How are reading, literacy and numbers taught at the Seaside Playgarden?
Our curriculum recognizes and honors the full range of human potentialities. It addresses the whole child by striving to awaken and ennoble all the latent capacities. The children learn to read, write, and do math; they study history, geography, and the sciences. In addition, all children learn to: sing, play a musical instrument, draw, paint, model with clay, carve and work with wood, speak clearly, act in a play, think independently, and work harmoniously and respectfully with others. The development of these various capacities is interrelated. According to Clouder and Rawson in the book Waldorf Education (1998, pp 85, 86), the Steiner Waldorf method of teaching is in itself ecological in that it starts from an assumption of the whole and then seeks to understand the parts within the context of the whole. From the first class onwards, this method is developed throughout the curriculum. Pittis (1995, pp 72-73) notes that the goal of the Waldorf approach to the language arts, of which
