We are an independent, co-educational and non-denominational Steiner Waldorf Early Years Centre located in Hornsey/Crouch End in North London, an area with wonderful parks and woodlands such as Highgate and Queen’s Woods.
Our school, in common with other Steiner Waldorf settings, takes the educational writings of Rudolf Steiner as its starting point. Our work also entails positive dialogue with other early years’ practitioners, school inspectors, and the relevant authorities or institutions.
The North London Rudolf Steiner School is a Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood setting, which provides experiential, play-based education as a basis for effective lifelong learning for young children from 0 to 7 years.
We aim to provide a caring, supportive and creative community, which nurtures all aspects of child development as a foundation for healthy, confident, well-balanced adults.
The North London Rudolf Steiner School opened its doors to some fifty children in September 1985, with two Kindergartens and Class 1 and 2 (7 and 8-year-olds), after work by many people that began in the 1970s. Since this time, the school has gone through several changes of which the most significant was to concentrate on early years education. The school currently comprises three Kindergartens, one Playgroup, and four Parent & Child groups.
In our school, children find time and space for an unhurried, playful childhood. They unfold as individuals and develop without pressure in a warm and nourishing environment. Secure in the home-like setting and reassuring rhythms of the day, they are free to explore the world around them.
Free play with simple natural materials brings the joy of discovery and the flowering of the imagination. With plenty of time for play, children can engage deeply and creatively in it, building up physical abilities, concentration, and problem-solving skills. Children of different ages play together, learning from each other and discovering how to balance the needs of the individual and the group.
Alongside the play, the classrooms and garden are full of real work and artistic activity, following the seasonal rhythms of the year. Imitation, the young child’s natural way of learning, flourishes as the adults purposefully work and make things around them. Children thrive as they help make bread, wash dolls’ clothes, push heavy barrows in the garden or prepare the snack for sharing later.
The North London Rudolf Steiner School is a full member of the Steiner Waldorf Schools’ Fellowship (SWSF) and a recognized SWSF Early Years’ provider.
Steiner Waldorf education is a unique and distinctive approach to educating children. Steiner Waldorf education is a unique and distinctive approach to educating children.
Steiner Education respects the essential nature of childhood and enables each child to develop the abilities and confidence needed for life. This is achieved through an integrated curriculum, which is responsive to the developmental phases in childhood. Subjects are introduced at age-appropriate stages and formal learning does not begin until age 6/7.
Our methods emphasize the whole development of the child, including the child’s spiritual, physical, and moral well-being as well as academic progress and education for ‘Head, Hands and Heart’, which nurtures children in becoming balanced, well rounded, confident individuals.
Steiner schools are always co-educational and welcome children from all cultures and faiths.
Rudolf Steiner’s philosophical ideas, known as Anthroposophy, are not taught at Steiner schools but form part of the teachers’ training.
The ‘Juniper, Rosehip & Rowan’ Kindergartens function as mixed age groups for pre-school children between the ages of three to six or rising seven years. The purpose of a mixed age group is to provide a traditional large family atmosphere, helping children to acquire social skills through experience and imitation.
The first 7 years of childhood is the period of greatest physical growth and a time when the structures in the brain are still being formed and refined. In Kindergarten we recognize that the young child’s primary modes of learning are moving, doing, experiencing, and imitating. We provide nourishing opportunities for children to learn experientially and feel the joy of discovery. The young child’s natural creativity, curiosity, and sense of wonder, qualities essential for life-long learning, are fostered through a curriculum rich in natural, imaginative content.
The range of activities offered promotes exploration of the world, concentration, perseverance, dexterity, strength, coordination, and creativity as well as cognitive and language development.
The listening skills, attention, mathematical awareness, and language skills which form the foundations for literacy and numeracy are developed through stories, songs, and rhymes and age-appropriate domestic work and craft projects. These also facilitate the development of large and small motor skills. Our emphasis on free play develops self-confidence and life-long social skills and the flexibility which will enable them to meet life's challenges with confidence.
The oldest Kindergarten children have special projects and drawing books, as well as privileges, responsibilities, and expectations of behavior, all of which help to prepare them for more formal schooling at age 6+.
Children in our school thrive on daily outdoor experiences in all weathers. The garden area encompasses a purpose-built outdoor classroom that can be used for woodwork and other such tasks. It also houses an earth oven where the children bake bread.
The rhythms of each season in nature are very much a part of the life of our school. The school has a sheltered outdoor area for play and work where the children can climb, hide in bushes, sit in a quiet den, play in the sand or dig in the digging area. There are composting areas, water butts, and vegetable and herb beds. The outside area also includes a purpose-built outside classroom which can be used for woodwork and other such tasks. It houses an earth oven where the children bake bread.
