“Love is higher than opinion. If people love one another the most varied opinions can be reconciled - thus one of the most important tasks for humankind today and in the future is that we should learn to live together and understand one another. If this human fellowship is not achieved, all talk of development is empty.”
~Rudolf Steiner
Educational Programs
Parent-Child Classes
Parent-Child Program (6-36 months)
Our Parent-Child program invites parents and young children to come together to meet new friends and share the wonders of the first few years of life. It is held in a nurturing environment, with natural toys that bring out a child’s imagination and initiative while also encouraging the child to develop social skills. The program has a class for toddlers (walkers) and a class for babies (non-walkers). In our toddler class, there will be time for circle songs, inside play, a wholesome snack, and outdoor play. Information about early childhood topics and conscious parenting will be made available and discussed. The program will be facilitated by experienced Waldorf early childhood teacher, Sarah McNamara. Come join for inspiration and enjoyable mornings with your child!
Early Childhood Programs
Preschool
Living Oaks Daisy Preschool is a play-based, structured, and developmentally appropriate program for children between the ages of three and four years. We have a beautiful classroom, outdoor space, and two exceptionally dedicated teachers with a small class size of 12-14 children. Care is offered four days a week from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. All preschool children must be toilet trained by the start of school and be three by September 1st. Rhythm for the day includes indoor play, circle time, snack, outdoor play, story, lunch, then rest, snack and end of day.
Kindergarten
Our Rose Kindergarten is a mixed-age program that serves children ages five and six years. Our kindergarten classes provide a nurturing, homelike environment full of natural beauty. Children form deep relationships with teachers and peers while developing foundational skills and a life-long love of learning. We have a kindergarten class with 14-16 students, keeping the teacher to student ratio low. Care is offered four days a week from 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Our program includes a daily rhythm of indoor play, circle time, snack, outdoor play, story, lunch, and rest time followed by end of day.
Lower Grades
Children in grades 1-5 are guided by a Class Teacher from first through eighth grade. Students and teachers develop a deep and important relationship through the shared experience of growing together as people through the years of the main lesson curriculum. The children make their own textbooks, full of their own interpretations, from subjects taught by the class teacher. The goal of each class teacher is to bring lessons to their class in ways that will excite and ignite, allowing each student to dream, learn, create, and explore!
Upper Grades
In the middle grades at Livings Oaks, worlds come alive through our Steiner inspired curriculum. Main lessons include learning about the Romans, medieval times, and the Renaissance. During this time of life, students continue to learn and navigate the world of social relationships, fostering respect and collaboration among the community within the class and as a whole.
Friday Programs
Little Sprouts
Children Kindergarten-3rd grade
Hours are 8:30am - 2:00pm
A nature and outdoor-play based program with hours of outdoor play on Living Oaks’ 10 acre campus. Activities include walks to the pond, the Merry Meadow, our biodynamic gardens, and to playscape areas on our grounds.
Children can often be found creating fairy gardens, building sand castles, making debris huts, sanding a piece of wood, making mud pies, or playing freely as they pretend to be jaguars. Simple gardening projects, as well as candle making, forest art, clay sculptures, mud-crafts, handmade boats, herbal medicine, plant dyeing, wool felting, gardening, composting, native bee houses, bat houses, and water color painting are among the arts and crafts projects which the children have engaged in as part of our Friday nature based curriculum.
Our program creates healthy seasonal rhythms for the children and allows the space, time and environment for exploring and discovering nature’s wonders.
Snacks and lunches are provided.
Cedar Group
Children 5th - 8th grades
Hours are 8:30am - 2:00pm
Centered around nature awareness and appreciation, combined with natural crafts that we can use to deepen awareness and explore the world around us. This program is seasonally focused with indoor and outdoor play. Our teachers will be speaking English and interweaving Spanish into our daily rhythms. The Friday curriculum will create healthy seasonal rhythms for self regulation with indoor point centered work alongside outdoor education and natural arts.
Our Friday Program is a nature and outdoor-play based program which incorporates the entire 10 acre campus in it's activities with trips to the pond, the forest, the meadow, biodynamic gardens, and the playgrounds in between. Children are given materials, and instruction for various project to complete. Past projects include: candle making, forest art, clay sculptures, mud-crafts, handmade boats, herbal medicine, plant dyeing, wool felting, gardening, composting, native bee houses, bat houses, painting, etc.
We incorporate the seasons in our exploration of nature and the world around us.
Snacks and lunches are provided.
Subject Classes
Handwork
Children at Living Oaks practice the art of handwork as a regular subject class. Projects vary depending on the grade and follow the traditional Waldorf handwork practice linked with the appropriate development of a child.
Biodynamic Gardening
Children in grades 1-8 attend bi-weekly garden classes where they learn to grow and tend to our edible crops as well as dye and harvest medicinal plants. The gardening curriculum is developmentally-based and reflects the main lesson work in each grade. Food from the garden is harvested daily and prepared for lunches by Chef Aran. All food waste is brought back to the farm to be composted and recycled into soil. We will continue to expand our gardens in the years to come.
World Language
Living Oaks offers Spanish as our world language. Children are introduced to the foundations for learning Spanish in our early childhood programs, with lessons beginning in first grade. The intention is to not only learn a new language, but to also give students insights into other cultures. Classes in all grades include poems, songs, stories, listening, speaking, grammar, and vocabulary acquisition. The specific content and way these skills are incorporated is tailored to each class based on their stage of development. Spanish and Italian teachers strive to integrate the main lesson topics from the classroom teacher into the language lessons in support of our interdisciplinary approach to teaching.
Cooking
At Living Oaks, we offer students and faculty a world class food program full of local and organic foods (some of which are from our very own farm!). The students work with our chef in the kitchen to help prepare the daily lunches and snacks for the entire community. They are learning knife skills, plating, nutrition, reverence for the food and where it comes from, along with proper kitchen etiquette and much more.
Movement/Games
Grades 1 to 3:
Teachers bring movement skills to life in imaginative ways through picture images and nature games in a noncompetitive environment.
Grades 4 to 8:
Teachers emphasize developing and practicing skills in specific areas and various team sports during class.
Music
Grades 1 and 2: Pentatonic Flute & Lyra
Music is integrated through stories and pictures rather than theory and technique.
Grades 3 and 4: String Instruments
Students select the violin, viola, or cello and learn music theory, note-reading, and instrument families, often singing in rounds.
Grade 5: Winds, Brass, or Strings (coming in the future)
Fifth graders have the option to stay with their chosen string instrument or select a new instrument from the broader options now available. Orchestral arrangements are chosen for each class based on meter, key, and melodic integrity to help students move inward from self to other.
Grades 6 to 8: A Full Orchestra (coming in the future)
Now skilled at playing together as well as individually, students exercise their need to be heard, literally and figuratively, as they are presented with challenging and diverse rhythms that harmonize and balance the group experience.
