Nursery & Kindergarten
Our Learning Philosophy
Young children live in their senses; all that they learn comes from their direct and immediate experience of daily life. Through creative exploration—action and interaction with everything around them—children acquire not only the rudiments of intellectual knowledge but an abiding appreciation for the world they have entered.
The Waldorf School of Garden City’s Early Childhood Program is designed as a sensory-rich environment for children to discover what lies in the world and to grow all the capacities within the children themselves. Its aim is to cultivate in young children the foundations for lives of sustained and sustaining learning and purpose. Formal instruction focused on specific skill development has no place here—no matter how seemingly creative the presentation or intense the motivation elicited in the children. Information and abstract skills lacking roots in the growing children themselves ultimately dulls their abilities for creative exploration as well as the joy that both follows and kindles the discovery of the workings of the world.
