The Kinderhale Program strives to provide a rich and rewarding experience for our keiki (little ones) focusing on the social, emotional, and physical development of the child.  The child’s creative and imaginative capacities are allowed to flourish as each child discovers and learns about their world through their experiences and interactions with those around them.

Kinderhale (“Kinder-house” in Hawaiian) offers a nurturing and protective environment where children enjoy unhurried opportunity to imitate in their play all that they hear in stories and verses.  The tasks of daily living are fun and joyful.  The children develop relationships by helping and being helped by those around them.  They delight in the festivals of the year, including their own birthdays.  They gain an inner well being as they experience wonder and gratitude for their world.

Here we have Time.

"I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age."

- Henry David Thoreau

 A Day in the Kinderhale

"Rhythm is the bearer of life, and therewith the bearer of health."
-Rudolf Steiner

Children are carried along by the rhythms of the world in which they live, from the cadence of breathing in their bodies to the daily patterns of sleeping and waking.  The yearly cycle of the seasons and the rhythmic procession of stars across the heavens are part of life’s experience for adults and children. Children flourish when their daily activities are arranged rhythmically to reflect the natural order of life. Thus the Kinderhale activities flow with a sense of “breathing in” and “breathing out,” from the quiet moments of fairy tales to the active moments of work and play. 

Typically, the children are involved in creative play during the early part of the morning. Each day of the week has its own special activity, such as watercolor painting, bread baking, beeswax modeling, handwork, and nature walks.  

Children play outdoors rain or shine.  Whether in the sandbox, balancing on the teeter-totter or exploring the garden, good, healthy physical activity is an important part of daily life in the Kinderhale

Circle activities require concentration and group participation.  Stories and fairy tales are told from memory with an emphasis on tone and pronunciation of words, engaging each child’s full imagination in the magic of the tale. 

"If you want your children to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales. If you want them to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales."
- Albert Einstein

Kinderhale Lunch Program

Children in the Kinderhale enjoy a healthy, primarily organic, vegetarian snack and lunch daily.  Lunch is prepared by our staff in the schools certified kitchen using high quality ingredients.  Children are encouraged to take part in the preparation of certain meals such a bread baking and chopping vegetables for soup. 

We believe that healthy eating happens when good food is prepared and served in a loving way.  Children enjoy meals while sitting together at a family table set with cloth napkins, silverware, glass drinking cups and porcelain bowls. 

Together we are thankful for our meal, our teachers our friends and our school.

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