The Waldorf School of Philadelphia offers an early childhood summer camp for children ages 3 to 6. The camp is run by faculty of The Waldorf School of Philadelphia for seven weeks starting June 11th to July 20th.
For more information about the camp, please contact Alexandra Borders, Director of Admissions at 215-248-1662 or admissions@phillywaldorf.com
Dr. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff – Power of Imagination from OECTA on Vimeo.
In this book two highly credentialed child psychologists offer a compelling indictment of the growing trend toward accelerated learning. It’s a message that stressed-out parents are craving to hear: Letting tots learn through play is not only okay-it’s better than drilling academics!
Drawing on overwhelming scientific evidence from their own studies and the collective research results of child development experts, and addressing the key areas of development-math, reading, verbal communication, science, self-awareness, and social skills-the authors explain the process of learning from a child’s point of view.
Congratulations to Sarah Cornelius, WSP Class of 2010, who was awarded a full scholarship to Phillips Academy Andover, a top-ranked prep school in Massachusetts. Sarah is a sophomore at Central High School in Philadelphia where she has maintained a 4.0 GPA for the past two years. She will complete her high school education at Andover. Sarah attended WSP from kindergarten through 8th grade. Congratulations Sarah!
Sarah Cornelius and friend - 2008-ish
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking ~Albert Einstein~ Scientist (1879-1955)
In some ways, this headline is almost funny, the idea of a young Einstein, wild hair flying, throwing his mother’s quilt over a couple of chairs and crawling underneath. But to Elizabeth Goodenough, M.A.T.’71, a headline like this is not a joke. We’re a busy-by-design society that’s become so concerned with turning kids into baby Einsteins that something critical to childhood, something that Goodenough holds sacred, is fast becoming extinct: free play. She says that all you have to do is drive around American cities and towns to see for yourself; there are very few kids outside.
It’s probably not a surprise to anyone that one of the biggest factors in the loss of free play has to do with parents being programmed by the ever-expanding “baby educating industry” into thinking that in order to survive in today’s global economy, kids need to be better, brighter, and busier than ever before.
“It’s a competitive foot race from the womb, this sense that you’ll miss out,” Goodenough says. “Adults have picked up the pace so quickly. What’s next? What’s next? What’s next?”
In an age where we clearly know more about how brains operate and how humans function, parents take parenting seriously. As a 2001 article in The Atlantic Monthly stated, “Your child is the most important extra-credit arts project you will ever undertake.” As a result, by the time these baby wonders reach college, they’ve become goal-oriented, resume-building “organization kids” who “work their laptops to the bone.” What adults need to understand, writes Michael Meyerhoff, Ed.M.’75, Ed.D.’84, in his booklet The Power of Play, is that free play isn’t a waste of time — it actually helps children learn.
Play based learning is the bed-rock of all Waldorf early childhood classrooms. Since the inception of the first Waldorf school in 1919, Waldorf Education has embraced the benefits of free-play in the belief that it builds empathy and better self-control and leads to greater problem solving and learning abilities. The authors of this article say that they see Harvard students who have trouble getting along. They suggest that college students may be better equipped to learn and interact if they had been taught through play-based curricula as opposed to the drill ‘n kill of skill based learning which can lead to greater social isolation.
So, Want your kids to get into college? Let them Play! by Erika Christakis and Nicholas Christakis
Erika Christakis, MEd, MPH, is an early childhood teacher and former preschool director. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. Together, they serve as Masters of Pforzheimer House, one of the undergraduate residential houses at Harvard College.
Gabrielle Principe, author of Your Brain on Childhood, will speak at The Waldorf School of Philadelphia on Saturday, April 28th, 11.00 a.m.
If you wanted to design a way of life that was exactly counter to the needs of developing brains, you would invent something like modern childhood.
We strap newborns into bouncy seats, babysit them with the television set, and enroll them in early learning centers. During toddler-hood, we give them learning laptops and educational DVDs. As they get older, we sign them up for dance classes, violin lessons, and soccer leagues. We give them artificial playgrounds and teach them how to play at recess. We push them to do the sorts of things we see more mature brains doing because we feel that brain development is a race, and the faster our children’s brains finish, the better.
But if you wanted to create a lifestyle that took advantage of the way the human brain was built to grow, you would have to stop doing all these things and redesign children’s environments—their homes, schools, toys, and pastimes—in a way that would capitalize on natural brain development.
In Your Brain on Childhood, developmental scientist Gabrielle Principe marshals scientific evidence from a diverse array of fields to offer effective ways to outwit the modern world, for the betterment of our children and their development. Principe shows how the solution is simply to design children’s lives to work with how evolution has prepared their developing brains not against it.
Gabrielle Principe, a developmental psychologist, has a lifelong fascination with the implications of evolutionary ideas on children’s development. As a scientist, she has a serious interest in translating the latest scientific research about human development into information that parents and teachers can use to better rear and educate children. As a mother, she has the moxie to use this science to advocate bringing the fun and freedom back in childhood and parenting.
Principe is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Ursinus College, where she studies cognitive development in young children. Principe received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. Her research has been federally funded by the National Institutes of Health and she has written numerous articles in scientific journals. Her new book is entitled: Your Brain on Childhood: The Unexpected Side Effects of Classrooms, Ballparks, Family Rooms, and the Minivan (Prometheus, 2011).
Here’s a great film that showcases The Brooklyn Waldorf School. The Waldorf School of Philadelphia is similarly urban, diverse and dynamic.
This new film by Paul Zehrer is a window into the wonderful educational and community life at the Marin Waldorf School in California.
The new short film, “Why Waldorf?” was inspired by a group of parents who saw a real need to effectively communicate ‘why’ Waldorf education has become so relevant and important to the 21st Century. A highly informative and emotionally engaging portrait, “Why Waldorf” includes interviews from teachers, students, alumni, parents, doctors, authors and scholars, combined with beautiful and compelling visuals of students in action, stunning artwork, and alumni who express their poised and optimistic take on the future.
Dimitri Christakis is a pediatrician, parent and researcher whose influential findings are helping identify optimal media exposure for children. This TED talk is highly recommended for anybody interested in the topic of media and children.
“We need more real time play today and less fast paced media.” The research presented in this talk shows the effect and consequences of media exposure on the developing mind.
“A typical newborn brain weighs 333 grams by two years old it will have tripled in size an extraordinary growth rate, unparalled over a life course. Humans are born with a life time supply of brain cells, or neurons. But that’s not what actually grows, it’s the connections between the neurons that grow, known as the synapses that account for brain growth and these form based on early experiences. We are born with about 2,500 by age 3 we have about 15,000.
We are technologizing childhood today in a way that is unprecedented. In 1970 the average age that children began to watch television regularly was 4 years of age. Today based on research, the average age is 4 months. It’s not just how old the child is but how much television they watch, the typical child under the age of 5 is watching on average of 4.5 hours per day, that’s as much as 40% of their waking hours. The more television a child watched before the age of three the more likely they were to exhibit attentional problems at school age. Specifically, for every hour they watched before the age of three the chances of them having attentional problems at school age increased by about 10%. So a child who watched two hours of t.v. a day before the age of three were 20% more likely to have attention problems compared to a child who watched none.”