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Mission Statement:
A movement program that is solidly based on the developmental needs of children can have many school-wide benefits. These include...
  • Stronger enrollment and retention
  • Reduced need for remedial services
  • Reduced teacher “burnout” because classes are more ready for daily academics
  • Increased parent satisfaction with the school
   A childhood rich in varied play and movement strengthens the developmental foundations needed for success in the grades and beyond. Through age-appropriate movement, the child gains basics like: postural control; spatial orientation; movement coordination; the ability to change sight perception instantaneously between three-dimensional and two-dimensional space; good body geography; and confirmed dominance.
   In seating a student behind a desk, we as teachers and parents are anticipating that the child is physiologically ready, or soon will become ready, for the year’s tasks. But realistically, every child will struggle with some aspect of the academic environment: it might be a challenge to sit in balance, or to listen quietly, or to muster the fine motor skills for writing. Thus, we must remember that through movement, every child can be helped in some way to reach his or her full potential.
   From early childhood through high school, experience has shown that classes of students who are provided with appropriate daily movement activities are able to move ahead more solidly. Benefits of these activities include:
  • Foundations for literacy - developmental capacities for all aspects of language.
  • Foundations for numeracy - the math/logical and spatial intelligences
  • Readiness for deskwork - enhancing focus and attention; setting the stage for harmonious receptivity to new material.
  • Bodily/kinesthetic and spatial integration.
  • Strengthening the will.
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Education for Balance and Resilience
Why do Waldorf Schools devote so much time – and salary lines! – to specialty subjects like Eurythmy, languages, handwork, woodwork, gardening, form drawing, painting, music and games? On top of that, why is the first twenty minutes or so of the daily main lesson devoted to movement and singing activities that seem sort of non-academic… and then why does the noontime usually include up to an hour for lunch and outdoor play? Let’s put a pencil to this question: a typical school week will comprise 32 to 35 hours in school; then subtract a typical 12 hours for specialty classes and 5 hours for lunch/recess. Answer: about half the school week is spent on other than the “Common Core” of math, science and English language skills (although the foreign language classes must be counted in the ‘Academics’ column). I believe that in looking at almost any such question, our Waldorf movement can be strengthened when we read and re-read Rudolf Steiner’s foundational lectures, and at the same time assiduously look to more modern research and writings to find parallels or further verification. Keeping “up to date” with newer approaches will give us a vocabulary that can help us speak with our wider communities in accessible terminology, and also to avoid the pitfalls of unexamined adherence to Doctor Steiner’s printed lectures from a century ago. So, let’s look at those time allocation questions from both ends – the past and the present...
—> Full article with chart

Announcing the fourth session, summer 2017:
Gym & Developmental Movement Intensive Week
June 25 to July 2, 2017 – at Aurora Waldorf School (Buffalo NY area)
The learning goal of this course is to enrich and enliven teaching approaches, starting with the insights of Rudolf Steiner a century ago and then linking these to more recent research and methods. The emphasis will be on activities for grades 1 to 4, but we will also experience how these transform for older classes. We will examine the foundations of healthy development that occur through movement, and experience how these foundations can be joyfully built through ‘old time’ gym, schoolyard and backyard games once played by children all over the world. Thousands of such activities are to be found in books for gym teachers and recreation directors published between 1910 and 1950.
     Each day will include five hours of movement and two hours of supporting pedagogical theory. Sessions will include techniques for identifying needs, planning lessons around individual or class problems, sensory integration, addressing specific academic/developmental goals. Following is an outline of the course content.
Games & Movement Categories:
Rough and Tumble Play… Wrestling Games…  Development of Throwing & Catching…
Active/Exercise… Danger/Pursuit… Circle/Musical/Clapping… Party/Quiet/Blindfold… Enrichment Activities and Remedial Sequences…
A Lower-Grades Model for the Waldorf Circus:
Low- or No-Spotting Gymnastics Skills… Acrobatics… Zoo Exercises… Mat Agilities… Circus Skills… Apparatus & obstacle course… Tumbling Games
Workup Games for Sports
Baseball variations, Tennis, Volleyball, Aussie rules football  ...and more
Pedagogical Lectures and Seminars
• A system of movement categories
• Fourfold human being; Twelve senses
• Hope, Love and Faith: applying Rudolf Steiner’s Pedagogical Law
• Comparative movement needs of boys and girls
• Postural control in the light of Anthroposophy
• Sixteen keys to developmental movement needs; Learning challenges & mainstream labels
• Developing/promoting a movement program - and how to communicate your goals
Sidebar topics: Competition; Teasing; the Olympics model; Comparative movement needs of boys and girls
Remedial & Artistic Activities
Including shaded drawing and painting handwriting
—> Go to information page

Gym/Games Curriculum and Goals, Grades 1 to 8
Following is the general description of the movement program at Aurora Waldorf School; this outline is provided to parents. One of the stated goals of the AWS movement program is to prepare every 8th Grade graduate with an ‘athletic generalist’ foundation of basic capacities and attitudes. We want to make it possible for any student to go on to competition at the high school level, if the desire is there.
—> READ

16 keys to developmental movement needs
A developmental assessment is not a measure of skills or a test of abilities; rather, we look at the interrelated areas of development listed below. These areas represent a child’s capacities or readiness for learning.
—> READ

24 movement standards for Third Grade
In first and second grade, we can observe the child reshaping, slowly working to change his or her kindergarten presence to a form more fitting for life ahead. Third grade (9 years old) should mark the change to a new, more individualized, presence; and a new readiness for academics. The following movements will help to promote and consolidate this important shift in developmental readiness.
—> READ

Zoo-robics and Crawl-asthenics
How much creeping and crawling does it take to prepare a child for school and life? Many child development specialists believe that tens of thousands (perhaps as many as 50,000) crawling type steps are needed to properly myelinate the brain for academic readiness. Given today’s popularity of strollers, walkers, baby bouncers, backpacks, etc. it is unlikely a modern infant/toddler will take that many crawling steps.
—> READ
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"Buck" - a movie recommendation 
An amazing example of teaching with respect and compassion
I strongly recommend this film to all teachers, and especially as one that deserves time in a faculty meeting study. It provides invaluable reminders of how to teach with respect and compassion; how to uphold the maxim that for every step forward with pedagogy one must take two steps forward with personal development.
 —> Read more about it
Online Forum for
Waldorf Teachers
The Waldorf Movement Forum is an online place to share questions and answers, and build bridges between Waldorf movement, class and remedial teachers.    —> Take a look

Newer Items…

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Two new book pdfs for arithmetic support and teaching
The Waldorf Approach to Arithmetic (von Baravalle) and Diagnosis and Remedial Teaching in Arithmetic (Schonell).  The former provides a valuable perspective on meanings and methods; the latter gives a step-by-step guide to locating roadblocks to progress in math. "Nowhere is the need so urgent as in arithmetic with its countless steps, varied material and its numerous difficulties."
—> go to books page
Educational Support forms
One of the challenges faced by Educational Support Teams, and remedial teachers in general, is maintaining an informative and objective record of observations, recommendations, permissions and goals. The files provided here show the progression of communication used at Aurora Waldorf; they are offered as just one possible example of ways to build and strengthen communications within the faculty, and between the school and parents of students needing support. At AWS, this progression of forms is stored in a separate EST file cabinet, not in the main student records.
 —> Read more

Remedial Programs – Practical and Ethical Considerations
The basis for a school-wide, all-students approach to learning foundations
by Jeff Tunkey and Amanda Boyler
The purpose of this article is to describe—and advocate for—a comprehensive spectrum of whole-class programs and individual support services. To begin, let us look at two practical aspects of Waldorf education that by their nature will lead us to focus on related ethical considerations; by keeping these two issues in focus, we can gain additional strengths for our Michaelic educational journey.
—> Read pdf

Making a paper "sailboat"
This video shows the paper folding instructions for a whole-class remedial activity known as "Sailboat Race." It provides fine motor development (the folding part); training of executive function (waiting to be told what the construction will be); an aid for breathing (you'll see!); and myelination of the brain.
—> Video
5th Grade Olympiad Information Packet
Aurora Waldorf hosts the regional Waldorf pentathlon for chools in western New York and southern Ontario. Here is a sample of the information packet we send out each year; it includes notes on competition and judging, odes, tunic designs, registration forms, etc.
 —> Read more

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The “Thinker” Pyramid
Here’s a nice and unusual acrobatic stunt I got from the Ithaca Waldorf circus. The bottom base gets on hands and knees. Others, from heaviest to lightest at top, assume the Thinker statue posture.