Setting Up a Borrowed Room for a Waldorf-Inspired Co-op Morning

A borrowed room can become a co-op room in 20 to 30 minutes, if you set it up the same way every week. Before the children arrive, clear a space for circle with a cloth in the middle. Unpack a small nature table from its own basket. Set up a painting corner near the sink, with one place for each painter, and a quieter table for the story or handwork. At the end of the morning, everything goes back into labeled crates, and the room goes back to how you found it.

This page is about the morning itself. For choosing a hall, a home or a park in the first place, see where a homeschool co-op can meet.

Why the room matters in a Waldorf-inspired morning

Holly Koteen-Soule, a Waldorf early childhood teacher educator, writes that a Waldorf early childhood setting "should be more like a home", even inside a school. Part of making that space, she says, is order within it, so that "everything has a place" and can go "home" at the end of playtime. Susan Howard, writing for the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America (WECAN), puts the room and the rhythm side by side. The adult shapes the space and the time, she says, and a steady rhythm gives the child security.

A church hall with stacked chairs and a strip light isn't a kindergarten, and it doesn't need to be. What you can give the children is a room that looks the same every week when they walk in. The rug is in the same place, the nature table is in the same corner, and the painting boards are by the sink. That's something a borrowed room can have.

How do you set up a room for a homeschool co-op?

Choose one order and keep it. A written list on the lid of the first crate saves a lot of "where does this go?" Here's one way to split it between two parents, starting 20 to 30 minutes before the families arrive.

Time	Parent 1	Parent 2
First 5 minutes	Stack spare chairs against the wall, clear the circle space	Unpack the crates, check the sink and the heating
Next 5 minutes	Lay the circle cloth, set out the nature table	Cover the painting tables with oilcloth, fill the soaking basin
Next 10 minutes	Set the story or handwork table, put out the arrival play basket	Set a place for each painter, mix the paint
As families arrive	Greets families, shoes off at the door	Finishes painting set-up, fills the rinse jars

If you're painting later in the morning, you can leave the paper soaking and the paint jars covered until after snack. Put setting up and packing up on your parent jobs list as named jobs, so they don't always fall to the family with the key.

The circle space

Circle needs more floor than you think. Everyone stands in a ring, arms out, and steps and claps, so push tables to the walls and stack the chairs you don't need. A rug or a large cloth in the middle gives the ring a center, and on a cold hall floor it gives the youngest somewhere to sit afterward for the story.

In the middle of the cloth, some groups put a candle. Check your hall's conditions first. Stagsden Village Hall says "real flame" for candles and lanterns must not be used. Cobo Community Centre prohibits candles and night lights anywhere in the building unless it has given approval in advance. If your room is the same, the moment at the start of circle can come from somewhere else. Ring a small bell, lift a cloth off the nature table, or sing the same gathering song every week. Children often come to know what it means within a few weeks.

What goes on in circle is its own subject. Circle time in a Waldorf-inspired co-op has a sample circle for mixed ages.

A nature table that travels

At home a nature table can stay up all season. In a borrowed room it has to pack into a basket at the end of each morning. That's no bad thing: unpacking it becomes a small ritual of its own.

Keep the traveling version small. One cloth in the color you see outside right now. A flat stone or a wooden block underneath to give it some height. One or two figures, and three or four natural things. A seasons table handout shared by a New Zealand Waldorf school suggests that children help collect, and add their own finds. So leave an empty space for what arrives in pockets that morning, and let the children put their finds on themselves.

Pack it the same way each week: the cloth folded on top, the figures wrapped in a small silk, the finds in a jar. At the end of each season, let the children take their finds home and start the basket again.

A word from Susan Howard is worth keeping in mind here. She warns against copying Waldorf habits without looking at where you live, such as a "King Winter" table in a tropical winter. A co-op in Queensland or Florida should build its table from what's outside its own door.

The painting corner

Put painting as close to the sink as you can. If there's no sink in the room, bring two buckets: one of clean water and one for the dirty.

Lavender's Blue, which writes a Waldorf-inspired homeschool curriculum, sets each painter's place with a board, a brush, a damp sponge, a rinse jar and a small jar for each color. In a hall, that means a long table covered in oilcloth, every place set before the children sit down, and a pile of wet rags within reach. Decide before the morning where wet paintings will go. Lavender's Blue leaves them to dry flat on the boards, which in a hall means a clear table or a bit of floor nobody will cross. Setting up a co-op painting day walks through the whole session with a group.

A quiet table for the story and handwork

The story needs the quietest corner of the room, away from the door and the kitchen door. If the older and younger children split for the story, give each group its own corner and turn their chairs away from each other. Handwork can use the same table later in the morning, with the baskets set out before the children come back in from outside.

Storing things between weeks

Ask the venue before you book, because halls differ a lot. Stagsden Village Hall asks hirers to agree in advance if they want to leave anything overnight. Cobo Community Centre says its cupboards are for its own tables and chairs and "not under any circumstances" for a hirer's equipment.

If you can keep a cupboard or a shelf, label it with the co-op's name and keep an inventory taped inside the door. If you can't, pack the room into four or five crates that go home in a parent's car:

• Circle and story: the circle cloth, a bell or candle, the story basket
• Nature table: the basket, packed the same way each week
• Painting: boards, brushes, sponges, jars, oilcloth, paper
• Handwork and drawing: wool, spare needles, crayons, beeswax
• Housekeeping: rags, towels, trash bags, a dustpan, the first aid kit

What goes in each crate, and who pays for it, is in the co-op supply list.

Packing up together

The hall's conditions will usually tell you how to leave the room. Stagsden asks hirers to leave the premises "clean and tidy". Cobo asks for rooms to be left "as you found them", with furniture cleaned and put back where it was stored. Take a photo of the room when you arrive, so whoever packs up knows where the tables go back.

Let the children help. A tidy-up song, a basket each, and a job that's the same every week: one child folds the circle cloth, another carries the painting boards to the sink. Susan Howard writes that young children learn by imitating adults at real work, and she counts caring for the materials in the room among that work. So tidy alongside them. The morning ends the way it began, with the room being cared for.

A set-up and pack-up list to copy

Change it to fit your room. Tape a copy inside the lid of the first crate.

Set up (start [20] minutes before families arrive)

1. Photo of the room as we found it.
2. Stack spare chairs, clear the circle space, lay the circle cloth.
3. Nature table out of its basket, in [the corner by the window].
4. Oilcloth on the painting tables, basin filled, one place per painter.
5. Story and handwork table in [the quiet corner].
6. Arrival play basket out, shoes off at the door.

Pack up (last [15] minutes of the morning)

1. Tidy-up song, children carry baskets and boards.
2. Paintings flat to dry, or home on their boards.
3. Nature table back in its basket, finds in the jar.
4. Jars, brushes and boards washed at the sink.
5. Tables and chairs back as in the photo, floor swept, trash bagged.
6. Crates checked against the lists and loaded.

Set-up and pack-up: [names this term]

If you're still looking for a group to share a room with, the Waldorf Map lists Waldorf schools and Waldorf-inspired groups near you.