Abstract:

“What we make for the child, not only we make it for the moment, but for all the life”. Rudolf Steiner

Waldorf education (also known as Steiner or Steiner-Waldorf education) is a pedagogy based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophy.
Nowadays, there are different ways to teach and how changes, depending on your school, can be learned. Some countries, not generally in all the world, the philosophy and the methods in his childhood learning, can be chosen. Methods and philosophy can change but not the essential subjects that children must learn.
In Spain, the main way that children learn is through the curricula state schools. It’s really difficult to try to change and provide to their children an “alternative school” with a different but also efficient methodology, for all families.
In Salt, Girona, exists a Water Museum which offers different activities related to the item “the river and the consequent town evolution” and which shows the different approaching of the water benefits to the users.
But, why we teach these Non-Formal issues in a Museum through the institutional curricula learning? Today, one of the most activities that the museum offers is: “Mifriginia’s tale”, which target are children from two to six years old.
When this activity was created, it was conceived like an experiment (because in Girona people are not used to teach like this). Why we didn’t use a new methodology to transfer the Knowledge? Why not to use Waldorf education to explain and transfer some ecological values and developing a relation with our environment, our own culture and our period? We try to motivate children transferring the message of discovering and learning alone, because learning is interdisciplinary. It can integrate practical, artistic, and intellectual elements in the same process. That was what we tried to do.
Waldorf education is coordinated with "natural rhythms of everyday life". The Waldorf approach emphasizes the role of the imagination in learning, developing thinking that includes a creative as well as an analytical component.
Different studies about education describe its overarching goal as providing to the young people basis on which to develop into free, moral and integrated individuals, and to help every child to fulfill his or her unique destiny.
Moreover, we used natural products to elaborate the tale: Wool Waldorf dolls, and different objects, plants, flowers and natural fruits of each season. Manipulating and telling a local and old tale, children learnt the different natural uses you can obtain from the river depending the season you are.
At the end of this course, this activity was very demanded and appraisals were really positives. Nowadays, this activity is one of the most important ones in the Water Museum program.

Keywords:

waldorf, pedagogy, methods, non formal, curricula, museum, pedagogic activity, nurseries.