Outdoor Education and Waldorf Philosophy by Mrs. M

Hello. We’re the Pill Bugs.
Yes, there are hundreds of us under your mulch. Yes, we scatter when disturbed. We know we look creepy.

But we’re mostly decomposers. We eat dead leaves, rotting wood, and decaying plant material — turning it into rich soil and fertilizer.

We rarely damage healthy plants.

Mulch is our habitat: moist, dark, and full of food.

What to do:
• Leave us alone in most areas
• Protect tiny seedlings with collars
• Avoid pesticides that kill beneficial predators

We’re basically tiny compost machines working for free.

https://youtu.be/5hMmV4xloEg?si=n9HR3fmGS3u44-Mq

Lost Recipe Archives 25 FORGOTTEN American Poor Man Casseroles the U.S. Heartland Survived On

"You are not a machine. you are more like a garden. you need different things on different days. a little sun today, a little less water tomorrow. you have fallow and fruitful seasons. it is not a design flaw. it is wiser than perpetual sameness. what does your garden need today?" —Joy Marie Clarkson

I have to wonder if anybody is reading this out of these well over 300 people who are subscribing still this site has been quiet and it’s basically vacant for so long that I’m not sure it’s worth trying to revive.

I would love to know if anybody is reading any of these posts or is interested in this subject be nice to know actually.

“If you stand still long enough to observe carefully the things around you, you will find beauty, and you will know wonder.” —N. Scott Momaday, 'Earth Keeper: Reflections on the American Land'

Sometimes people ask me when is it the right age to dig a child outside? Is there an age at which it’s most appropriate?

The fact is for 1000 thousands and hundreds of thousands of years humans were outdoors 99% of the time

Even if they had a cave or something to retreat to, there was no way to keep out the weather in the air and the sounds and the feeling, and these were just temporary rather dark respite sites even shelters are thin, walled, and permeable, and the outdoors is still present moment with pretty much all the time.

Human beings were actually made to be outdoors in line with the environment and connected to nature and everything around us, which is as much a part of us as the hair in our heads is a part of us.

Rudolph Steiner points out many times in his lectures that we are all in one environment. We are all one body, even though we have many different. In other words, the forest, the plants, the trees, the rocks, the animals, the fun, and the flora of our very earth are all part of us as we are part of it. They really is no literal separation.

And babies and infants are huge reflection of principal babies are their environments, and their environments are them when the baby feels hunger, all parts of the body feel hunger, including your fingers and toes, and the baby feels that all those people around who are in other bodies, but nearby are also feeling the hunger and that we’re one big sort of ecosphere together in infants and adults.

There’s a beautiful thing about taking young children out into nature regularly, particularly for sleeping outdoors as they’ve recognized for hundreds of years and parts of the world yes covered with a blanket, but sleeping peacefully outside with the breezes in the sounds and the sun and the weather, it’s the most beautiful feeling in the world.

Many studies have shown that being outdoors improves immune system, and intelligence and perception and confidence and descriptive capacities and perceptual capacities, and the children that spend the most amount of time outside are noticeable in the school setting. They usually very good at their artistic capacities, and they feel nature deeply within every bone and every cell of their body.

The young child lays up upon the ground, and this is really the Waldorf tradition where you’re not putting them in jumper seats and walkers, and this kind of thing holding them holding them and they are on the ground on their bellies and on their backs and overtime they rise.

This is a very important step in child development, the use of the limbs to creep and then crawl and then stand and finally to take those important steps, one precarious tiny foot on the earth, the other lifting and finding a new home.

The act of doing this lays down neural tracks in your brain in the most phenomenal way and is critical to the development of thinking and analyzing and choosing and relating to other human beings.

Babies on floors, babies on rugs, babies on grass babies on dirt babies on all kinds of surfaces and out in the world with their little hands, grasping the bits of flat and Jetson that come their way it’s all part of the development of the human being.
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In the Waldorf philosophy, the first year of life is the walking gear by the end of that year most babies will actually rise up and stand, and most will walk.

The second year of life is considered the talking year as babies babble in form words and begin to distinguished by the end of the year, 1 to 2 many different names and associations.

The third year of life is considered the thinking year when the baby begins to think between 2 to 3 and for the first time for many children, the pronoun I is used. This pronoun is the only one you can’t teach a child. You can’t teach them to say that they have to do it themselves in their own ego formation when they say I want cookie or I go out or I love you..

Your baby, an infant are born to be outside. Our bodies are created to fulfill their destiny outdoors were made for walking, striding, running exploring, climbing, leaping, and moving across the Earth with our limbs. We are made to live in rain and snow and wind and weather and heat, and we have all the skills and capacities to create a situation where we thrive in those environments. So your baby even in birth is ready to be outdoors with you prepared yes but ready and needing it as well it’s a kind of nourishment for every human being that we often deprive ourselves of.

How young is too young to be outdoors? Is that even a question for hundreds of thousands of years humans were outside even when they were inside to a degree like in a cave or crevice or shelter type structure they were actually still mostly outside imagine spending 100% of your time in the outdoor world with the outdoor temperature in the outdoor winds and the outdoor noises and the outdoor weather and imagine surviving this even thriving.

We’re meant to be outdoors we were designed and created to be outdoors. We have all the tools we need and what is necessary to live well when being essentially outdoors.

We’re built to move to walk and run and step and stride and sneak around and slip away and on these small feet where intended to rise from the Earth and be perpendicular.

Our balance and our vision and our accessory systems are designed to be upright.

I have seven grandchildren and a new one is coming in August this year and I have had three children of my own and I have watched them all progressing that first year from helpless rather fragile newborn to the eight month old to sleep on my lap right now who’s very busy learning to crawl. She also wants to stand up quite often and she’ll grab my hands and pull herself straight up. She can also sit straight up now with a beautiful posture, and this will force to stand is so dominant in the human being.

In the Waldorf way, we don’t use walkers or Johnny jump ups or things that artificially prop the child up into an upright position. It’s very common and Walter practice to make sure the child first connects to the Earth and the floor in the grass the ground lying on their bellies or lying on their backs they gradually learn to turn over and to lift their head and look around, but that urge to rise in the first year drives all of the other forces.

And the fact is that when they do rise and they have the tiniest feet little doll sized feet that fit in your hand, and yet they can stand their whole body up on these two small appendages and then they learned to pick one up and move it forward and now we have a whole new phenomena.

In the Waldorf Way we think about the first year of life as the walking year and the second year of life as the talking year and the third year of life as the thinking year.

Rudolph Steiner had a lot to say about this again these processes mimic ancient cycles of development that relate to every human on the Earth and they go back so far it’s so incredibly far that we don’t quite grasp how wonderful and amazing this is.

Yesterday I came home with my daughter and her little family and because here in Oregon and April the weather is quite nice at certain times of course at other times it’s raining like Noah’s Ark is happening, but yesterday was one of those blue golden days with a light breeze and the baby and I went in the backyard and sat outside and with that light breeze in the sun and the blue sky that baby took an hour long nap on my lap and I think sleeping outside is the best thing that was ever invented.

We know the English in the Scandinavian, but their babies out on the porch and all kinds of weather year-round for them to sleep snuggly under blankets with a hat and just have their little faces out of the fresh air and this is such a healthy practice.

Research has even shown that children exposed to outdoor weather are healthier gets sick less often and have much stronger immune system systems. At the school, I found it in 2003 right from the beginning we were outdoors quite a lot and also later in the curriculum plan we always have one whole day where we spent outdoors in the wild on structured places, and this was from three years old to 14.

So every age is a good age to be outside♥️🧡♥️🩷❤️ especially when you’re very old.


As I’m growing older now entering the 70s, I’m finding I wake earlier and earlier and apparently I need a lot less sleep than I used to so what am I wonderful morning habits is to probably wake up between 430 and six and I’m awake and feeling well and I get up and I like to watch the sunrise.

I like to watch the very dark of the night grow slowly into the light.

I think the transition from day to night and night today is so important for the human being to see and participate in and I think honestly children need more exposure to this phenomenon.

It’s kind of an amazing thing isn’t it that we have these two parts of our life every single day on this earth.

Watching the Artemis two rise up in the space has been tremendous fun and inspiring for everyone. We lift ourselves from the ground to learn to walk and run, and we lift ourselves from the Earth to fly into the stars.

We can lift ourselves out of the night into the bright day, the life-giving and nurturing son Risys faithfully and provides everything we need here on earth. And then gently gently, the sun slips over the horizon at the end of the day, bringing us the restful chocolate brown warmth of the night.

It’s a rhythm that is impossible to superintend or overwhelmed. For eternal time, humans were ruled by this division between the night and the day and we know that we have night predators, and we have some safety issues with going about in the dark with accidents and cliffs and obstacles. So we tend to huddle in we gathered around that fire. We told stories and laughed and watched the children play in, grew and rested.

How do we help our children today in 2026 see that big change that wonderful change can we put together a ritual of an evening? Oh let’s watch the sunset time at least in the fall in the spring when the time is more reasonable and surely in the winter when time is much longer in the night than in the day..

Can we enjoy the routine of a summer sunrise celebration, and Reverend moment, singing on your porch with A cup of hot cocoa or hot tea in hand and watching that beautiful transition from the dark blue of the midnight skies to the bright gold and pink and oranges and glorious, beautiful colors that pop up with the sun.

if we want the children to be well and at ease with mother nature than we need to bring them to visit with mother nature, like we take our little ones to see grandma.

How can we institute a regular rhythm of an outdoor time into our lives instead of lying in front of a screen or some entertaining thing where we shut our brains off from sensory impressions and move to kind of entertainment guiding by an electronic system that doesn’t really care about us.

I hope you find time to rise early and see the sunrise. It’s important for parents to have that time sometimes while children are still sleeping so that they can have this moment to reflect and think.

Great idea

What a fun & simple outdoor activity!
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