Early Childhood Curriculum

Mountain Phoenix Community School, a member of the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education, offers a joyful nurturing setting in our Early Childhood Program that inspires the imagination through creative play, storytelling, puppetry, music, movement, nature & art.

Early Childhood at Mountain Phoenix

The Preschool at Mountain Phoenix is tuition-based which is open to students who will be ages 3 and 4 by October 1st. The state-funded Kindergarten, a one or two year program based on the child’s age, is open to students who will be age 5 by October 1st.

At MPCS, it is common for our students to start Grade 1 when they are closer to the age 7.

Preschool Curriculum

Our trained teachers provide a caring environment as our young ones gently transition from home to school. MPCS recognizes that the young child learns primarily through imitation and example. Since the young child’s response to the environment is imitation with openness and trust, the teacher’s goal is to become a worthy role model in gesture, mood, and speech.

Our classrooms are not filled with desks, but with the familiarities of home such as a family eating table, cozy living space and opportunities for practical work. Work is play! Children are learning to chop vegetables, bake bread, fold laundry and keep their areas tidy. This stewardship naturally rewards them with values such as care and responsibility through a balanced rhythm steeped in predictability.

Every day the children have a family style snack. For full-day students, you will provide a lunch or sign-up for hot lunch. There is an essential rest time that is offered for students who stay for the full day.

Kindergarten Curriculum

Similar to the preschool, the Kindergarten also provides a homelike environment, rich in weekly nature walks, singing, seasonal activities, painting, puppetry, and storytelling. Waldorf philosophy believes it is profoundly important that the child have time to develop body, imagination, and will in a secure setting. Free play with simple natural toys draws out the imagination.

Because children live so deeply in the environment around him and imitate all they sees, our trained teachers strive to create an environment that mirrors back to the child the good and the beautiful. The teacher cultivates a reverence for nature and for caring relationships and good habits, laying a solid foundation for lifelong learning, personal development, fruitful relationships with others and engagement with the world.

Kindergarten as a Foundation

In the current times of technology and scholastic rigor, we recognize that parents want to know how their children are becoming academically prepared for Grade 1 and beyond. Here are the explicit foundations that are being framed during their early childhood experience at Mountain Phoenix.

“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

One key goal of the kindergarten program is to lay a strong foundation for the formal academic curriculum of the grades. Many preliminary academic skills are unfolding implicitly, meaning through the heart space, not the head space. Said differently, this material is not presented through formal academic lessons, but rather is embedded in the activities and rhythms of each day. The kindergarten program also allows children to fully engage in their will forces, deeply live into their imagination, and build empathy for the other in preparation for the higher levels of cognitive thinking developed in the later grades.

Math: Qualities of numbers; sorting and ordering; rhythm counting with movement and song; measuring in baking and cooking; woodworking
Science: Cooking; baking; nature stories; nature walks; observations; gardening; woodworking
Handwork: Finger crocheting; sewing; cutting; pasting; drawing; seasonal crafts; woodworking (fine motor skills, foundation for concentration, speech and thinking)
Language Arts: fairy tales from around the world; singing; poetry recitation; with emphasis on the oral tradition
World Language: Introduction to Spanish, through songs and rhymes
Social & Emotional: Extended Periods of uninterrupted, deep imaginative classroom play.
History & Social Studies: Multicultural stories; festivals; foods
Visual & Performing Arts: Drawing; painting; beeswax modeling; drama; singing; puppetry
Movement/Physical Education/Games: Circle games, finger games, jumping rope, climbing, outdoor imaginative play

This text above is adapted from the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education and revised to reflect the program at MPCS.

Welcome MPCS Parent

Welcome MPCS Parent

Preschool Curriculum

Kindergarten Curriculum

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