Hie network ot Waldorf schools that stretches across the

Hie network ot Waldorf schools that stretches across the country and around the world has a new link — Spring Mountain School in Rappahannock County.

And like all Waldorf schools, Spring Mountain is beginning with a nursery and kindergarten, to grow with the addition of higher grades as conditions are right.

“It’s what I wanted for my son, Whitney,” explained founder Bethany Craig. “Not just an educational process but a method of education that encompasses the whole child.”

A former pre-school and adult education teacher who has her degree in art education, Mrs. Craig attended the Steiner Institute in Maine and the Waldorf Institute in Spring Valley, New York, to learn more about this holistic approach to education.

She started Spring Mountain School in 1987 as a play group, the participants meeting at her home near Sperryville. With the support of other Rappahannock County parents interested in providing their children with a Waldorf education, Mrs. Craig is now getting ready to move the program to a new location, turning the play group into nursery and kindergarten classes.

As a precourser to the expansion, she is sponsoring a lecture and workshop, “The Waldorf Approach: Educating as an Art,” on Aug. 24 and 25. The sessions will be held at Washington’s Child Care and Learning Center with John Metric, teacher at the Green Meadow Waldorf School in Spring Valley, New York, as the guest speaker.

Spring Mountain School joins one of the largest independent school systems in the world with more than 400 schools here and abroad.

Emil Molt, the director of the Waldorf Astoria Company, founded the original Waldorf School in 1919 in Stuttgart, Germany. The impetus came from World War I’s devastation of Europe. Mr. Molt believed new approaches to education would produce a generation which could avoid a repeat of that conflict and forge a brighter future. He hired noted author and lecturer Rudolf Steiner to train teachers and develop curriculum, and Dr. Steiner worked with the faculty of the school until his death in 1925.

The first Waldorf School quickly grew, gaining international recognition for its philosophical base and innovative teaching methods.

That base is too broad to adequately cover here, but the following is a sampling:

• Dr. Steiner viewed the process of human development as unfolding in seven year cycles with the first seven years being a stage of tremendous physical growth. Because preschool children are so physically oriented, Waldorf preschools take great care in the choice of materials which surround them and with which they work and play.

• As anyone who watches young children knows, play is work to them and work is play. So at a Waldorf School, children are encouraged to engage in creative play which strengthens their imagination. As a compliment, they also participate in household tasks: they learn to cook and to bake, to hammer and to build, to sweep and to wash. These practical tasks develop both large and small muscle coordination and a sense of spatial relationships. In addition, by participating in meaningful tasks, their love of work is strengthened.