Our program for 2024 is:

A mixed age program (younger and older children in each group).

Children turning three by April 31st attend kinder for two morning sessions per week (9am - 12:30pm) on either a Monday and Wednesday or a Tuesday and Thursday. Morning tea is provided. Please note; conditions apply to attendance prior to a child’s 3rd birthday.

Please note; A child must be turning 6 in the year they attend the Steiner Stream prep program so please consider this when deciding which year to enrol your child into the kindergaten program.

Free, creative play - the very lifeblood of childhood - is considered the best preparation for self-realising adult life. The Steiner kindergarten strives to provide guidance for the young child in an environment where children are free to play and free to be children. The Steiner educator endeavours to create an environment that gives children time to play and encourages them to exercise their imagination and learn to conjure up ideas from within themselves.

The educational implications in the kindergarten program are to recognise the importance of imitation as a learning art. The child will learn much from imitation and example, more so than from merely being told things.

In the third year of life the child's play emerges into the world of fantasy, where the child is able to imagine that common items like a piece of wood have qualities of a car or a rolling pin.

The environment with which a child and his senses interact is of primary importance. The kindergarten environment aims to a nurture the senses, but not overwhelm them. The social environment, along with the adults who interact with the children can also influence them profoundly on a number of different levels.

Playthings are often objects collected from the natural environment, sea shells, nuts, pine cones, logs and other more conventionally shaped blocks. There are also cloths in plain, beautiful colours, and hand carved wooden animals or houses. The outside play area is also very important. It should be effectively a children's garden where they play alongside plants, flowers and trees and experience the natural elements.

In free play, children are forever problem solving, whether in the social realm, the physical realm, or the psychological realm.