Spring Garden Waldorf School was in the news for its extra lesson class in the article Smart Moves published by Akron Life Magazine. Extra Lesson is taught to students at Spring Garden in kindergarten through second grade, and then on a by-need basis. 

The class helps students develop physical capacities and coordination, gain skills needed for complex movements including spatial orientation and balance, and be able to transition from play-based early education to sitting at a desk and taking in academic instruction. 

Diane Miskinis, Extra Lesson education support teacher at the school says: “Our bodies … it’s a bridge to helping children grasp higher-level learning. Children build those physical capacities and deepen awareness of their body, self-control, patience, stillness.”

The Extra Lesson class was created by Waldorf teacher, Audrey McAllen, who wrote a book of the same name and was inspired by Rudolf Steiner’s lectures, given in Berlin between 1909 and 1911, now published in ’Wisdom of Man, of the Soul, and of the Spirit.’   

McAllen said, ”The Extra Lesson Concept doesn’t focus on the soul of the child, but it works with the spiritual laws behind the architecture of the physical human body, and with the spirit of the earth. The exercises integrate the movements of the child into the universal movement patterns of the earth.”

Read the story at Akron Life Magazine.
Photo Credit: Spring Garden Waldorf School