Back to Steiner Schools in Australia Back to Steiner Schools in Australia
The centre is located in Byron Bay, on the northern New South Wales coast, 840 km north of Sydney.
| Offering | Pre-school centre for children 3 to 6 years of age |
| Location | 5 Sunrise Blvd., Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay, NSW 2481 |
| Phone number | (02) 6685 8898 |
| Fax number | (02) 6655 2325 |
| periwinkle5@bigpond.com |
Last updated on 02 August, 2007.
"The greatest divine revelation on Earth is the evolving Human Being"
- Rudolf Steiner
We especially feel this when in the presence of the young child. Indeed to simply watch a child engaged in play is a most wonderful meditation. With the gifts of innocence, empathy and imagination that the child brings to Earth, one can sense the interpenetration of the spiritual and the physical. These gifts truly make for a magic, "alive" world, and have to be worked with, slowly transformed, slowly developed.
We must be careful not to ADULTIFY our children too soon, but rather work with their natural powers of creative fantasy, respecting the importance of this for their future in today's technological age. The path of life for an adult without fantasy, without imagination, without artistry, tends to be narrow and restricted, lacking in the ability to initiate and create, to transcend and transform, to relate to and truly love his/hew fellow human beings.
"Periwinkle" has been established to meet the needs of the little ones in our community. Its approach has its roots in the understanding of the nature of the developing child, as indicated by the teaching of Rudolf Steiner, Austrian born philosopher, scientist, educator.
The young child lives in a work of "doing", of will activity. He/she needs plenty of opportunities to engage in rhythmical and domestic activities... cleaning, sweeping, digging, weeding, building, kneading... all the things in fact that a child would see done and wish to imitate in an active household. For this reason "Periwinkle" strives to be as little like school, and as much like home as possible, with learning through imitation seen as a fundamental key to one's work with children at this stage of childhood.
As well as these strengthening will activities, "Periwinkle" offers various artistic experiences, including water-colour painting; beeswax modelling; singing games and rhymes; musical work with pentatonic lyre and percussion; story-telling; puppetry; wool crafts; and a joyous and wondrous experience of the seasons and special occasions through Family festival celebrations.
A healthy balance however between structured group activities and free play is maintained. In keeping with the introductory paragraph of this brochure, "Periwinkles" priority is to create a simple play environment with "little material - much fantasy". This environment includes no formed or finished toys, rather the children are encouraged to make or build their own dolls, boats, animals, gnomes, farms, cubbies, etc, from a selection of natural materials, colourful wools, soft cloths, and simple pieces of furniture.
Alongside this priority of the nurturing of imaginative play, "Periwinkle" respects the sensitive, receptive nature of the young child and thus realises the importance of the teacher striving to create a harmonious atmosphere around him/her of happiness and goodness.
Rudolf Steiner indicated to teachers that the young child is "all sense-organ". The child literally builds into himself not only the objective outer side of things, but also their inner nature and even the moral atmosphere of the environment; for in his openness to the world, he has a much more immediate connection with these qualities than the more intellectual adult.