STELLENBOSCH WALDORF SCHOOL
School in Stellenbosch

These young children live in a rich world of play and discovery. The simpler the toys the more active can the children’s imagination be. Through play young children recreate the world they find themselves in and live it out. The primary focus in a Waldorf kindergarten is on imaginative play and rhythmic activity, which serves as a sound learning basis for later academic achievement in the child’s thinking, feeling and will activity. In Waldorf schools the aim for the class teacher is to move with his or her class right through the Primary School. Throughout the years the class teacher and the parents form a co-operative relationship, centered on the growing child. The child’s feeling of wonder for form is encouraged and stimulated from the earliest classes. Through large, free hand form drawings the child develops an experience of inner harmony, which can be, applied later, both in practical tasks and in exact thinking. The students must now learn to think for themselves and form their own judgments. Class teachers now give way to specialist teachers who lead the students through a rich and varied selection of lessons. In the high school the endeavour is to provide the student with personal challenges that stimulate a capacity to think independently and apply the will to seeing a project through to the end. Examples of such projects would be the performances of plays and Eurythmy, project oriented camps such as surveying, work experience and the final twelfth class project that caps the pupils’ high school experience. The matriculation results of the Waldorf schools are consistently good, showing that academic excellence can be well achieved within a very broad education for life. The child is under the constant observation of the class teacher who is warmly interested in his or her progress. In a Waldorf School discipline is neither rigid in the traditional sense nor free in a permissive way. Here is an opportunity for parents to regularly meet the teachers, discuss pupils’ progress and become informed about the work of the children. This focus has at times resulted in the development of leadership qualities in sport, even beyond the school years. The basic skills for the various sports are taught first through class games in the primary school. Some sporting events are shared between other Waldorf schools, such as the Greek Olympics, an annual sporting event in the Cape schools. Eurythmy is a subject that is taught from kindergarten until the final years of high school. There is much room in the Eurythmy lesson for developing the themes of their current main lesson. For example, geometrical forms can be used as a basis for movement and music and poetry can be drawn from a main lesson such as Ancient Greece. Throughout the primary school the children regularly show their work in performances. In high school the students finally create an own individual piece of work as a performance.