Marianne Frost (center) makes bread with her morning students.
Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
At Ruby Morning Playgarden, Marianne Frost creates a safe place for “the whole child” to integrate thinking, feeling and doing. The Sonoma resident opened the school, for children ages two to five, in November so she could work closer to home, after teaching kindergarten in the Novato Charter School for the last nine years. On Railroad Avenue, it’s in the space of the former Blue Sky Preschool run by Barbara Stockton.
Frost follows the principles of Waldorf education, which teaches children to think logically while they gain a sense of reverence for others and the world around them. Toys, crayons and furniture are made from only natural materials and the children use real dishes, cups, silverware and cloth napkins, rather than disposable paper and plastic ware.
Ruby Morning isn’t a preschool that prepares children academically for kindergarten, but instead gives them simple experiences, in a hands-on curriculum from which they develop their own imagination and a basis for later learning.
For some mid-morning snacks, for example, the children must divide rolls they helped make into pieces for every child. Because it’s a social event, Frost explains, and something the children care about, they soak up the implicit lesson about fractions.
Recently, the children gathered “treasures” from outside – twigs, flowers, pine needles – which they arranged on plates that the teachers filled with water, then put in the freezer. On a sunny day, Frost will hang them outside for the children to admire as the ice melts. Because they’ll have fun, the children will learn another implicit lesson, one about the effects of changing temperatures.
To Frost, no weather is improper, so the children play outside every day, dressed in appropriate attire, including waterproof shoes or boots at this time of year. They feed the two chickens that live in the yard and gather the eggs, which become a snack once a week.
Teaching children a sense of order helps them learn to think clearly. When it’s time to clean up after play, Frost will ask for “furniture movers” to put chairs back around the large, low wooden table in the center of the main room.
At play time, she artfully re-enforces the concept of order by asking the children to “wake up” the dolls, farm animals, puppets and other toys they had put away the day before.
After lunch, some children go home while others stay until 5 p.m. in a program that’s akin to being at grandma’s house, starting with a nap, followed by play time. In fact, the children call Frost “Busha,” a name she used for her own Polish grandmother. They picked it up from her two four-year-old grandsons, Satchel Sevenau and Ike Vargas, who attend the school. To signal it’s time for a new activity, like lunch, she rings a little bell that once belonged to her grandmother.
Frost emphasizes that young children learn through imitation and that she and fellow Waldorf teacher Sage Otterson and assistant Christie Jones work hard at being worthy of imitation.
Summing up her philosophy, Frost quotes the guidance she received from one of her own teachers. “Look at the child in front of you, then ask, ‘What do you need from me to learn?’”
Ruby Morning Playgarden,
18345 Railroad Ave.,
El Verano; 707.935.0999.
e-mail: rubymorngarden@aol.com
