May Tree is a new Kindergarten in Canterbury, Kent that offers a full-day, mixed-age kindergarten programme for children between the ages of 3 and 6 years old. Our kindergarten programme is carefully designed to respond to the developmental needs of the young child through creative, play-based learning.
There is nothing like your first glimpse into a Waldorf Kindergarten. You might notice the soft colours or be intrigued by the natural wooden toys or soft silks and fabrics.
The food that the children are offered is nutritious and normally organic and the atmosphere is one of calm.
Our highly experienced teachers offer the children a familiar daily rhythm that includes creative free play, a focus on purposeful work, and significant time spent outdoors. Drawing, seasonal crafts, watercolour painting, beeswax modelling, woodwork, and puppetry all nurture the child’s creativity and imagination and preserve the innocence and innate wonder of early childhood. As they care for the classroom, bake, prepare nutritious snacks, lead circle time activities, and tell stories, our teachers lead by example and the children learn naturally through healthy imitation.
Circle time songs and verses, along with indoor and outdoor play, strengthen each child’s sense of balance and well-being, confidence, security and touch. This creates a solid foundation for the physical, social, emotional and cognitive skills that will be developed further when they take their first steps into school life at six years of age,
"The Kindergarten teachers nurture the children’s power of imagination, creative play and sensory integration that will be the foundation for academic learning and will prepare them for later learning and for life itself". Susan Howard, Waldorf Early Childhood Expert
For more scientific evidence on why it is so important to delay desk based learning please read this article in the New Scientist.