City Garden School is a 501c 3 non-profit Waldorf-inspired school for grades 1-5, located in…read moredowntown Columbia, Missouri. My child has attended 1st-3rd grades there and will enter 4th in the fall.
I have heard the popular catchphrase recently: "Educate the *Whole Child*" but I have never seen it so fully, thoughtfully, carefully accomplished as in this school. Education here is about finding the intersections of multiple aspects of being a person, such as: learning mathematics through art, rhythm, grouping physical objects after hearing a story, and team exercises; circle time for body awareness, recitation, and singing; learning basic music-reading and recorder-playing for breath, pitch, and control.
By third grade, interesting elements are included in the curriculum--measurement, fibers, farming, and house-building. In each of these, the children learn the historical application, the evolving facets and techniques, and the fundamentals of how they themselves could create useful shelters, food, and clothing.
Assessments at City Garden are not grades, but rather the child's place along a spectrum of skill: Emerging Skill, Developing Skill, Achieved Skill, or Strength. This way, parents and children both can observe what the teacher's focus is and will be with each student, in each topic.
Creative play is well-valued at City Garden, and going outdoors to run and play is considered a needful release of tension, as well as an "out-breath" in the natural rhythm of human habits. This structure creates a balance of focused, detail-oriented Main Lesson time of study, with raucous childhood's energetic free-play.
Each Friday is Outdoor Friday, where children spend the day hiking Columbia's local parks and natural areas, creating a mental map of great play-areas, native creature-sightings, and seasonal joys.
Both German and Spanish language classes are taught, each twice a week, so the children receive cultural awareness and early exposure to other languages.
Instead of Physical Education, City Garden offers a Cooperative Games class, which does work to foster many of the skills p.e. would attend: balance, rhythm, spatial orientation, etc, but with a greater focus on teamwork and less structure that supports individual "winners and losers."
There is also the element of Handwork in the classrooms--a time twice a week were students practice creating an item with a skill, beginning with knitting, progressing on to crochet, then embroidery, wet-felting wool, wax-molding, etc. This supports a great deal of mind-hand-eye- coordination, requiring the child to follow instructions, incorporate a repetitive action and unique design elements, and exercise a critical eye towards successful and unsuccessful production.
Finally, the teachers of City Garden School have fostered meaningful working relationships with local institutions such as the Columbia Art League, for their children's classes, and the Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture, where children go on Outdoor Fridays once a month to learn about and support CCUA's mission of education and providing fresh, sustainable, local food.
Through all these wonderful experiences, I have witnessed my child truly bloom into his own abilities, awareness, joys, and critical thought in manners that I did not even realize I wanted for him before this school's influence.
City Garden School supports childhood in a way that makes me wish I could go back to being a six-year-old and live through grade school all over again, with this approach.
At least I can give this to my children, and participate in the community, the festivals, the friendships, skill-building, and explorations with them!!
