Barn Owl School - Saratoga, CA

And just like that, another school year is over! The school year that was full of joy, discovery, relationship building, imagination, and simply AUTHENTIC CHILDHOOD!

Pictures represent magical memories from winter 2021/2022.

“The best way to introduce children to color is to let them paint with colors dissolved in water, for then the color in a liquid form will best reveal its nature. Even the two and three-year old child can manage brush and paint. He will seize the brush quite spontaneously, dip it in the pot, and paint so that sooner or later the color spreads out over the whole white sheet of paper. It is the activity of painting and the experience of creating that is all important here. Nevertheless, the effect of the color is being unconsciously produced in his body. He likes painting with water-colors and becomes happily engrossed.” ~ Brunhild Muller, Painting with Children

Our kids use this tree fort for many things, but the other day it shared its branches so the kids could have a closet.

Elder bug house that was built by our 5 year old boy and 4 year old girl. The kids worked cooperatively and brought it to life after more than 2 hours of uninterrupted hard work.

We are so lucky to be immersed in nature. Nature provides an abundance of open-ended and natural materials for our kids to tinker and create with in their early childhood.

Oranges 🍊 are in in season in CA. We took this opportunity to incorporate home grown oranges into our art activity in our parent child class this week. We presented the oranges and cloves for the little ones to get benefits from sensory experience as this activity can’t get better for fine motor skills and developing their senses - smell, touch, sight and taste in the case of this activity.

Willow wreaths with the local greenery were eagerly assembled by the kids together with our wonderful teacher Alis.

The girls are tenderly helping each other to fold their blankets.

“Today the cat tails in the pond shared stalks with us that they are no longer using. The friends used scissors to make, play and tinker with these autumn materials.” - reported Teacher Alis after yesterday’s class.

How many of us have a village where we live?

It takes a village to raise a child.

Join our beautiful community this fall. We have 2 spots available in our Monday & Wednesday morning program and 3 spots in our Wednesday afternoon program.

Please contact Katerina Novello for more details.

Dear friends, apologies for the silence. We have been enjoying the summer vacations and will be back in the middle of August. Have a great summer everyone!

Childhood is short, let’s fill it up with magic, wonder and whimsicality.

Free play is a very special gift to our children. One of the opportunities that play allows is to foster the ability to relate to and understand other people. Interpersonal intelligence needs to be enhanced through real-life situations as it is challenging to teach it through books or lectures.

“Teacher Katerina, look what I created, the bug gym.” ~ 6 year old Ali

The child is the creator of play in the Waldorf-Inspired Forest School. Children play from the images created during circle time and story time, and from the images of their own life experiences. If there are rich images around the children, they can create satisfying and appropriate play.

“Toys” in a Forest School are not what we usually find in other preschools. New parents often wonder if children know how to play with these things. These are toys with magic still in them. Children have to work to find that magic and bring it out in play. Each day, play time is a time of transformation. The sections of logs, for example, now form a village. Later, the same logs might be used for telephone play. The seashells are pretend money for shoppers but later become pretend food for children who are playing restaurant.