The Stone House Preschool and Kindergarten is not a traditional school focusing young minds on ABCs and 1, 2, 3’s, and that’s exactly what its founder and director, Sarah Cole, had in mind when she opened it nearly a decade ago.
Cale said “Stone House,” which is how it’s mostly referred to in conversation, is the only school in the Virgin Islands whose philosophy is steeped in the Waldorf education model, which started in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1919 at Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner’s “The Free Waldorf School.”
Today there are thousands of Waldorf schools around the world and hundreds in North America, where the philosophy of the curriculum is based on childhood developmental phases and the nurturing of children’s imaginations.
“Everything to this day that I read about Waldorf still speaks to the child so much,” Cole said as she sat outside in Stone House’s vast play area. The children have a forest, chickens and a very natural St. Croix environment from which to learn.
“For children ages 1 to 5, this is how they learn, through exploration with their senses,” Cole said.
As Stone House teacher Cat Austin Franks said, “This is a developmentally based program, which means activities are geared for the developmental stage of 1- to 5-year-olds. It means they are not required to go beyond what their bodies would naturally try to do.”
In other words, Stone House is stress free, a place to let the kids be kids and play, explore and discover the world around them.
Franks, who’s now in her early 60s, grew up and was schooled on St. Croix, then left for a number of years, then moved back again with her own family 16 years ago. With a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education from Boston’s Wheelock College and years of teaching experience under her belt, she taught kindergarten and nursery school at the Good Hope School for 14 years upon her return, which is where she met Cole, who taught second grade and art.
As she sat in a tiny chair overlooking one of the inside play rooms at Stone House, Franks spoke of her love for its unique philosophy and how, after 40 years of teaching, she’d finally found a place that believed in everything she did as an educator.
“Parents walk into this room sometimes and say, ‘There’s not a lot going on here.’ Yet every day, children walk into this same space and are never bored.”
“Every day it’s something different,” she said. “One day the same blocks are a garage, then a dragon’s castle, then something totally different. To me, when you take a child’s brain at such an early stage and force it to work in an unnatural way, it cramps his or her style. They’re not learning as quickly and can’t file the information in a meaningful way to the way they think.”
“Even though this might not look academic, I think it’s a much more highly academic experience for children,” she said.
The play-based experience and structure of the Stone House curriculum includes what Cole calls “rhythm and routine.”
“When the children arrive, it’s quiet. Then it gets robust as they begin to go outside and play. Then we come together for quiet time and snack and circle time, and then it’s back to play,” Cole said. “So it’s like this natural feeling of big out-breaths and in-breaths and, with that, you prevent discipline problems because they know what the expectations are, and it’s very comforting for the children to know what comes next.”
Both Cole and Franks said they can’t stress more the importance of rich and imaginative play for preschoolers and toddlers.
“This (play) is all that is important, I believe. It is how they learn to think and learn to process information,” Franks said. “Left to their own devices, they learn to make sense of everything around them.”
She put it another way. “I do wicked-cool projects. The kids love them. Yet every day, despite what project we do and this one being the best ever, they always ask, ‘Can we play now?’”
“Children are born to move. Climbing, running, jumping, it all supports healthy body and growth and the development of gross motor skills,” Cole said. “They also become aware of their space, the environment around them and space with each other.”
In Waldorf education, Cole explained, one of the first things children need to become aware of on their own is their sense of balance and movement.
With boulders to climb, chickens and roosters to chase, tree swings to use and even an old boat to climb inside in the outdoor play area (not to mention the swings, slides and sand pit), Cole said, “They will do a lot of risky things here and that all comes with more information for children because they know what their capabilities are and what their limitations are.”
She said they will watch the toddlers attempt things, but then not do it, “because they know this does not feel safe. And the kids will ask us to put them on the rocks or tree swings, but we wouldn’t ever do that. Never, ever, ever! We’d tell them they need to learn to climb them and do the things themselves.”
She further explained that Steiner believed children shouldn’t even grasp intellectual information at a young age because everything is about their bodies.
“That’s how they learn things,” Cole said. “In Waldorf, everything they see, touch, everything they hear should be of this beautiful quality.”
She mentioned a weekly activity popular with the children. “This is why we bake bread. It’s not just some cute thing we do. It’s nourishing to the body to smell it baking and then the whole aspect of making something start to finish, and the children can see beautiful things done with their hands,” she said.
Cole said the research on the subject of an academic preschool experience where children learn things “important to us” versus a play-based one like Waldorf and Stone House’s is clear, too.
“There are no studies, no research that show the benefits to pushing all this academic information down" to children, she said. “Children learn through play, experimentation, and trial and error. The material being taught to them is so abstract and they could care less. So why not teach what is genuine and innate to their beings?”
Cole recalled a few of her preschoolers spending a half an hour a few days prior building a catapult. The excitement in her voice talking about the dedication, focus and imagination of the children spelled out the Stone House experience perfectly.
“That’s what they experience here,” she said, “all that experimentation that comes from within.”
