IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED TO HEAR WHY EURYTHMY PLAYS SUCH A BIG ROLE IN THE FIRST 7 YEARS .

ARTICLE ABOUT A BOOK FOR EURYTHMIST. I think you can only get in German

' Eurythmy in the first seven years; an elixir of life in our time- basis from a study of man with practical examples' by Elisabeth Goebel . Verlag Freies Geistesleben 2005.ISBN 3-7725-1868-0 EURO 24.-

It rays out joy ( they relate that to the book not to the Eurythmy), joy in the world of children in their first seven years: joy in the art of movement, eurythmy: joy in educational activity carried by Rudolf Steiner's concept of the human being. ( I know the person who wrote it,. She is very positive and enthusiastic. Anyway I think the article is valid, particular for our kindergarten teachers.)

Sensitive, and in a language with humour, the chapters can be fluently read and in a language which shows poetic insight. She has achieved the eurythmy lesson in the kindergarten, and at the same time showing the background to it that can be gained from observation of the children and the effects of eurythmy...

The content and structure of the book is woven like a tapestry. Practical examples ( verses, stories and exercises, with indications how to carry them out in movement and with musical accompaniment) are artistically woven with the eurythmical task of accompanying the being of the child through the sounds of speech carried by moods and pictures, and to practice skill in bodily movement. The structure of lessons, embedded in the cycle of the seasons, is developed with examples and variations illuminated in method and teaching technique. They are brought to the attention of the eurythmist as stimulation to his/her own creativity. A loving, serious, joyful encouragement is the prevailing tone, awakening a deep trust towards the creative and healing formative forces of eurythmy.Here the arts of eurythmy and of education flow together, deepened through points of view out of anthroposophy.

In this book a path is described leading through all four seasons. The respective education aims are formulated and eurythmically fashioned out of the moods of mature, the various human activities, the elemental beings and the experience of the human inner and outer worlds. The realms, for example,of the seven life -processes, of the ether-body and its meaning for the work with children are carefully described, through lessons for spring.In the light summer stories there lives the refreshing and nourishing forces of the sounds of speech, which can be equally experienced by the children and the eurythmists and most stimulating through their teaming imagination. The stimulation of the senses( Steiner's teaching of the 12 senses) is awoken in the example for the autumn. Further lessons for autumn , Advent and winter deepen the inner world of experiences of the incarnating personality ( the 'I” of the child).

1. Illumined through the stages of development expressed in walking, speaking and thinking. Here moral forces are fostered, which as pictures or in the rhythmical breathing of movement can have their strengthening effect throughout puberty right on till adulthood. It becomes clear what support for the individual path in life can be given through the short eurhythmy lessons in early childhood..........

Distributed Learning Environment

I just went to MY SPACE . Tried to get an address up. What a pitty that it took so long. I grew impatient and cut it short.
Lots of Blonds on there!
I only found one interesting guy who looked and sounded a bit more educated then the usual crowd in MY SPACE. He was a Real Estate with the name ADAM. Anyone seen him too? He is at the moment online so may be you have more luck with sending him a short message??!!!

Have a restfullllll night my dear friends.

Out of an Article about Waldorf Education.....by Truus Geraets USA

Further more I had the opportunity to witness a very impressive work with offenders in a youth prison in north California. In this prison each young person had their own cell, locked at night. During the day they attended school in the same building. In each classroom I saw not only a teacher but also a warder who was able to remove the individual from the classroom with the slightest challenge.

The director of the prison truly wished to help the young people to a better life. The greatest initial problem for the young person was the whole school business. As presented in most state schools, it had become totally unbearable. After the director had heard of Waldorf education and had sent some teachers to the Waldorf teacher-training, the situation had begun to change. The young people began to develop an interest in school. When in addition an experienced Waldorf teacher joined, the hated school atmosphere slowely changed into a place of creative teaching. I myself could perceive how the young people worked keenly and enthusiastically on their art -projects. They listened with great interest to the description of a certain period in history because it was related in such a.lively manner. They even used their free time to practise recorder playing because they wanted to play a duet by Mozart for their parents. Otherwise regarded as hopless, they showed a great artistic ability. Regaining their self-esteam in this realm, the will grew to succeed in all the school subjects.

Several young people begged the judge to extend their sentences. They knew how better it would be to remain in the school instead of falling back into the street life.

Tn their deepest being people are good. If one were only able to help as much as possible in carving out their potential. The personnel of the youth prison possessed a deeper love and seriously attemped to help their charges to a better life. With the help of Waldorf ( Steiner) education and the special emphasis on the artistic faculties, paths opened up to turn the otherwise hopleless situation towards something good.......

From : Newsletter from the Section for the Arts of Eurythmy, Speech and Music.

The Creative Learning Community has social interaction as its foundation. Through conversation learning
is stimulated. In order to learn creatively the child needs to be inwardly
activated. The teacher in the classroom needs to provide the right
environment or zone of proximal development, which means to set a goal which
the learner must strive for, but it is not unreachable. The more interactively and
creatively the conversation develops, the more perspectives the
student reaches and broadening his or her knowledge. These social
interactions or collaborative learnings need to come to an agreement.
Vygotsky called it "Distributed Learning Environment". We can summarize
it into three points. */
/**/
/*!. Student*/
/*2Learning resources*/
/*3. Learning environment*/
/*Firstly, we need to find the right environment in which the student can
learn.*/
/*Secondly, we need to find Inspiration, the aid for learning ,the
source of all learning*/
/*Thirdly, we have to find the cognitive tools which are the technical
facilities. */
/**/
/*We are also urged to be flexible in viewing the child in different
learning styles . Here we encounter the Theories of Bruner who claimed that we are different learners in multifaceted
environments. The teacher is placed in an important role within the
social relationships. He has the greatest impact on the learner,
as John Hattie says . The affirmation the teacher gives the student is
significant for the social interaction and the learning outcomes. That
means the teacher needs to have an engaging relationship with the group of
children he is teaching.*/

/*To work in a good team, three basic conditions need to be established : */
/*1. The student himself in so far as where he is placed or belongs .
A feeling o belonging gives him/her security. The child must feel equal in the group so eye
contact is important within the whole group.*/
/*2.As a teacher it is important to study the body language from each
individual, as it tells us a lot of messages that the words may not. So the soul mood affects the whole team and their
outcome . */
/*3.Everybody should feel a sense of place , belonging and comfort.*/

/**/

/*The next step is to build up effective time. Time is precious so
there for everyone should be aware not to waste time but treasure it and
work effectively. Each individual can rise to the occasion in the
special time and unfold their hidden gifts of ideas .In order to do
this, trust is required which is easily reached in actual listening to
the person. Real listening towards a human being is essetnial to build up trust.*/

/*The consequences of a group working effectively together are extrodinary. The saying goes: "ordinary people working together effectively achieving extraodinary things".*/

/*This creative learning community produces young creative people which are very effective in their learning abilities. The provision of the resources and the supervion of the affirmation, is what we call a costructivst enviroment.*/

*/My own experience of Learning when I was young.

Being my own constructivist, bringing understanding and knowledge into
me and around me, how did it happen ?
… Yes I really have to get away from
the screen, in tune with myself, into my own imagination. When did real
knowledge come like lightening into me and changed my whole being for
ever? When was knowledge the first time an experience ? When did it
overgrow all my special joys in life like Christmas and Birhtdays, and
presents and holidays?
When I was 12 years old, it happened every week when I saw her. I was
afraid but curious and excited. I was in awe of her. I never practiced
enough, but it didn't matter . She always came too late to the lesson.
Sometimes I had to wait for 1/2 hour but she also went mostly overtime
with me. When I was sitting in her grand studio with the 3 grannies (
pianos) in front of me I got all shy. When Hayat Atta Ogilvie was with
me she told me all those secrets. Secrets I made visible though my play,
my being.

Where do the tones come from?

How do the tones go through me?
How do I let them go, release them?

She showed me how to make my body, the way I sit, my arms and my fingers receptive

to make the tone alive ,
how to release it again. And then of course it would be different if I
played Bach or Mozart , different again if I played Beethoven or Chopin.
With Bach I use more the bones of my hand, with Chopin or a Debussy more
the flesh of my fingers. It was absolutely magic. As soon as I finished
with the lesson, I ran down the stairs, out the door and down the hill
where my mother would pick me up. I couldn't explain to her what
happened, I was too overwhelmed by it, it was tooooo big for me anyway
to explain with words in and out of my little head what just happened to me.
But I could do it if I was confident.
(It almost happened every week like that,
new secrets, new worlds, more to learn , wow....)
When I practiced the following day, all the magic was gone. I was quite
desperate and felt lonely. Over time my inner imagination seemed to grow
again and I imagined her sitting next to me, yes there she was and she
led me into her secrets again and then I new how to play again. Bach was
my favourite. Sometimes I established such levity through the play in
my body that I didn’t seem to sit on the chair anymore. Even today telling about my
time with Hayat Atta Ogilvie gives me goose bumps . That
experience, and today I can transfer it into my daily life.We are all
coming from somewhere invisible, like the tone , that experience I had
will never leave me and no one can take it from me, yes , I have even
the possibility to share this with other people and make the invisible
world vocal. I can show it through my own being. And hopefully can
release the tones gracefully again.

It was and still is a life changing experience. At the beginning of the
life of every human being wouldn't that kind of experience be vital even
if it is unconscious? Would it not be important to bring this
threefoldness into the world? [Not only at church, well in actual fact, it
would be really good to give the priests a crash course on how to bless
people properly, so it has substance and make them speak the Lords
prayer in such a way that one can actually connect with it inwardly ,
may be Annika can help with that. Remember, when we taught the ministers
from the Uniting Church and I got such a shock because I imagined them
much better as soccer players then as ministers. Well anyway, may be
everyone has to find his own church in himself?]

When I sit in front of the computer, I am enjoying very much watching my
fingers dancing almost elegantly on the keyboard.(You know what I mean)
It would be great if my shoulders would be loose and relaxed and ......I
think I have to imagine my Piano teacher again, may be she would be of
help??
Anyway, as I said, in front of the computer...... I feel most of the times
like my head swells up to a mighty balooooon. The rest of the body is
really not at all that important. Through the computer we get
INFORMATION. The rhythmical system goes arhythmical and the limbs get
very lazy and unmotivated.( Explain that later)
Besides that I bought already 2 different glasses since the beginning of
this Computer course (February), why put little children in front of
this? The more they sit in front of televisions and computers the more
they get robbed of their inner pictures- their imagination( quote Rosemary).

It is like this: A little plant, why bring it unprotected through storms
and rains and thunders. It will grow crooked and will look pretty
unhealthy at old age even disabled may be? So why not give it more
protection from the wise old trees? So it can grow beautifully upright?
Later on it will manage to withstand any storm….
/*

Here something else: Why not think of Education and Healing in the following way:

Teachers in the future will may be become more and more the Healers

Medical doctors will treat less and less and become a teacher of health.

Doctors use teaching to prevent sickness.

Teachers use Education to heal.

Once in olden times

There lived in the souls of the initiates

Powerfully the thought

that by nature

Every person is ill.

And education was seen

As a healing process

Which brought to the child,

As it matured

Health for becoming a true human being.

Meditation by Rudolf Steiner.

I think it would be a great idea to develop the Curriculum of any School in to a healing force.

And coming back to the threefoldness in my story which could be integrated into the

”Creative Learning Community”, which is a great process in it self,

1Understanding

2Meaningfullness

3Managing it

or in different words:

1 Understanding ourselfs and the world

2Meaningfull what we understand

meaningfull what the child is learning

3Like to do it, confident to do it.

Lets hear the the three steps out of the Bible to this theme:

I am the Truth

I am with you

I am guiding you towards freedom.

Constructivism

Jean Piaget (1896-1980)

Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel (Switzerland) on August 9, 1896. He died in Geneva on September 16, 1980. He was the oldest child of Arthur Piaget, professor of medieval literature at the University, and of Rebecca Jackson. At age 11, while he was a pupil at Neuchâtel Latin high school, he wrote a short notice on an albino sparrow. This short paper is generally considered as the start of a brilliant scientific career made of over sixty books and several hundred articles.

His interest for mollusks was developed during his late adolescence to the point that he became a well-known malacologist by finishing school. He published many papers in the field that remained of interest for him all along his life.

After high school graduation, he studied natural sciences at the University of Neuchâtel where he obtained a Ph.D. During this period, he published two philosophical essays which he considered as "adolescence work" but were important for the general orientation of his thinking.

After a semester spent at the University of Zürich where he developed an interest for psychoanalysis, he left Switzerland for France. He spent one year working at the Ecole de la rue de la Grange-aux-Belles a boys' institution created by Alfred Binet and then directed by De Simon who had developed with Binet a test for the measurement of intelligence. There, he standardized Burt's test of intelligence and did his first experimental studies of the growing mind.

In 1921, he became director of studies at the J.-J. Rousseau Institute in Geneva at the request of Sir Ed. Claparède and P. Bovet.

In 1923, he and Valentine Châtenay were married. The couple had three children, Jacqueline, Lucienne and Laurent whose intellectual development from infancy to language was studied by Piaget.

Successively or simultaneously, Piaget occupied several chairs: psychology, sociology and history of science at Neuchâtel from 1925 to 1929; history of scientific thinking at Geneva from 1929 to 1939; the International Bureau of Education from 1929 to 1967; psychology and sociology at Lausanne from 1938 to 1951; sociology at Geneva from 1939 to 1952, then genetic and experimental psychology from 1940 to 1971. He was, reportedly, the only Swiss to be invited at the Sorbonne from 1952 to 1963. In 1955, he created and directed until his death the International Center for Genetic Epistemology.

His researches in developmental psychology and genetic epistemology had one unique goal: how does knowledge grow? His answer is that the growth of knowledge is a progressive construction of logically embedded structures superseding one another by a process of inclusion of lower less powerful logical means into higher and more powerful ones up to adulthood. Therefore, children's logic and modes of thinking are initially entirely different from those of adults.

Piaget's oeuvre is known all over the world and is still an inspiration in fields like psychology, sociology, education, epistemology, economics and law as witnessed in the annual catalogues of the Jean Piaget Archives. He was awarded numerous prizes and honorary degrees all over the world.

STAGES OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT

Piaget may be best known for his stages of cognitive development. Piaget discovered that children think and reason differently at different periods in their lives. He believed that everyone passed through an invariant sequence of four qualitatively distinct stages. Invariant means that a person cannot skip stages or reorder them. Although every normal child passes through the stages in exactly the same order, there is some variability in the ages at which children attain each stage. The four stages are: sensorimotor - birth to 2 years; preoperational - 2 years to 7 years; concrete operational - 7 years to 11 years; and formal operational (abstract thinking) - 11 years and up. Each stage has major cognitive tasks which must be accomplished. In the sensorimotor stage, the mental structures are mainly concerned with the mastery of concrete objects. The mastery of symbols takes place in the preoperational stage. In the concrete stage, children learn mastery of classes, relations, and numbers and how to reason. The last stage deals with the mastery of thought (Evans, 1973).

HOW CHILDREN LEARN

...we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child. (Dr. Maria Montessori)

JEAN PIAGET'S

THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT

Intelligence

When considering intelligence, Piaget focuses on the mental processes thatoccur, rather than on the actual measure of the intellect. He uses four areasto define intelligence. These areas are: a biological approach to looking at intelligence, the succession of the stages, knowledge, and intellectualcompetence.

Piaget's biological approach, or biological adaption, focuses on thephysical and mental aspects of our bodies. This includes our reflexes whichoccur when certain stimuli trigger an instinctive response. He also discusseshow we adapt to certain situations using assimilation and accomodation. Assimilation occurs when new information is introduced to a person. The personbegins to integrate the new information into existing files, or "schema". Accomodation occurs when the person reorganizes schema to accomodatethemselves with the environment.

The succession of stages involves the movement through four stages thatPiaget has set and defined. Children must move through these stages duringtheir childhood. These include Sensorimotor, Preoperational, Concreteoperational, and Formal operational. Stage movement is an important factor ofPiaget's definition of intelligence, because Piaget states there are a specificset of criteria that must be met and mastered at each stage. In order to movefrom the first stage to the next, the child must master that specific set ofcriteria.

To define Intellectual Competence, Piaget focuses on the highest level offunctioning that can occur at a specific stage. Although Piaget has approximateages assigned to stages, a child's competence is only measured by what stagethey are in, not by age. If the child can only perform tasks that are at thepreoperational stage, that is the highest level the child is at regardless ofage.

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE

The sensorimotor stage is the first of the four stages Piaget uses to definecognitive development. Piaget designated the first two years of an infants lifeas the sensorimotor stage.

During this period, infants are busy discovering relationships betweentheir bodies and the environment. Researchers have discovered that infants haverelatively well developed sensory abilities. The child relies on seeing,touching, sucking, feeling, and using their senses to learn things aboutthemselves and the environment. Piaget calls this the sensorimotor stagebecause the early manifestations of intelligence appear from sensory perceptionsand motor activities.

Through countless informal experiments, infants develop the concept ofseperate selves, that is, the infant realizes that the external world is not anextension of themselves.

Infants realize that an object can be moved by a hand (concept ofcausality), and develop notions of displacement and events. An importantdiscovery during the latter part of the sensorimotor stage is the concept of "objectpermanence".

Object permanence is the awareness that an object continues to existeven when it is not in view. In young infants, when a toy is covered by a pieceof paper, the infant immediately stops and appears to lose interest in the toy(see figure above).This child has not yet mastered the concept of objectpermanence. In older infants, when a toy is covered the child will activelysearch for the object, realizing that the object continues to exist.

After a child has mastered the concept of object permanence, the emergenceof "directed groping" begins to take place. With directedgroping, the child begins to perform motor experiments in order to see what willhappen. During directed groping, a child will vary his movements to observe howthe results will differ. The child learns to use new means to achieve an end. The child discovers he can pull objects toward himself with the aid of a stickor string, or tilt objects to get them through the bars of his playpen.

Concrete Operational Stage

The concrete operational stage is the third stage in Piaget's theory. Thisstage typically occurs between the ages of 7 and 12.

During this stage, the child begins to reason logically, and organizethoughts coherently. However, they can only think about acutal physicalobjects, they cannot handle abstract reasoning.

This stage is also characterized by a loss of egocentric thinking.

During this stage, the child has the ability to master most types of conservationexperiments, and begins to understand reversibility. The concreteoperational stage is also characterized by the child's ability to coordinatetwo dimensions of an object simultaneously, arrange structures in sequence, andtranspose differences between items in a series

THE FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE

The formal operational stage is the fourth and final stage in Piaget'stheory. It begins at approximately 11 to 12 years of age, and continuesthroughout adulthood, although Piaget does point out that some people may neverreach this stage of cognitive development.

The formal operational stage is characterized by the ability to formulatehypotheses and systematically test them to arrive at an answer to a problem.

The individual in the formal stage is also able to think abstractly and tounderstand the form or structure of a mathematical problem.

Another characteristic of the individual is their ability to reason contraryto fact. That is, if they are given a statement and asked to use it as thebasis of an argument they are capable of accomplishing the task. For example,they can deal with the statement "what would happen if snow were black".

Stage Movement

According to Piaget, there are four interrelated factors that allow movementfrom stage to stage. These factors include maturation, experience, socialinteraction, and equilibration. Maturation is the physical andpsychological growth that occurs in the child at a specific stage. Experienceis when the child thinks and interacts with real or concrete objects in theexternal environment. Social interaction involves the child socializingwith others, especially chilren. The last factor of stage movement is equilibration,this occurs when the child brings together maturation, experience, and socialinteraction in order to build mental schema. Equilibration is considered to bethe tendency for children to seek cognitive coherence and stability. They aremotivated in this drive for equilibration by disequilibrium or aperceived discrepancy between an existing scheme and something new.

Piagets Conservation Experiments

Conservation is the realization that quantity or amount does not changewhen nothing has been added or taken away from an object or a collection ofobjects, despite changes in form or spatial arrangement (Pulaski, 1980).

Jean Piaget used the idea of conservation in a set of experimentsgeared at studying children's ability to think and reason. Piaget realized thatmaturing children progressively master different types of conservation as theyreason about their world. The cow figure below represents conservation of area.When a child realizes that cows eat the same amount of grass regardless of thespatial location of the grass , they can conserve area.

According to piaget, a student's ability to solve conservation problemsdepends on an understanding of three basic aspects of reasoning: identity,compensation, and reversability.

With mastery of identity: The student realizes that materialremains the same if nothing is added to or subtracted from the material.

With mastery of compensation: The student realizes that changesin one dimension can be offset by changes in another.

With mastery of reversibility: The student realizes that achange may be canceled out by mentally reversing the steps and returning to theorigin.

Cognitive Development