“Receive the child in reverence …”
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adjust the work taken from daily life so that it becomes suitable for the children’s play activities. The whole point... is to give young children the opportunity to imitate life in a simple and wholesome way.
—Rudolf Steiner
Our Waldorf-inspired Kindergarten curriculum fosters the development of the whole child – body, soul and spirit. The early years of the child is a stage of intense physical development of the child and it is imperative that the home and school environments support this development. And hence, we strive to create a warm, secure and love-filled environment in our Kindergarten.
Our Kindergarten is a joyful and beauty-filled space where children can explore freely, while feeling safe and comfortable. Classrooms are warm, inviting and intentionally filled with beautiful, natural materials. These organic elements encourage children to create their own games and stories, nourishing their minds and senses.
The foundation for harmonious social interactions is laid through unhurried hours of free play and exploration interspersed opportunities to sing, move freely and explore the colours and form in various artistic activities. A mood of reverence and gratitude pervades the space with children imitating the soul mood of the teachers in the space. Predictable, regular schedules – daily, weekly and annual - create an atmosphere of harmony and rhythm promoting health of the kindergarten child.
The environment is planned as a mixed-age environment with children from 3-6 years sharing the same space. This gives organic opportunities for the older children to lead the group and feel a sense of responsibility for the younger children in the environment.
The presence of caring and loving adults – the teachers - who are striving tirelessly to prepare the space for the whole child to blossom in is the most important element of our programme. Through story-telling, singing, finger-plays, puppet-shows, cooking activities and games, our teachers instill in children a feeling for the goodness in the world.
Through the kindergarten years of joyful engagement, our children develop lifelong capacities for creative thinking, healthy foundational senses, a self-confidence and awareness of others, and readiness and enthusiasm for academic learning. The rewards of this play-based entry to school become visible when children enter first grade and begin the academic journey through the grades. The children now have the visual, auditory, and kinesthetic readiness to explore the worlds of letters, numbers, writing and arithmetic.
Educate them in love …
“The heart of the Waldorf method is that education is an art - it must speak to the child's experience. To educate the whole child, his heart and his will must be reached, as well as the mind.”
—Rudolf Steiner
The young child in his 7th year of life is living and thinking in a world of images. And our Primary Grades programme is designed to meet this artistic being of the child. In the first four years of primary schooling, everything the child meets in school will touch the child’s budding soul life. The curriculum builds foundational skills in reading, writing and arithmetic quite deliberately with each lesson growing into the next one. Stories, drawings, paintings, music, recitation are all daily experiences for our primary grade students and all the academic content is planned to be taken to the class in an artistic manner. This helps the young children to receive the academic content joyfully and with enthusiasm. A sense of beauty and wonder pervades the curriculum across these years. Repetition, reverence and rhythm form the cornerstone of our approach with children of this age group.
Every class will have a class teacher who will be the key person in the learning process, acting as the glue that holds various components of education into a wholesome experience. Many teachers travel forward with the batch of students carrying not only the present but also the past and future of the class’ educational journey with them. Teachers become familiar with each student’s strengths and needs, helping them grow academically, socially, and emotionally.
In these years, the primary subjects in the curriculum include English, Tamil, Mathematics and Art with practical work in the areas of gardening, farming and house building and a unique study of the animal kingdom seen in relation to Man.
To bring in depth and beauty to the programme, core subjects are always handled intensively within an interesting framework called the Main Lesson Block (MLB). Unlike traditional classes that are 40-45 minutes long, our MLB’s will consist of a two hour class devoted to the study of any one subject for a period of 4-5 weeks. This framework lends itself to concentrated, in-depth study while recognizing the need to bring content to the class in bite-sized packets giving them the time they need to digest the subject matter. Main lesson time is a lively, interactive time, moving between artistic and intellectual activities that engage each student’s faculties of thinking, feeling and willing.
At TATVA, Art will not be there just for Art’s sake. It is in fact the core of education and is used to convey and depict academic content that the child can connect with more deeply. Students extensively work with painting and clay modeling and spend the initial grade years in open-ended tasks for exploring form and colour. Sports, too, is not for sports’ sake or for the purpose of building careers in sports. Rather, it is designed to be another tool enabling the holistic development of the child. In the Primary Grades stage, it will revolve around group games and cooperative games. Field visits are organised to enable children to experience stimuli beyond the school environment. Such experiential learning makes the curriculum significantly richer.
These are the middle childhood years when the beauty of our approach really starts to shine through in the works and beings of our children. The foundations laid in the early years are built upon in every area of learning to make their learning experience deep and rich.
Language includes a formal study of grammar, reading and composition with emphasis on fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Mythologies gently transform into historical stories in our classes giving the children a picture of the evolving consciousness of humanity.
The learning of Mathematics, particularly Geometry, strongly engages the imaginative side of the child. Mathematics is related to life through the application of Arithmetic and Algebra to comprehend and solve day-to-day problems.
In Science, there is a strong emphasis on learning the natural sciences by the proper scientific method. With the focus being on developing keen observational skills, phenomenological approach to learning sciences wakes up the children to the beauty and lawfulness present in the natural world. Carefully directed discussions help the class hone their logical thinking skills as they deduce sciences from their observations and what they already know of the subject.
Geography starts with local geography and its relation to life, and extends to the study of geography and its influence on life. The emphasis on art continues, including art as a means to present academic content in various areas. Sports get more serious as children, unlike in the primary grades, are ready for competition. The emphasis is more on team games such as basketball, volleyball, throwball, kho-kho, etc.
With every passing year, the growing capacities in the child are evident and the class teacher from the primary grades continue to work with the classes through these years, too. At times, subject teachers with specialized expertise start supporting the class teachers in this journey. The emphasis all through the Grade years (Grade 1 – 8) is building in children a capacity to sense beauty.
Set them forth in freedom …
”Our highest endeavor must be to develop free human beings who are able of themselves to impart purpose and direction to their lives. The need for imagination, a sense of truth, and a feeling of responsibility—these three forces are the very nerve of education.”
—Rudolf Steiner
The beauty of the Waldorf-inspired curriculum and approach comes to the forefront in the final years of the child’s stay in our school. The depth and breadth of the programme in areas of Science, Mathematics and Humanities challenge students to apply themselves with rigour in their areas of strength and will also encourage them to extend themselves into the curriculum areas that may present difficulties for them. The main lesson structure that has accompanied the students’ journey all these years continue to serve the students by bringing to them an in-depth and inter-disciplinary immersion into several areas of learning spread over the years. Striving for truth is the unstated theme for these years and children’s capacity to form judgments and discern between right and wrong become sharper and more sharply tuned. Thus, our children learn the life lessons of balancing passion and interest with rigour and discipline.
Our core curriculum includes English, Mathematics and Art, with Hindi, Science and Social Studies being additional subjects.
At TATVA, the senior school curriculum therefore has a clear two-fold target – to enable children to face and excel in the rigorous and comprehensive IGCSE and A level examinations conducted by Cambridge University qualify in the requirements of various options of further education they may choose to pursue The curriculum consists of intensive, focused study of core subjects.
Our core curriculum includes English, Mathematics and Art, with Hindi, Science and Social Studies being additional subjects.
At TATVA, the senior school curriculum therefore has a clear two-fold target – to enable children to face and excel in the rigorous and comprehensive IGCSE and A level examinations conducted by Cambridge University qualify in the requirements of various options of further education they may choose to pursue The curriculum consists of intensive, focused study of core subjects.
