Back to School: 10 Gentle Tips for a Waldorf-Inspired Transition August 04 2025

The final weeks of summer offer a precious opportunity to prepare for the new school year with intention and care. In Waldorf education, transitions are honored with rhythm, presence, and a deep respect for the child’s inner world. Rather than rushing back into structure, we can gently guide our children toward the school rhythm with warmth and confidence.

This quick guide offers simple, nurturing ways to ease your family into the school year—focusing on connection, daily rhythms, and emotional support. Whether it’s lighting a candle at breakfast, organizing school supplies together, or simply slowing down, these small gestures can make a big difference.

Read on for 10 practical and heart-centered tips to help your child feel ready, secure, and even excited to begin again.

Back to School the Waldorf Way August 01 2025

The transition from summer to school can stir many emotions—eagerness, uncertainty, and everything in between. For families grounded in Waldorf education, this shift is approached not with pressure or urgency, but with rhythm, presence, and deep respect for the unfolding child. The goal isn’t to jump back into academics, but to gently guide the child into a new season of growth, connection, and discovery.

July - Author of the Month July 07 2025

July is the month we celebrate Eric Müller, author of two adventure-fantasy novels for youngsters: The Invisible Boat and The Invisible Boat and the Molten Dragon. 

Book Review: Geron and Virtus- A Fateful Encounter of Two Youths June 23 2025

Geron and Virtus invites us to consider what bravery really looks like. It's not always found in battle—it's often found in the quiet courage to do what is right, even when it breaks with tradition. 

 

Five Easy Ways to Support Summer Reading June 17 2025

Five Easy Ways to Support the Transport to Wonders through Good Stories for Youngsters

Waldorf Summer Reading June 16 2025

Five Easy Ways to Support the Transport to Wonders through Good Stories for Youngsters (Summer Reading:-)

June - Author of the Month June 01 2025

We all love stories. Whether in a book or a re-telling of an event, or in a film or play; stories teach and inspire and make life easier to understand. A good story can make us laugh or feel compassion or even anger or anxiety. A good storyteller knows how to choose a story that will delight listeners by delivering it with the right emphasis, to make it maximally engaging. Jakob Streit was one of these truly great storytellers.

The Joy (and Benefits) of Summer Reading! May 30 2025

In Waldorf education, we often emphasize the importance of rhythm and reverence, of stories that awaken the inner life and help children find their place in the world. Reading—whether curled up with a loved one, listening with rapt attention, or delighting in decoding a word alone—is more than literacy instruction. It is soul nourishment.

MAY - Author of the Month May 12 2025

Manfred von Makensen was a creative experimenter in life, dedicated to Waldorf education and, more specifically, the sciences in Waldorf schools.

Celebrating May Day: A Joyful Welcome to Summer May 01 2025

May Day, celebrated on the first of May, is a time-honored tradition in many communities across the Northern Hemisphere. It marks the transition from spring to summer and is steeped in history and cultural symbolism. Known as Beltane in Celtic traditions and celebrated in ancient Rome in honor of the goddess Flora, May Day is a festival of life, renewal, and the blossoming of the Earth.

APRIL - Author of the Month April 11 2025

Van James is a rare combination of a remarkable, gifted artist and an effective, beloved teacher. Through his lifetime, he has inspired youngsters and colleagues alike to incorporate visual arts into their lives by practicing and mastering skills for self-expression and beauty.

MARCH - Author of the Month March 02 2025

This Month’s featured author for the month of March is Elizabeth Auer. This remarkable teacher and artist has published three books with Waldorf Publications. 

Creative Pathways, Elizabeth’s first book, is rich with information about the stimulation in brain development that comes from creating art. Many projects are described in the book with information about age-appropriateness. The book is generously illustrated to make clear what the offerings are asking of those doing the projects with the young. The developmental benefits are abundant in this beautiful and intelligent offering.

February is Author Dick Bruin Month at Waldorf Publications! February 06 2025

20% Discount on all books by Dick Bruin

PLUS, free videos of lessons in Painting and Form Drawing by Dick Bruin

www.youtube.com@waldorfpaintingDickBruin

Hone your Artistic Sensibilities! Thank goodness for Dick Bruin!

The Science Says It All in Waldorf Education! December 13 2024

Waldorf Publications is proud to announce two new books by author Michael Holdrege. These books cover the life science curriculum in a Waldorf High School. The ninth and tenth grade life science curriculum is described in From Mechanism to Organism, Enlivening the Study of the Human Organism. The eleventh and twelfth grade life science curriculum is explained in Holdrege’s second book, Embryology, Genetics, and Ecology, Windows into the Dynamics Nature of Living Organisms.

Waldorf Learning Support: Books from Audrey McAllen, Joep Eikenboom NOW AVAILABLE! October 22 2024

For decades through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, in England, Audrey McAllen studied the indications given by Rudolf Steiner about child development, sleep, breathing, children’s drawings, and the circulation of the blood, the system of our nerves, temperaments, and much more. She worked these into specific exercises and specific class exercises to give strength to the therapeutic work made possible by a Waldorf class and classroom.

Ingun Schneider worked with Audrey McAllen for fifteen year to merge her own in depth experiences in the classroom with the knowledge of Audrey McAllen. Ingun has founded Waldorf Learning Support (WLS) to help teachers comprehend the power of accomplishing exercises with a whole class that helps all children to master specific capacities to aid in a more complete incarnation and a harmonious blending of therapeutic activities into a whole class experience.

The tendency in the contemporary culture is to isolate children who are struggling with ordinary learning in a classroom setting. While exercises of support for individuals such as these children is also a possibility, work with a whole class to utilize the social intentions of the ideals behind the building of a class community and the cultivation of care, one for another, possible in that class community. What is excellent support for a struggling child become good for the whole class of children.

Waldorf is very excited to be selected by WLS to publish and distribute the books that form the body of the Extra Lesson work, developed over the last fifty years. With help from Steiner Books, Waldorf Publications now can off these books for supporting teachers in remedial care as Waldorf Learning Support develops an all new edition of The Extra Lesson:

This Extra Lesson book is the original edition by Audrey McAllen and will be replaced soon with a new, expanded edition including Ingun Schneider’s edits and additions out of the long-time work done developing ideas. This edition is the last of the original stock remaining.

These books offer a treasure trove of ideas for balancing and supporting difficulties in learning children have. Thoughtful, experientially-based practices are all through these valuable manuscripts with explanations about why as well as how. Ingun is working to revise the books to include her own research and exercises based on her work with Audrey McAllen.

Deeper Look - Autumn-Nature Activities for Children October 08 2024

"Autumn Nature Activities for Children" is a comprehensive guide filled with creative and engaging nature-based projects designed to connect children with the natural world.

What is America? July 03 2024

It is quite a moment in American history, isn’t it?  The grand experiment of Democracy is being tested again!

New Release - Parzival: A Forerunner of the Modern Human Being June 25 2024

Parzival
Forerunner of the Modern Human Being

The archetypal legend of the famous, bungling hero, Parzival, holds lessons for all human beings. We start out as ignorant ingenues, without a clue about the great world; stumbling after what we believe we want and wish to be, hurting others, making wrong assumptions, following rules others have laid out instead of finding for ourselves what it is that we are called to do.

Right Speaking and Right Listening in Waldorf School Communities by Gary Lamb June 05 2024

Spiritual Beings live and are active in human speech, and when one formulates words, elemental beings press into them. On the wings of words spiritual beings fly through the space where human beings are conversing with one another. This is why it is so important that we . . . do not simply let uncontrolled feelings get the better of us when we speak.
- Rudolf Steiner, 12/28/1914

This brief commentary is based on several annotations and quotations...

Book Review - Verses and Poems and Stories to Tell March 10 2024

Dorothy Harrer's Verses and Poems & Stories to Tell is a charming collection that embodies the spirit of childhood wonder and the rich tradition of storytelling. Through a delightful mixture of verses, poems, and fairy tales, Harrer invites readers into a world where the mundane meets the magical.

Now Available - Stories From the American Journey January 23 2024

This book is a collection of beloved stories from an author who has spent four decades teaching. These narratives showcase adventurous and talented individuals whose actions and visions embody the nation's ideals. Spanning the breadth of America, these tales highlight those who stood up for justice, championed free thought, innovated, reshaped communities, revolutionized business, or simply showed kindness and support to others.

The Waldorf Class Play and Reccomended Reading January 11 2024

From grade one through grade twelve, the annual class play is an essential feature of the life of every Waldorf class. The play is often the defining event of the year, the event most clearly remembered and most often referred to, long after much else of what happened is lost to memory.

Light in the Darkness- Winter Solstice in Waldorf Schools December 20 2023

In Waldorf schools, December with its disturbing weeks of the deepest darkness begins with the Winter Garden. The children experience darkness and the return of the light as each individual candle gets lit and the light fills the room with increasing brilliance.  The picture of the light of each of us in community is a perfect one.  Hope and confidence in the light’s return is expressed quite literally.

Many Waldorf schools celebrate St. Nicholas’s Day on December 6^th.  St. Nicholas loves children and his stories are all of rescuing children from danger, unkindness, starvation, and despair.

Welcome to the Tenth Anniversary of BUY NOTHING FRIDAY! November 23 2023

Join us on a brigade of peace and inner stillness as we continue the mood of Thanksgiving and read, play, create, and sing with children, family, and friends and work in the opposite direction of the hectic mayhem of the commercial world.

We will join forces to make a light-filled Friday following the glory of Thanksgiving: nothing crazed, nothing competitive, only peace, quiet and FUN!

Download the Buy Nothing Day Packet