Songs and Verses for Transitions in a Waldorf-Inspired Co-op: Tidy-Up, Handwashing, Going Out and Coming In

The simplest way to handle transitions in a co-op is to give each change in the morning one song or verse and one adult who starts it. Four changes matter most: tidy-up, handwashing, going outside and coming back in. The adult begins the job and sings. The other parents join the singing rather than giving instructions, and the words stay the same for the whole term. Old verses and traditional rhymes are free for any group to use. Newer songbooks are worth buying.

Which songs to sing through the morning, and how to teach them, is in singing together at co-op. This piece is about the moments in between.

Why the in-between moments are hard in a co-op

At home, one parent says "time to tidy up" and the child knows that voice. At co-op there might be five parents and twelve children, and five different ways of saying it. One parent counts down, another bargains, a third tidies up for the children. The children hear a lot of adult talk and no clear signal.

Susan Howard, writing for the Waldorf Early Childhood Association of North America, asks whether the day flows in such a way that "transitions are as smooth and seamless as possible". She also describes the teacher refraining "as much as possible from verbal instruction", letting gestures, actions and familiar rhythms do the work. One of her questions for a teacher is whether the rhythm of the day carries the children along, or whether they keep asking what comes next.

A co-op can borrow that directly. Fewer words, one voice, and the same song every week.

Give each transition an owner

Before the term starts, go through your co-op day and mark every change. Then give each one to one adult. It can be the same parent who owns that part of the morning:

Transition	Who starts it	What they do while singing
End of free play, tidy-up	Setting-up parent	Picks up the first basket
Handwashing before snack	Snack parent	Walks to the sink and turns on the tap
Going outside	Outdoor parent	Sits by the shoe rack and pulls on their own boots
Coming in	Outdoor parent	Walks to the gate, then the door

Everyone else joins the singing and does the task beside the children. What nobody does is repeat the instruction in their own words. If your group hasn't talked about this, raise it at a planning meeting: "When the song starts, we sing and tidy. We don't call out." It's a small agreement, and it changes the room.

Susan Howard describes children taking up the adult's inner attitude through imitation: the care and sense of purpose in the work, not only the outer movements. A parent who tidies with care, and sings while doing it, gives the children something to copy. A parent who stands still and gives orders gives them something else to copy.

Tidy-up

Tidy-up is usually the biggest change of the morning, because the children are being asked to leave their play. Sarah Baldwin, describing a Waldorf kindergarten day, writes that the end of play "is signaled by a familiar song", and the children tidy up and gather for circle.

A few things help:

• Warn the room quietly first. Walk around and tell each small group, "We'll tidy soon." Then start the song a few minutes later.
• Tidy alongside. Pick up the play silks and fold them. Put the wooden animals back in their basket. Children join in more readily when there's work already happening.
• Give a job to the ones who wander. One child carries the basket of blocks, another sweeps. Older children can carry the heavy things.
• End the song when the room is done, not when the verse runs out. Sing it again if you need to.

For a tidy-up song, the old Mulberry Bush tune works. It's traditional, it takes any words, and the collector James Orchard Halliwell recorded working verses like "This is the way we wash our clothes" in the mid-1800s. Sing "This is the way we tidy away" to it, or make up your own words for your own room.

Handwashing

Handwashing is a waiting problem. Twelve children, one sink. The children at the back of the line are often the ones who start pushing.

Keep the song going the whole time, not only at the sink. The line sings while it waits, and each child at the tap sings the verse through while scrubbing. The CDC says to scrub for at least 20 seconds and suggests humming "Happy Birthday" twice as a timer. Time your own handwashing verse once at home, and sing it as many times as it takes. For example:

This is the way we wash our hands, wash our hands, wash our hands. This is the way we wash our hands, ready for our snack.

(The last line is yours to change. It's a folk tune, and families have been changing its words for a long time.)

Put the snack parent at the sink and a second adult at the back of the line. If you have a second sink or a bowl of warm water and soap on a low table, open it. For what comes after, see snack at co-op.

Going outside

Getting twelve children into coats and boots is slow, and it's meant to be. Treat it as part of the morning, not a delay before it.

Start by sitting down near the shoes and pulling on your own boots while you say a verse. Children who are ready can help the little ones with zips. The traditional rhyme "Girls and boys, come out to play" is more than 300 years old. Its first two lines appear in dance books from 1708. Its second line is about the moon, so many groups keep the first line and add their own about the weather.

On a wet morning, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Rain", from A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), is four lines long and free to use:

The rain is falling all around, It falls on field and tree, It rains on the umbrellas here, And on the ships at sea.

On a dry one, try Christina Rossetti's short verse from Sing-Song (1872):

Wrens and robins in the hedge, Wrens and robins here and there; Building, perching, pecking, fluttering, Everywhere!

Say it at the door, then walk out together. Outdoor time at co-op covers what happens once you're out there.

Coming back in

Coming in is the mirror of going out. The outdoor parent walks to the gate singing, and the children gather there. Boots come off at the door, wet things go on the pegs, and hands get washed.

Then give the room a moment to settle before the next thing. Sarah Baldwin describes a rest time with the teacher playing the lyre, and story time as "a quiet, reflective moment" after outdoor play. At co-op, that might be a single verse said quietly on the rug, or a minute of a children's lyre before the story begins. The story will go better for it.

Where to find more verses

For songs written for exactly these moments, WECAN publishes A Day Full of Song by Karen Lonsky: 42 songs for the kindergarten day, including washing hands, cleaning and story time. It's in copyright, so buy the book (a companion CD is sold too) and sing from it in your group rather than copying it out for families.

For free verses, two books on Project Gutenberg are a good start: Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses and Rossetti's Sing-Song. Look for poems about weather, birds and the seasons, and keep them short. Recitation and poetry has more of both poets.

Many verses you'll find shared online as "Waldorf verses" have no author's name on them and come from books still in copyright. If you can't tell where one came from, choose an old one you can.

A transition plan to copy

Transition	Song or verse	Who starts it	Where the other adults stand
Tidy-up
Handwashing
Going outside
Coming in
End of the morning

Fill it in at your first planning meeting, and keep it the same until the term ends.