that our Waldorf foundation is set and complete.
And as far as Orange Day? I would come to learn that children in Waldorf preschools are introduced to colors one at a time, eventually blending them to create the secondary colors. For weeks they are given only one color to use, proudly producing big rectangle papers of... red, or blue etc. Cookie was present for Red Week, and also for Yellow Week. The anticipated culmination would be... you got it, Orange Week, which she missed. So now you may be asking, does Cookie know how to make orange? I took a break from typing to quiz her. I'll let the conversation speak for itself:
"Cookie, what two colors do you mix together to make orange?"
Picking at her hand, "I don't know."
Nug jumping in, "Am I supposed to know that too?"
Me, competing with My Little Pony on pause on the television, "Do you... mix green and blue together?"
Cookie, smiling, "YES!"
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*The entire food blessing, well there are two of them that we loved, is here:
- For the golden corn and the apples on the trees, for the golden butter and the honey from the bees. For fruits and nuts and berries, we gather on our way. We praise our loving mother, and thank her everyday, hooray!
- Earth who gives us all this food. Sun that makes it ripe and good. Dearest Earth and dearest sun, we won't forget what you have done.
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