Our blog shares some of what is unique and wonderful about Madrona School and the worldwide Waldorf education movement. Madrona School is an independent, private school on Bainbridge Island (WA) offering Waldorf education for children ages 18 months - 14 years. We have parent-child classes, play - based preschool, nature - intensive kindergarten, and grade school classes. Our grade school offers arts - infused academics for 1st - 8th grades. We are located a ferry ride away from Seattle, WA in Kitsap County. Find out why Waldorf education is a time-tested alternative educational methodology.
The whole family is very welcome to join us on Saturday, January 11 between 10am and 12pm for our annual school-wide Open House. Come meet teachers and see classrooms. We’ll have information available on next year’s early childhood programs and we are eager to show off work and teachers for grades 1-8 too! Bring a friend or neighbor — this is truly a “more is merrier” morning at school. Hope to see you there!
At Madrona School, ‘Q’ stands for quesadillas…and peppermint tea in enamel mugs, good rain pants and boots, and a healthy dose of fresh air. Everything that makes outdoor kindergarten a pure joy! Children need time outdoors -- time to explore, problem solve, work hard, get dirty, lay quietly watching bugs or clouds, run, yell, chase, climb…. Each day, our kindergarteners do just that and more, at school and in nearby parks and beaches around the island. And, Friday’s class also enjoys an additional day out hiking and exploring on “adventure Fridays”. Experiencing the outdoors is an integral part of our curriculum, and represents a whole and healthy childhood. Rosy cheeks and the muddy boots are wonderful things! In our society at large, today's children spend an average of over seven hours (!) each day engaging with media of some sort, according to one study by the Kaiser Family Foundation -- and this was after data collection three separate years showed steady growth in that time. The National Wildlife Federation offers a list of recent research studies, many of them concluding that children's outdoor time is shrinking, and stands at well under an hour a day. Follow the link here to download their report entitled "Whole Child Report: Developing Mind, Body and Spirit Through Outdoor Play". Sound familiar? It's an excellent read. What a gift we give our youngest students, who can prepare for grade school with a healthy dose of movement and imaginative, nature-rich play. Engaging the whole child is a basic principle of Waldorf education, and one that ideally prepares our children to be resilient, hardy contributors to the world around them, and to find pleasure in the "great outdoors". We believe a Waldorf kindergarten education is beneficial to your children, your family, and to the wider world!
— adapted from our school newsletter
We’ve reached the letter ‘P’ in our 26-part series on what makes a Madrona School education unique, and P is for painting. Art infuses our curriculum, and a basic tenet of Waldorf education confirms artistic expression as elemental to our humanity. Every one of us is an artist, a creative being. In addition to drawing in main lesson and other specialty periods at Madrona, we include watercolor painting as a weekly activity in our early childhood classes, as well as a specialty class throughout the grade school. Our students learn techniques around wet-on-wet painting, applying watercolors to wet paper. This technique demonstrates the fluidity of color and requires time to learn, so the children build on what they know as they move through the grades. And, as with much of our curriculum, the full flowering of painting technique reveals itself in the middle school years. In kindergarten and 1st grade, students learn to work with color, experiencing colors both separately and blended, and they also begin to acquire brush control. As they develop skills, paintings reflect current main lesson blocks, and augment main lesson drawings and essays, becoming more detailed and skilled as they master techniques. We invite you to walk through the school building every so often - the teachers hang art in the halls on a regular basis. It's inspiring!
— adapted from our school newsletter
Madrona School is a non-profit, tax exempt public charity organization incorporated in the State of Washington. Madrona School does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender expression or identity, national and ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or religion in any of its programs, classes or activities.
