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‘The Bosklas’: A Steiner Forest School Kindergarten

‘The Bosklas’: A Steiner Forest School Kindergarten

A conversation with Trees Sirens

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in Kindling: The Journal for Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Care and Education. Many thanks to them for sharing it with us here. Kindling is a remarkable journal, published twice a year. It is always inspiring and full of wonder. Learn more at kindlingjournal.org.

By Amelia Errazuriz

During my training in Holistic Early Years Education, I had the blessing to land at the Steiner School in Bruges, Belgium where I did my placement and stayed volunteering for over a year.

Amongst a group of wonderful teachers was Trees Sirens who runs the Forest Class Kindergarten: a group of 22 children aged 4-7. With my background in farming and passion for outdoor education, I immediately connected with her teaching style and started assisting her classroom regularly where I learned invaluable lessons from this extraordinarily inspiring woman that I wish to share with you to hopefully encourage more outdoor classrooms experiences as I am deeply convinced that this is the future for Early Years Education.

I escape the buzz of the city of Bruges walking into the urban forest on my lunch break. I’ve arranged a meeting with Trees Sirens who runs the ‘Bosklas’, an outdoor kindergarten branch of the local Steiner school. I feel I’m running a bit late so quicken my pace, but as soon as I enter the forest, I immediately give in.

My pace slows down, my breathing gets deeper, and a general sense of calmness arrives in me. I heighten my sense of hearing, expecting the loudness of the children to guide me through the forest towards them, but all is silent. I can hear the birdsongs and the wind rattling the leaves. I wonder if I’m in the wrong place.

But then I spot a sign: bright colored cloths hanging from tree to tree, scattered around in the distance. As I approach them, I realize these giant cocoons are in fact hammocks, each rocking a child, back and fro to the tune of a gentle song during their rest time. Amongst a hedge, I find an open gate inviting me into an enclosed area within the forest.

I cross the threshold, landing into the dreamy landscape of the bosklas where Trees, the class teacher, greats me, as always, with her warm smile. I have arrived.

Enabling environment

We walk quietly down the path to sit by the pond during her lunch break. We talk about her upbringing in a large Flemish family. A strict and busy household where as long as they were home on time, there was always time to play outside. Her eyes light up as she recalls images of playing with her siblings amongst fields of grain, building forts and exploring the neighboring farms.

The feelings of freedom and joy of being in nature is something that stayed with her ever since. She shared how when she later became a teacher, she struggled with the restrictions a classroom imposed on the children. She felt there was never enough room for them to move freely and it was often too busy and loud.

She didn’t feel comfortable limiting children’s creative play by constantly requesting silence or asking them to sit still within closed doors. The children were doing everything right, but the environment was lacking something. So how could she provide an enabling environment to support their development?

During a study day for Steiner educators in Belgium, Helle Heckman was a guest lecturer, invited to talk about outdoor play and movement, sharing her experience of her own setting, Nøkken, in Denmark. Everything Heckman shared deeply resonated in Trees and inspired her to begin introducing elements of the outdoor classroom in her setting.

She started by establishing one outdoor day a week: every Wednesday morning children arrived in full outdoor gear, walked into the forest 1,5 miles away from the school where they spent the whole session.

She could immediately see the benefits of being immersed in a natural environment that is alive, as opposed to an enclosed school building. Not only did it provide the freedom of movement and space she was searching for, but it also created a quieter and calmer atmosphere for the group.

Leaving walls and toys behind, the play welcomed more fantasy and creativity using the natural elements from the forest and the group dynamics shifted. “The play in the forest is never ending! Its dynamic and incredibly rich in fantasy. The children play, play and play!

It is fascinating to see them get into character and reenact experiences, a wonderful way to make sense of the world. Just a few days ago, after the yearly Blood Procession in the city of Bruges, they came up with a blood procession themselves with costumes, flags, fanfare, and all. Incredibly elaborate and accurate. It was delightful!”.

The immediate success of weekly forest days encouraged her to increase the outings, so they started visiting the local city farm every Friday. Another success. It didn’t take long for her to be offered the position to lead an outdoor classroom: 5 days a week, year around, always outside.

No longer viewed as “outings”, the forest would become the classroom. She didn’t doubt it for a second. “It was my dream! And the etheric forces are so strong in nature. It is so good and healthy for the children to be immerse in them”.

She approached the local neighbors, found a privately owned piece of the forest 1,5 miles from school, and settled. She cleared the space, made some benches from tree stumps covered by a tarpaulin as shelter, put up a little shed for storing basic materials, and hung up the hammocks welcoming the dreams of the children into the space. The class was immediately fully booked with 21 children between 4 and 6 years old. Seven years have passed since and the waiting list is still ongoing.

Collective listening

We pause our conversation for a moment to reflect on how her individual dream became a collective reality. A magical feeling arises as we realize we are surrounded by sleeping children and I can’t help wondering what their dreams may become. As we sit in silence, listening, a symphony of birdsongs fills up the space. Her class often does this: sit in silence, in a circle, and listen.

It doesn’t last long as they are soon interrupted by a bird, a squirrel, or raindrops but those short instances are powerful opportunities to engage with the natural world with reverence and respect.  “Experiences don’t have to be extraordinary or even great to create a big impact on a child. Observing a spiderweb can be enough. We don’t point it out to them or attempt to formally educate them about nature. They discover its beauty and experience the lessons by themselves if given the opportunity”.

At one with their environment, the children of this class build a deep connection with the forest, as a collective. With Trees as a model, they innately imitate her carefulness and reverence towards the natural world. She is gently sowing these seeds of love and nourishment in the future generation in a cared environment where they are most likely going to thrive.

The poet and environmental activist Cecilia Vicuna talks about ‘nature as a universe of silence that speaks to the child’. She says that when we learn to be in silence, we create the ability to listen as an opening gesture, where we participate in a conversation.

We receive messages and therefore, as a consequence, we can learn to respond, to serve our perceptions. Recalling the solitude of her childhood in the countryside, Vicuna recalls “I learned to be in silence, which is critical to be able to listen. During long, lonely, and silent days, my listening expanded immensely. I learned to listen to the frogs, to the birds, to the animals, to the Earth, to the wind. I became an expert listener, because through listening I felt the presence, the connectivity, and the warmth of everything that was alive. I felt loved, and I recognized my need to be loved” (Vicuna, 2021).

I like to think that by raising children immerse in nature, we are giving them the opportunity to unconsciously develop the ability to respond to nature, to its demands and cries for help today with love. And I trust that as this dialogue evolves in time, these children will become the adults with creative answers today’s environmental crisis needs.

The power of the circle

Suddenly a gush of wind blows across the pond. I spy a duckling move out of the water and head off to find protection in the rushes. And I wonder where the children in the ‘bosklas’ find the warmth they need in such an open space, often cold and damp. When I think about the challenges of holding an outdoor setting outside throughout the year, the first thing that comes to my mind is the weather that can be relentless in the winter months. Isn’t that the biggest hurdle?

When I ask Trees, she doesn’t hesitate with her answer. “No, no, no! Not at all! When it is very cold, we light a fire. We sit tightly together around it to share our meals and stories. We play games to run and warm our bodies. The children love it. Those cold days are often the coziest of all! Occasionally a child may complain about cold hands or feet but, as I acknowledge it and they realize we are all in it together, they move on. And the challenges of the weather can also become wonderful opportunities to develop resilience and bond with each other.

Just the other day, we had a thunderstorm. One child was quite scared, so I held him tightly on my lap and we watched the storm go pass together, just comforting him in silence. It was beautiful to share the experience, provide the safety he was searching for and witness him overcome the fear by just being there for him”.

So, I realize that the sense of warmth in this classroom stems from within the collective, from sharing their inner warmth as one body. Gathering in circles to sing and play, to eat, to listen to a story, to cook a meal or warm themselves around a fire surrounded by forest, they create a boundary, a safe and protective cloak that carries the group.

Trees explained beautifully how she often uses the eurythmy gesture of the B, the sound of the mother, the protector, in songs and stories, to reinforce this boundary and how she experiences the circle as a powerful, living body of warmth that holds the group together. “Gathering in a circle, often by just sitting or standing together in silence when we arrive to the forest, before we begin our ring time or any other activity, is an instance of inner reflection.

The stillness of that moment alone, when we can look at each other in the eyes, acknowledging one another, is a moment of recognition that we do not stand alone. It is often an instance of deep gratitude and joy to realize that I am part of a collective, that I belong to a community and that feeling fills me with inner warmth”.

I reflect on the heartwarming experience of gathering in a circle. That sense of belonging to something greater, of mutual reciprocity that arises from the sense of community and the ability to share that inner warmth as we become a collective unit and how this feeling is amplified when we add a physical fire in the center.

Trees sets bonfires to light lanterns and roast chestnuts in Autumn and melt beeswax for candle making in the dark days of Winter, where the fire brings magic into the stories, and dries wet gloves after playing in the snow. As the days grow longer and temperatures rise, they swap gathering around the bonfire for a ring around a tree or around what seems to be bare earth, where they slowly witness bulbs shoot out in early spring until a fully grown colorful centerpiece emerges. The warmth is carried through, without the physical fire needed to always be present.

As rest time is coming to an end, we walk back to the group. Little toes begin to appear from the hammocks and a sense of restlessness begins to emerge in the forest. It’s a warm summer day and the class is busy with Midsummer festival preparations. The children that are moving on to class one are looking forward to jump over the fire in a few days.

The school year is coming to an end and the cocoons are ready to unfold. Butterflies are ready to spread their wings. Welcoming them back from their dreamland is Trees, silently sitting in the circle, greeting them with her warm smile. It is story time and a new adventure is about to unfold.

References:

Vicuna, C. (2015) The Miami Rail Available at: miamirail.org/visual-arts/cecilia-vicuna-with-camila-marambio/ (Accessed: 28 July 2022)

Amelia Errazuriz trained in biodynamic farming and Holistic Early Years Education at Emerson College. She is a mother of two, originally from Chile. After spending a year abroad, she has recently returned to Forest Row, UK where she will be working at Robin’s Nest Early Years Setting and running a nature-based Parent and Child circle, inspired to bring in her experiences from assisting Trees in Bruges.  She is passionate about building community, nature and crafts.