Early Childhood at Cairns Hinterland Steiner School offers:

• Playgroup (2-3 years)
• Kindergarten (4 years) three days a week
• Kindergarten (5 years) four days a week
• Prep program (6 years) five days a week

In the kindergarten and prep years we seek to provide and foster an environment that is more like a home rather than a classroom. A warm, secure and calm atmosphere is created where, surrounded by beauty, the young child’s imagination and creativity can unfurl within their play and work.

Every feature of the kinder and prep, from the choice of colours to the play equipment offered, has been carefully selected to provide the optimum environment in which the young child can unfold.

The children are not introduced to an academic programme. They are simply allowed to be children. A great deal of what they need to learn at this age can be achieved through their own rich and rewarding world of self-directed play. The teacher maintains an unobtrusive, but loving and watchful presence.

The children are free to join the teachers in a range of wholesome, home-based activities, crafts and artistic pursuits. They may be involved in baking bread for morning tea, working in the garden to grow vegetables that they make into soup for lunch, growing flowers for flower garlands or fairy rings, sweeping and mopping, washing dolls clothes and hanging them out to dry, building cubbies, weaving or sewing, painting, drawing, wood work, singing and ring-dancing.

Each day the children and the teachers come together to sing songs, recite verses and poems and participate in ring dances and finger plays. Later in the day they all meet again for story time, where they are exposed to traditional folk and fairy tales and simple nature stories. The teacher provides the children with rich and beautiful oral language experiences which builds the foundations for the language work that comes later in their educational journey. 

Similarly, the groundwork is being developed in other areas of learning: developing body geography through guided movement, which helps with reading, developing the foundations for math work through rhythmical and counting activities, and daily exposure to the world of nature and a focus on seasonal elements underpins science.

 Shelley Pollard is our Nominated Supervisor for all Kindergarten programmes.