Nania News

2004　　　2005　　2006　　At nania corner

At Nania(１)

We will be introducing a column “At Nania” in Nania News to talk about the Whys and How we do things at Nania.We welcome feedback and questions.

You may have observed the prevalence of the color pink at Nania.  Today, I would like to introduce why we use the color pink.  Small children are open to the surrounding elements and receive all sorts of impressions from them.  Colour, which is part of the environment, is an important aspect of the child’s world.

At Nania, we use the colour pink for the curtains and wall. Pink, a shade of red, represents a colour for life. It is reflected as a bluish quality in the children’s soul, which has a calming effect on them.

We use a lot of soft coloured cloth to decorate the rooms. The soft fabric and colours warm the space. It makes young children, who still possess a dreamy quality, to feel calm and protected within.

The staff wear soft coloured aprons for a similar reason. We encourage the teachers to wear soft flowing skirts to enhance their feminine quality. Teaching staff wear pink and light blue aprons, kitchen/house keeping staff wear light purple aprons to differentiate their roles. The aprons offer a consistent impression to the children. Young children need a settled environment to feel settled within themselves and comfortable with the environment. To mitigate staff changes and the mood of the individuality expressed in the daily fashion of our clothes, the staff wear the same coloured apron every day to offer the children the consistency they need for their emotional comfort.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Junko

At Nania(２)

At Nania we work very much with the three major learning principles Imagination, Imitation and Repetition. Today I would like to talk a bit about Imagination.

Young children between three to six years old have great imagination. They create many things from the play material at Nania. They set up different play scenarios such as flying in an airplane; on board a ship, at the hairdresser; hospital; car workshop; a restaurant; etc. Although the play materials are the same, we have different creative play everyday.

The vigor of their imagination transforms a piece of play log into BBQ fish, a bar of soap, or train. A piece of string becomes noodles, a bundle of strings into cooking fire. It is possible for children to imagine and transform toys in many ways because of the play material itself. At Nania we have many unformed toys. Formed toys with clear defined shapes do not leave space for imagination. Unformed toys like stones and cloth invite imagination to transform them. If the child is surrounded by formed toys, it is difficult for their imagination to behold more than what they see. It is hard to transform a beautiful fire engine into a ship or train. It is easy to transform a play log into a beautiful fire engine, ship or train.

We prefer natural play material in the classroom. Plastic is “Cold” as opposed to natural materials which are “Warm” to touch and offer more sensory comfort. The play materials we offer are selected to allow the children to cultivate and nurture the power and dynamism of their imagination. When they play imaginatively it not just their imagination and limbs that are busy, their souls are also enriched. Young children are will beings. It is important for them to play creatively during their tender years to lay good foundation for the later stages of their life.

                              Junko

At Nania(3)

Today I would like to talk about another one of the three major learning principles, that is “Imitation”.  Young children have the natural ability to imitate.  They learn through imitation.  They learn to speak and walk by observing and imitating the people who speak and walk around them.  The imitating ability of children under 7 years old is very powerful.  It is amazing for example how small children can learn poems and songs in different languages so quickly.  It comes through the faculty of imitation.

It is not only words and behaviour that they imitate.  Children also pick up moods and attitudes through imitating people’s feelings and inner quality.  Knowing how small children are always imitating and learning from their surroundings, we adults need to ask ourselves if we are being good models or not.  If they have a stable environment and good models to imitate during their young age, children will grow up in a wholesome way.

At Nania, we gather together at 8.00 am in the hall to start the day.  We hold hands and pray for a happy, healthy and safe day for the children.  As care givers, we need to prepare ourselves to work happily together as well as be good models individually for the children.  Everyday, at the beginning of the day, we gather (eight of us) to coordinate carrying the day as best we can.  The smiling faces of the staff make a great start to the day.

In the classroom, we teachers will do some simple and recurring work, such as preparing for class work, clearing up, folding napkins, or making handicraft.  As we work with love, we fill the space with joy.  The children will sense the comfort, which supports them to feel happy and safe in the space and play well.  The simple and recurring work allows us to maintain our observation of the children without difficulty.  This is a reason, when parents visit Nania for their child’s Birthday or Farewell, we ask them to do some work.  If adults are just watching them and doing nothing or talking loud, children will not feel comfortable in the space and cannot concentrate.  When unsettled, children loose focus of their behaviour and often end up running around.

With their inclination to imitate, absorption and learning through imitation, unsupervised TY viewing can allow unwanted influences to shape the child’s behaviour, inner feelings and attitude.

What has been observed, is often tried out by the child as part of his/her learning experience.  At Nania, the children will often want to play out the TV characters that have taken their interest during creative playtime.  Their play in such cases is often loud and follows somewhat fixed roles and story patterns.  The boys often imitate action characters; adopt aggressive fighting roles in their play, including making electronic type action sounds, short loud speeches in line with popular TV cartoon type characters.  Such play is somewhat prescribed, limited in scope and not as rich in social interaction, imagination and speech formation.

Playing out defined scripted roles does not encourage children to act out freely.  At Nania, we tell the children TV cartoon type characters live in their TV world and do not come to class.  We direct them to play out less defined but more human archetypal characters such as Mother, Father, Doctors, Shopkeepers, Princes and Princesses, etc..  When acting out such roles without a predefined script, the imagination of the child is free to evolve a different story each time and respond spontaneously to others in the play.  The interaction is more social, less aggressive and foster more meaningful speech and behaviour. Mitigating the influence of TV is a challenge in child education in today’s world.  Whilst the debate about the good and bad influences of TV continues, there is no dispute that TV has an influence on the development of the child.  We encourage parents to exercise supervision over the kind of TV programmes their children are exposed to.

At Nania we discourage imitation of TV cartoon characters for the reasons described above.  I wonder what you think of it.  Consequently we discourage bringing merchandise (toys, etc.) associated with them to the class. 

Enclosed with this issue of Nania News is a copy of an article on the subject, Television and the Growing Child, from latest issue of New View, a magazine with a focus on contemporary work based on Rudolf Steiner’s research, also called Anthroposophy.

Junko

At Nania(4)

Today I would like to talk about another one of the three major learning principles related to young children, that is ‘Repetition’.

At Nania, we pay emphasis on the rhythm of the day, week and year.  We repeat some activities every day, others every week and a few annually.  First and foremost, we strive to establish a nourishing rhythm of expansion and contraction within the day.  When the children come to Nania, arriving in still not a fully awaken state in the morning, we introduce them to an artistic activity, e.g. painting.  It is a calm activity allowing the child to focus and compose his/her inner self (contraction) at the start of the day.  When they finish their artistic work they have free play, an expansion to a more outward and social activity.  After free play, they come together for morning snack. 

Children use lots of energy in their activity as well as for body building.  At Nania we have three snack and meal times.  Besides nourishment, snack and meal times act as natural pause periods between activities.  They also offer learning opportunities for household chores.  At Nania, children set the table for meals, they also wash their own plates, fold napkins, etc.  

After morning snack, we have songs and poems (ringtime) followed by outside play (expansion).  After outside play, the children come inside for lunch.  The older children then have study time (extended contraction) whilst the younger ones have free play.  The difference reflects the ability of the older children to concentrate and manage intellectual study. 

We then have afternoon snack, which brings both age groups together again.  By this time the children have had five hours of activities, a pretty full day by any means.  They would be satiated and somewhat tired.  We then settle them down for story time and finish up with a goodbye song.

As human beings, we thrive on alternating rhythms, e.g. breathing in and breathing out.  Supported by a nourishing rhythm of expansion and contraction (or relaxation and concentration), children play and learn well, growing up in a healthy way in their body, mind and spirit.

Further to the rhythm of the day, we repeat seasonal festivals throughout the year.  The repetition gives children a sense of stability and helps them to build strong memory.  For every festival we introduce a different set of poems, songs and finger plays.  Close to the festivals, we sing the songs and recite the poems everyday for the festival.  Although we introduce many songs, the children remember quickly through the repetition.  They are, more importantly, not memorizing things meaninglessly.  Their learning is filled with the joy of preparing for the festivals.  The joy of learning certainly contributes to a better rate of learning.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Junko

At Nania(5)

The world is getting busier.  The increasing turnover of activities, use of technology and demand for higher productivity in the adult world is also impacting our children’s world.  The competitive market place experience is heightening parents’ interest in early training to give their children a good head start.  An example of this is computer classes for children at kindergarten age. 

Many parents today believe an early introduction to reading, writing and use of technology will allow their children to orientate themselves and function better in the modern world.  Many think this is the “natural” way to keep up with the world and secure a future in a competitive marketplace.  As an educator, I notice parents are, increasingly over the years, getting more worried when they notice other children reading and writing or seemingly performing intellectually better than their own children at kindergarten age.  Today, parents start to worry if their children still do not know their ABCs at 4 years old. 

Living amidst the fast pace of change in modern times, the need for a well-balanced development is a greater challenge than ever.  Children do have an amazing ability to learn.  They indeed master a wide range of skills and abilities (walking, talking, etc.) in a relatively short time.  As parents and educators, wanting the best for the child, we have to be careful we do not push them too fast too early. 

Children before 6 years old are busy building their bodies.  They grow seven times their body weight (as a baby) over this period. 

 Physical development is the signature of this development phase.  The use of limbs, their coordination and an accompanying sense of time, space and movement should be the primary focus of their development programme at this stage.

At Nania, we approach children under 6 as Will beings.  They WANT to do things.  Through doing something they discover and learn.  Through playing with their friends, they discover and learn about themselves.  With children of this age, it is learning through willing and not learning through thinking as adults do.  Hence our pre-school programme is designed to support the child to do many things in a rhythmical and artistic way.  Activities take place within a daily and annual rhythm.  Learning is fostered through creative play, artistic activity, imitation and repetition.  This however does not mean intellectual development is neglected. 

Development unfolds in phases.  The change of teeth is a sign of change in the child’s development process.  It signals completion of the formative phase in bodybuilding.  Some of the life forces occupied in bodybuilding earlier are now available for other development processes.  The child, age 6 going to 7, is now more ready for classroom schooling than he/she was earlier. 

Until children are ready for intellectual class work, intellectual development or more accurately preparation for intellectual activity should be supported through movement and artistic activity.  Those who have tried would know that explaining abstract concepts such as Alphabets to pre-schoolers is hopelessly ineffective.  Coaching pre-schoolers to copy and memorise letters correctly does not really translate into expanding their understanding and use of language.  Children however develop better vocabulary as they call upon language skills to articulate themselves during creative play. 

It is too demanding for children at pre-school age to sit still and concentrate their mind.  Putting children through the traditional classroom language training exercises at pre-school age is likely to contribute more to stress than learning.  Children at this tender age clearly do not know how to handle stress.  Parents may experience irregular behaviour as a result.  The stress to the being of the child also disturbs the bodybuilding process the child is in.  We have learnt, in modern times that many of out illnesses, e.g. headaches, stomach aches, are stress related.  Likewise the child’s organism will be affected. 

Competition or keeping up with your classmates is often used as a tool to push children along in their studies.  Because they are not ready for it, this technique applied on pre-school age children to encourage them to remember their letters and numbers makes children more anxious and less harmonious to each other in class.  The stress and anxiety impressed on the being of the child at such tender age without any defence on their part is liable to set the stage for psychological problems in the future.

Truly, if we push children against their nature at this early age, we could nurture a dislike instead of interest in intellectual study.  I often hear parents complain about their teenage children’s lack of motivation and interest in schoolwork. 

As educators we need to package learning environments appropriate to the physical, mental and emotional development phase of the learner.  At Nania, we introduce the world of letters, words and numbers to our pre-school children through a combination of movement, poems, rhymes and songs.  The children are lead from Form drawing, colouring to writing, reading and comprehension. 

With these activities, they will enjoy learning reading and writing through their whole body.

The foundation of life is established during the tender age below 6 years old.  If learning is nurtured in an artistic and joyful environment, this joy of learning can continue to the next stages of life.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Junko

At Nania(6)

Today I would like to talk about ‘reverence’.　It is one of the most important aspects we observe at Nania.

Everyday we have time for ‘prayer’ and occasions of expressing gratitude.During our class daily morning circle, we look out for absent children and pray for the sick children’s recovery.Before meals (snacks and lunch) we say verses expressing gratitude for the food, to nature and the people who prepared the food.　We pray for victims of tragic incidents such as the recent Tsunami. Lighting a candle and making a good wish for somebody other than themselves, performed by the children, is the centerpiece ceremony of Nania’s Christmas festival. At Nania, we take these moments and opportunities to offer prayer or express gratitude to surround children in moods of reverence. It comforts their being and nourishes the sense of goodness they possess.

Children below six are naturally close to the spiritual world.  They feel and talk about things in the nature as if they are alive like themselves.  They naturally relate to ‘Mr. Sun’, ‘Mr. Tree’, etc. as natural beings.  If not discouraged, they have high affinity to stones, leaves, seeds, flowers, insects and such.  During outside play, some children will collect stones, etc., to keep and take home.  Ordinary stones to adults, but for small children things in nature can be treasures, filled with mystery.

A dead ant can be a big happening to small children. They observe, they discuss “the situation” and they make a grave to bury the ant. Once I over heard a conversation after some children finished decorating a grave with beautiful flowers. It goes as follows:“Mr. Ant will surely go to the Heaven, won’t he?” … “He will be happy there, because his mummy and daddy are waiting in the Heaven, isn’t it?” … “Yes, I think so”

Parents will notice the usage of Gnomes and Angels at Nania. Gnomes at Nania are elemental beings in the nature who protect the Earth. On the child’s birthday, he/she receives presents of a crystal, seeds and shells (nature’s gifts) from Mr. Gnome. When a child falls sick, other children place gnomes around the resting sick child to watch over him/her. Children feel gnomes as their guardians. They make houses and presents for them. One can build on the child’s sensitivity to elemental beings in nature to develop respect and care for the environment.

Development from childhood to adulthood can also be portrayed as a recapitulation of the development of humanity from early prehistory origins to the present day. Small children bear similarity to ancient consciousness, which is close to the nature, and animistic. As children grow up, they will progressively experience the separation from nature and the development of intellect and other ego faculties.

At their age and corresponding to their spiritual emotional state, as educators, we at Nania strive to nurture an environment of ‘warm space filled with love’. And within that space, to foster the experience of a higher purpose and cultivate recognition and attitude of ‘gratitude’ for life and nature.

The power of the words in verses and prayers enrich the child’s soul life and good intent.

Junko

At Nania(7)

Today, I would like to reflect on the 1^st Asian Waldorf Teachers’ conference held in Taiwan, which Teacher Thian and I attended.The education system at Nania is based on Rudolf Steiner’s work, which is also referred to as Steiner or Waldorf Education.The name Waldorf comes from the name of the first Steiner School established in Germany, in 1919. Rudolf Steiner’s work in general is also known as Anthroposophy, i.e. Knowledge (sophia) of Man (Anthrop). Besides education, Steiner’s work (Anthroposophy) also covers development in areas, such as agriculture, art, music, medicine, architecture, economy, and curative education. Steiner’s work in agriculture, known as Biodynamic Agriculture, was a pioneer development of organic agriculture.

Established as early as 1919 in Europe, Waldorf education is relatively new to Asia. Whilst international Waldorf Education Teachers’ conferences have been held for decades in Europe, this is the first time an Asia Pacific regional conference is held. It reflects the growing interest in Waldorf education and its development in this region over the last decade. Over the last ten years, many Waldorf kindergartens and schools were established in India, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Nepal, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, China, Vietnam, Japan and Malaysia. About 150 people attended the conference to exchange classroom experiences as well as teacher’s training and curriculum development for Asia.

Before my husband and I started Taska Nania 9 years ago, I taught in several Japanese government schools, i.e. primary , high school and mentally challenged children’s school for over 10 years. I had many questions about the education system I was implementing. I did not discover adequate answers and satisfaction on many issues as a teacher until I met Waldorf education.

Waldorf education employs a wholistic human development approach. It recognizes the different development phases in accordance with the biological, social and spiritual aspects of human life as well as the individuality of each human being. The education curriculum and teaching method is tailored to the need of the children experiencing their different life development phases. It clarified many pedagogical issues I had as a teacher. Working with Waldorf education is also self-development as an educator. We are inspired and challenged to work hard but we also see wonderful fruits in the shining faces of the children.

There is a popular notion since young children learn well that introducing as much intellectual work, as early as possible, will make them smarter and secure better opportunities in their life. Is it really so? Joseph Chilton Pearce, human brain research scientist and author of the ‘The biology of Transcendence’ found that the left brain, which relates to intellectual work, develops only after age 7. Until then the active brain is the right brain, which relates to emotion and movement. Undeveloped right brain cells are later destroyed by the body when children turn 11. At Taiwan we were told Joseph Chilton Pearce researched different education systems and found only Waldorf education relate to this. His grandchild is now in a Waldorf School. In Waldorf education the development of the right brain is supported through artistic work and creative play. Intellectual work is not introduced before change of teeth.

It was really encouraging to meet other colleagues from 9 other Asian countries. Nania is the first of currently two Waldorf kindergartens in Malaysia. This year, 5 Malaysian friends joined the Melbourne Steiner Education seminar for 2 years training. I look forward to their return and further development of Waldorf education in

Junko

At Nania(8)

Today I am going to talk about kindergarten and home. The children spend most of their time at home and at kindergarten. Nania is their second home. It is set up like a home. There is a kitchen, laundry with ironing board and baby (dolls) corner. The children are class brothers and sisters. Teachers are class mothers. Both homes are important to the children. It goes without saying it is important how the two places relate to each other. The more they communicate and work in accord with each other the more the children will gain from their education at the kindergarten and at home.

At Nania, the children learn to manage things themselves. They are expected to change by themselves, fold their clothes and keep them in their bags, set tables, wash their dishes after meals, hang the laundry, fold the napkins. Being full of will children are very happy to do their own things by themselves as well as help the teachers. They need guidance and instruction to begin with but soon after they want to do things by themselves and feel proud of themselves for that.

I notice many families have live in housemaids. For some their main responsibility is to take care of the children. I have some concern about how the maids play their role as care givers. I notice they tend to offer the children too much help, for example changing clothes for them, feeding them, carrying their bags, etc. I suppose partly to demonstrate their care and work to the parents. What does this situation, where the child is expected to do everything by him/herself in one place and there is a maid or a parent doing everything for him/her at another, teaches the child.

It mainly creates confusion. At home, the child learns care is demonstrated by the care giver (mummy or kakak) doing things for them. It can lead to the misconstruction when things are not done for them they feel uncared for. Coming to kindergarten, children also expect and demand teachers to do things for them as happens at home. Alas, the children have to unlearn this before they can learn to take care of themselves and feel good about it.

Young children learn through repetition, doing the same thing again and again in a consistent way. We are most comfortable when we know what to expect. Young children cannot know what to expect unless there is a regular pattern. Keeping a consistent daily, weekly and yearly rhythm is the foundation of a learning environment. Learning cannot take place if children are uncomfortable and unsettled. Repetition, e.g. singing the same song, within a regular rhythm, e.g. daily ringtime, allows the child to pick up the song quickly. The same applies for attitudes and behavior. When we change the way we do things often, young children tend to become lost, confused and loose interest in what they are suppose to do. They cannot focus.

The start of the day establishes the keynote for the rest of the day. When the child wakes up and when he/she arrives at the kindergarten are important factors to the rest of his/her day. Adults might not feel so lost when we are not in time for work or appointments but small children are. When late, at Nania, the child feels out of place and is hesitant to join in on-going group activity. During the recent Lantern festival, parents may have noticed that late children were hesitant to join the presentation circle. To give him/her a good start get the child to bed and up regularly on time.

It is good that kindergarten and home communicate and work together to remove inconsistencies and contradictions between what is expected of the child in kindergarten and at home. Also to include what is practiced in one is also part of the child’s life in the other. At Nania we say grace before and after each meal. If interested, I am sure the children will be happy to show you what to do together.

Junko

At Nania(9)

For this issue we share an article written for a magazine published by the support organization Friends of Steiner Education in Germany.

Cultivating a sense of individuality and belonging
- at home amongst the unfamiliar

Nania, named from the “Narnia” stories by C.S Lewis, started as a home based kindergarten in 1997. Like ‘Narnia’, Junko wanted it to be a place where children would like to visit and return again and again. Strengthen by a returning overseas trained staff, we moved to our current address in 2002 and expanded to 2 classes, one for Japanese and another for English speaking children. Our endeavour to develop a quality preschool programme was realised with a new staff team end of 2004. As pioneer initiative in the country, we suffer the absence of preceding models. On the other hand, there was freedom to innovate without ‘traditional’ cumbrances.
Individuals today are challenged to discern their own values without prejudice to others in an environment where traditional norms juxtapose with new age experimentation and beliefs. Where it may seem there is no ‘correct’ behaviour or moral code that does not offend some persuasion/organised religion or seen as encroaching the right of free expression. This may well be the natural breeding ground for ethical individualism. What role can education play?
On reflection, the multi ethnic, racial, nationality and cultural setting under which Nania operates challenges as well as showed us what could be possible at the preschool level. The enrolment of local and international children at Nania, mirrors the human movement and cosmopolitan society of the global market economy we belong in.
What is universal for a class of Chinese, Indians, Eurasians, Germans and Japanese? What is fitting and relevant for local as well as foreign nationals? Many of the expatriate children do not stay long. How and What can be offered to those that come and go to feel at home in the short time they are here amongst the new and unfamiliar? These questions lead us to the multi cultural curriculum we have at Nania. It is a mix of something personal, something common, something familiar and something new. Besides academic development, our experience at Nania affirms education needs to also offer a social cultural environment that allows the development of the ability to interact and establish relationships over national boundaries, ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
At Nania, our class session, starting from 9.00am to 2.30pm, is longer than usual from most kindergartens, which ends at 12 noon. The classes eat morning snack and lunch together. The children also have outside play together. It is always fascinating to watch how different languages pose little impediment to making friends between children.
The children take to the kindergarten as their second home. That is also how we want it to be. They participate in many housekeeping tasks throughout the day, clearing up their classrooms, setting tables for snack and lunch, clearing up and washing their own cups and plates, hanging out the laundry and more. Parents often remark their children show more interest in house chores since coming to Nania. Some say their children become more lively and ‘harder’ to manage. Not surprisingly, the highly interactive experience at Nania cultivates confidence as well as unfolds the inquisitive side of the child’s personality, making her/him more spirited and possibly rebellious towards a more restrictive management at home. Many Malaysian children today, well attended to by housemaids, are prevented and cautioned from doing many things in case they may cause a mess or hurt themselves.
Many children who have left keep in contact and visit. They recall fond memories of making and decorating their birthday cake and the festivals at Nania. Festivals are a big part of the education cultural life at Nania. We celebrate 15 events over the year. 6 are celebrated as festivals with parents and siblings. The humid tropical weather in Malaysia, alternating almost daily between hot wet and hot dry, can beat like an unchanging monotony. Festivals are critical to cultivating different moods and establishing a seasonal rhythm for the year.
We include festivals from the many different cultures and nationalities living in Malaysia. We do not, however, celebrate the festivals fully in their respective traditional manner, focussing mainly on values akin to the festivals agreeable to all. The children sing festival songs in Chinese, English, Japanese and Malay. We present our puppet shows in English and Japanese.
The most outward festival at Nania is our Sports/Family day. The programme is carried together with a committee of mothers. It is held on a Sunday morning so that busy fathers can also participate. There are singing, dancing and fun games for everyone, young children, older children and adults. Parents’ feedback on the opportunity for all family members to play together, also to meet other families, have been very positive.
Christmas is our end of the year and most inward festival. Most children at Nania are not Christians. We maintain the festival theme, to light the light within our hearts without touching on any Christian religious aspects. We present a puppet show about a little girl, who when offered a wish for herself wished it for someone else in need. It compliments the central festival ceremony of lighting a candle and making a wish for some one else instead of only for one’s self. At the last festival one boy expressed, ‘I wish St. Nicholas to bring presents to the children in Iraq before bringing it to me.’ One girl expressed, ‘I want St. Nicholas to take our garden vegetables to the hungry children in Africa.’
Malaysia sandwiched between predominantly Buddhist Thailand (North); Muslim Indonesia (South); Catholic Philippines (East); Hindu India (West); whose political administration is British by colonial tradition; whose major trading partner is Capitalist USA and faces an emerging powerful Communist China in the region, has assimilated a myriad of influences through history yet managed to retain a unique identity of its own amidst the international influences that continues to-date. Over the generations of living, working, fighting as well as intermarriage, ethnic traditions remain separate and distinct. Unlike the modern migrant melting pot society of the USA, majority of Malaysians opt to retain their respective ethnicity but have also learnt to adapt and adopt modern day norms to their day to day life as well as cultural practices. Malaysia as such is home to a diversity of cultural traditions including space for interaction across traditions and innovation of new cultural norms. This spirit body has offered invaluable guidance to the curriculum we have at Nania to date.
The children harvest bananas, cikus and rambutans from the garden under the hot tropical sun. Their laughter at the wooden hut, the sand pit, the flower garden and rabbit hutch fills the whole garden with joy. It is their joy that attracts more and more interest in Nania and Waldorf Education in Malaysia. It is that joy in their hearts that provides the foundation to discern their own values without prejudice to others thus the ability to build relations over the ethnic, racial, cultural and national boundaries of this world.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Kung Wai & Junko

At Nania(10)

At Nania, we emphasize the importance of each child’s birthday. We focus the whole morning on the birthday child’s celebration. The birthday child’s mother (sometimes also father) normally joins the celebration. The children start preparing to bake the birthday cake first thing in the morning, from 9.00 am. There will be about 7 or 8 children, i.e. the birthday child, the angel children and friends. They wear aprons around the baking table and begin from cracking eggs to mixing them, sieve flour and mix in butter and sugar. The 5-6 years old do most of the activity by themselves whilst the 3-4 years old do with the help of a teacher and their older classmates.

After preparing the cake, the children set the tables while the cake is baking in the oven. They also collect garden flowers and leaves to decorate the cake. At snack time when everybody is gathered in the dining hall, the cake is taken from the oven for the birthday child to decorate with icing sugar and bananas. We then light candles on the cake and sing a birthday song in English and Chinese. The birthday child will bring some cake back home for family and siblings who cannot attend.

After snack the children gather in a circle in the classroom for a birthday story. The birthday child and angel children enter the classroom wearing crowns accompanied by the sound of a Lyre. The teacher tells the child’s story one year at a time as she lights a candle for each year. The story is prepared from the parents’ input.

The child’s story is told with an introduction of his/her journey from the spiritual to an earthly world. The spirit child travels through the cosmos with a guardian angel. Arriving at a big door, the spirit child peeps through a tiny hole in the door. He/she sees many things on Earth and finds his/her parents. The child asks, “Can you be my father and my mother?” They answer, “Of course, please come down now”. As the spirit child prepares to descend, the guardian angel tells him/her he will keep his/her heaven clothes until he/she comes back through this door again. The door then opens and the child is born. Although the child cannot see his/her guardian angel anymore he is always around protecting him/her.

The story coveys the picture humans as soul entities travel the spiritual world seeking a suitable physical body to be born on Earth. In asking, “Can you be my Father and Mother?” the spirit child chooses his/her parents. The child’s choice of parents’ scenario implies an understanding of a right set of parents, underlining a special relationship specific to the child’s life task or destiny to be fulfilled in his/her life on Earth. That a child comes through a parent to live his/her own destiny is different to the picture the child comes from the parent without an agenda.

Thinking children comes from them, parents sometimes treat children as property to be protected, trained and managed. At Nania, we work with the picture each child has his/her own life task and destiny. That development education means recognising and respecting children’s individuality and encouraging them to grow through their own difficulties. When we overcoming challenges through our own effort, the fruit of learning is greater.

Besides a collection of class drawings, the birthday child receives a gnome and gnome’s bag present with seed, shell, crystal and stones. They represent friends from nature. The birthday celebration at Nania seem to remain in some children’s hearts deeply. Some still talk about their birthday celebration years after their graduation. Each individual life has enormous value. Celebrating each birthday with significance and love affirms meaning to their life.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　Junko