Waldorf Education Philosophy

The Waldorf education philosophy is just one of the many systems we have researched to create the Education for Life Program. The Waldorf method distinguishes three broad stages in child development that each last approximately seven years. The first stage focuses on hands-on learning activities and through creative play; the second focuses on artistic expression, social development, and creative and analytic thinking; the third stage encourages critical understanding and morality. This page is meant to function as an ever-expanding archive of open source, free-shared, and duplicable Waldorf education philosophy inspired ideas that we organize into the primary components of the One Community Education Program: Curriculum for Life, Teaching Strategies for Life, Learning Tools and Toys for Life, and building The Ultimate Classroom. These components are designed to be combined to create endless “Lesson Plans for Life” purposed to grow and evolve what we feel will be the most comprehensive, effective, and diversely applicable free-education program and resource archive in the world. The One Community Foundations of Teaching, Leadership, and Communicating, combined with a collaborative Evaluation and Evolution Component (Portfolio Creation and Maintenance), help us to further grow and adapt both the program and as individuals.

RELATED PAGES

PROGRAM OVERVIEW    ●    STRATEGIES OVERVIEW    ●    OPEN SOURCE PURPOSE

OTHER WAYS TO CONTRIBUTE TO EVOLVING THIS EDUCATION PROGRAM WITH US

SUGGESTIONS    ●    CONSULTANTS    ●    PIONEERS    ●    COLLABORATIVE NOTES

Waldorf Education Philosophy

If you have ideas stemming from Waldorf education, philosophy, and/or theory that you feel should be added to this developing resource guide, please use our Education for Life Collaborative Input Page. To create the upcoming page we have researched a diversity of the components of the Waldorf method and Waldorf schooling approach including: Waldorf education training, Waldorf education curriculum, Waldorf homeschooling, and more. Our goal is to list here what we feel are the best, simplest, and most usable tools with application and benefit for all ages?

NOTE: One Community does not believe there is any one system that is the best. It is our Highest Good of All philosophy to look at all systems and all methodologies. Our goal is to learn and integrate everything we can to better inspire and create the Education for Life program as an open source and free-shared globally collaborative and accessible program available to positively contribute to the education of anyone who chooses to use it.

Here is our continually evolving list of Waldorf inspired ideas divided into the categories of the Education for Life program:

Waldorf Foundations of Leadership, Teaching, and Communicating

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Foundations of Teaching, Leadership, and Communicating component.

● Qualitative: Formative assessment helps teachers to monitor their students’ progress and to modify the instruction accordingly. It also helps students to monitor their own progress by incorporating feedback.
● Self governing by consensus of a group of teachers: Provides creative autonomy as a foundational skeleton which enables children to learn by example.
● Multiple intelligences: Children are measured as individuals (versus based upon universal criteria) to allow for multiple and differential intelligences.
● Looping: Utilizing the same teacher over multiple years in order to build longterm relationships.
● ???

Waldorf Curriculum Ideas

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Curriculum for Life component.

● Anthroposophy to incorporate inner development in areas such as intuition, inspiration, and imagination into natural science that could eventually be evaluated on the same basis.
● Moral responsibility: An active practice teaching, “One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.”
● Social competence and personality development.
● Eurythmy: Expressive movement art to poetry, music, plays. Learning moods combined with pitch, tone, rhythm, grammar.
● ???

Waldorf Teaching Strategies

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Teaching Strategies for Life component.

● Age 1-6/7: Learn best by being immersed in an environment where one can learn through unselfconscious imitation.
● Age 7-14: The approach emphasizes cultivating children’s emotional life and imagination. The core curriculum is introduced imaginatively through stories and creative presentations.
● Age 14+: The curriculum is structured to foster pupils’ intellectual understanding, independent judgment, and ethical ideals such as social responsibility, aiming to meet the developing capacity for abstract thought and conceptual judgment.
● Eurythmy: Expressive movement art to poetry, music, plays. Learning moods combined with pitch, tone, rhythm, grammar.
● Reciting previous lesson: after each new lesson is taught, there is outdoor break, upon arrival back the previous lesson is recited and the child records findings in journal.
● ???

Waldorf Learning Tools and Toys

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Learning Tools and Toys for Life component.

● Open Ended/Gender Neutral Toy: Push Cart, Playstand/Testles, (submit ideas).
● Open Ended/Gender Neutral Toy: Squares of different colored silk.
● Dress-up clothes/costumes near the mirror.
● Natural objects as toys – stones, feathers, branches, earth, sand, leaves, pinecones, etc.
● Avoidance of toys and clothes with commercial fictional characters.
● Recording book: Student has a ‘journal’ to record learnings after each lesson.
● ???

Waldorf Classroom Design

If you’d like to help us make this list better, please submit your Waldorf inspired suggestions so that we can integrate them here and into the Ultimate Classroom component.

● Art station specifically for art, music, and dancing (by mirror and Montessori dress-up clothes?).
● Natural containers and building materials – avoid plastic and other synthetics.
● Natural toys without paint etc. so kids can use their imagination more.
● ???

OTHER SYSTEMS EXPLORED

Montessori   ●   Orff   ●   Reggio   ●   Multi-Intelligence   ●   Bloom’s Taxonomy   ●   Study Tech