How is music used at the Seaside Playgarden?
There is no recorded music in a Waldorf classroom. Children sing daily in imitation of their teacher as part of their circle time and with such transitions as washing hands or preparing for snack-time. Teachers often play a handheld, six-stringed harp called the Kinder Harp or a simple tone bar. Some play a recorder. In later years (after first grade) the Waldorf curriculum calls for all children to learn to play a musical instrument but in the kindergarten a simple love of and appreciation for ‘”real” music is cultivated. Pentatonic music and songs (based on the pentatonic scale with five notes instead of the usual seven) are used in Waldorf schools until the third grade, when the children have developed an inner emotional life that makes the major and minor scales more appropriate for them (Dancy, 1981, pg 217). Pentatonic music was once used by most of humanity, and has the characteristic that it can go on and one without having an ending note that gives it a feeling of being finish
