Creative activities for children

Well in the almost 18 months since that first blog post we have established Wild Cherry Steiner School and currently have 15 children in Prep and Class One and are planning to offer Class Two next year. All our school information is now at wildcherrysteiner.com.au and we are on Facebook at www.facebook.com/wildcherrysteiner.

This blog will now be used for weekly or fortnightly updates on what we're thinking, talking and inspired about at the school. To start off here's an article that was in our weekly school newsletter recently written by Steiner teacher Walter Jefimenko, that appeared in the Melbourne Rudolf Steiner School, Early Childhood Booklet with ideas for alternatives to television and computer games.

Creating a Healthy Life Style for Your Primary School Child

Providing the space for children’s creative activities is very important. A place in the garden could be set aside, provided with planks and rocks. Outside cloths, a sandpit, perhaps a tree house, a swing, a gardening area, etc. The main activity is in the “building” so that games can be invented and played. This area needs to be maintained with the rocks and planks returned to their neat stacks so that activities may be done again and again.

 For indoor activities parents could provide drawing paper, crayons, clay, plasticine or play dough, wool scraps and needles, rocks and shells which have been found on outings to rivers and beaches.

Time needs to be set aside for drawing or indoor building. We encourage parents to set up the crayons at 5.00 p.m. every evening. Doing the activity at the same time every evening, establishes a rhythm that will ultimately carry the activity by itself.

 Older children love to use their real tools – hammers, spanners, saws, hand drills. etc., to make things. There are booklets available on carpentry for children. Little electric motors are fun with balsa wood and glue. Magnets, model kits, meccano and pulleys are some more suggestions. Of course, there are many craft activities using frames, bead frames, small sewing machines (non-electric), knitting needles, wood carving tools and more. Some children live to pull apart old radios or use pulleys to build a tree house. Ropes can be used for a flying fox or for rock or tree climbing.

 Evenings provide a time for a rhythmic and regular meal and bed time procedure. Things to do are play in a warm bath, help to make the meals and set the table. Light the candle to begin the meal. A bed time story with a candle and a constant bed time will complete the day in a healthy way.

 Be confident that a determined approach by parents will result in children regaining their imaginative and creative expression and play. This may take them some time, so persevere, for a freeing of children from the effects of T.V. will result in them regaining their childhood as well as serving education purposes such as enhance language skills, improve the ability to concentrate at will, be able to participate in lessons, practice creative imagination, penetrative thinking and improve sociability. Benefits of a training of healthy expression become particularly evident in adolescence.