How Do Waldorf Families Use Movement and Bean Bag Games at Home?

Most days, Waldorf families at home move together in a short morning circle, before the main lesson or the day's activity. You say a verse with gestures and step or clap a rhythm. Then you play a bean bag game: passing a small cloth bag round the circle on the beat of a rhyme, or tossing it back and forth while you count. It takes 5 to 10 minutes, it wakes up sleepy bodies, and in grades 1 to 3 it can carry the numbers too.

What's in a Waldorf morning circle?

Picture a Tuesday in October. You and your 6-year-old stand on the rug. You light a candle and say the morning verse. Then a song about the wind, with arms swaying. Then you step a rhyme around the room, stamping on the strong beat. Then two bean bags come out of a basket, and you pass them back and forth while you say a short verse about the apples in the orchard. The bean bags go back in the basket, and you sit down for the story.

That's a morning circle. In kindergarten it's 10 to 15 minutes of songs, verses and finger games with movement, as the kindergarten at home guide describes. In grades 1 to 3 it opens the school morning before the main lesson, and the daily rhythm guide shows where it sits.

Waldorf schools use the same pieces. Mountain Laurel Waldorf School lists bean bag games, clapping games and rhythmical walking in its first grade. Jean Miller of Art of Homeschooling names clapping, bean bag games, rhythmic stepping or marching, and hand movements to nursery rhymes as the heart of it.

Why Waldorf teachers put movement first

Jean Miller gives a practical reason: movement warms up the body so the mind is ready for the lesson. She also finds it helps children "breathe out" after a stretch of concentrating, and helps them learn poems by heart. She writes that Steiner recommended ring games and simple gymnastic exercises to help build "confidence, concentration, balance, control and coordination, a sense of rhythm, direction, and form in space."

Kelly Ehrman of Lavender's Blue puts it simply: "A key principle in the Waldorf approach to education is beginning with activity." A child steps the numbers before writing them, and claps a rhyme before reading it.

You'll know this if you've watched a 6-year-old try to sit still for a story straight after breakfast. Ten minutes of moving first often makes the sitting easier.

If you'd like movement that goes further into the arts, the eurythmy at home guide covers movement stories and walking forms. This article stays with the simpler games.

How to play the Waldorf bean bag passing game

This is the classic Waldorf bean bag game, as Jean Miller describes it. It works with two people or ten.

1. Hold the bean bag in your right hand, palm up. Everyone has one.
2. Pass it to yourself. Bring your hands together in front of you, turn your right hand over and drop the bean bag into your left hand, which is now palm up.
3. Pass it on. Open your arms to the sides. Your right hand, now empty, turns palm up to receive a bean bag from your neighbor. Your left hand turns over and drops yours into the open hand of the person on that side.
4. Add a verse. Once the passing feels easy, say a rhyme and match the passing to its beat.

With just two of you, face each other and pass forward instead of to the sides. Go slowly at first. It takes a few days before the hands stop fumbling, and the fumbling is funny, so let it be.

A verse with a strong, even beat works best. Anything from your seasonal circle will do: a rhyme about the leaves in autumn, the snow in winter, the seeds in spring. Say it the same way every day for two or three weeks before changing it.

What does crossing the midline mean?

You may have seen bean bag games described as good for "crossing the midline." The midline is the imaginary line down the middle of the body, between left and right. Crossing it means one hand, foot or eye reaching over to the other side. Think of the right hand picking up a cup on the left, or the eyes following a ball across the room.

Here's what the research says, as far as we could find. In 1980, Sharon Cermak and colleagues watched 150 children aged 4 to 8, and found that children crossed the midline on their own more often as they got older. In 2006, a French team watched 432 children aged 3 to 10 reaching for cards. Older children crossed the midline more often, and the clearest difference was between 3- and 4-year-olds and 8- to 10-year-olds. The authors describe it as a long, gradual trend. Children aren't ready on a fixed day. They grow into it over years.

Waldorf teachers pay attention to this. Nancy Garvey of the Waldorf School of Cape Cod describes the kindergarten year as full of circle gestures that cross the midline, along with sewing and chopping vegetables. Imhoff Waldorf School lists walking in a cross pattern and catching and throwing a large ball among the signs a child may be ready for first grade.

What the research we found doesn't show is that a particular game speeds the process up. So it's fair to say bean bag games give children plenty of practice at reaching across, catching and passing. It's not fair to promise that they fix anything. If you're worried about your child's coordination, talk to your doctor or an occupational therapist.

To bring a little crossing into the games, choose one:

• Pass the bean bag from the right hand, across the body, into the left hand held out on the far side.
• Tap the bean bag on the opposite knee, then the opposite shoulder, in time to a rhyme.
• Toss it from one hand to the other in an arc over your head, while you count.
• Stand side by side and pass it behind your backs and round the front, like a belt.

Bean bag games for counting and times tables

In grades 1 to 3, the same bean bags carry the numbers. The mental math guide covers the daily spoken number work. Here are the bean bag games that go with it.

Counting back and forth. Toss the bean bag to your child and say "1." They toss it back and say "2." Up to 20, then back down again. Kelly Ehrman suggests working up to counting to 100 and back while stomping or tossing bean bags.

Whisper and shout. Toss on every number, but whisper the odd ones and say the even ones out loud. Your child hears the 2s standing out. Later do the same with the 3s: whisper, whisper, loud.

Passing round the circle. With three or four people, each one says the next number as the bean bag arrives. Change direction when someone says a multiple of 5.

Toss on the table. Say the 4s times table out loud, one toss for each line: "1 times 4 is 4," toss, "2 times 4 is 8," toss. The grade 2 times tables guide shows the stepping, clapping and circle patterns that come alongside.

Skip counting on the move. Ehrman suggests skip counting while skipping, galloping, jumping or tossing bean bags. Walk the 5s across the garden with a bean bag in each hand, dropping one into a bucket on every 5.

Keep each game to a few minutes. A number game that ends while it's still fun will be asked for tomorrow. The grade 1 curriculum guide sets out the year's number work, and Starpath's free Times Tables and Skip Counting guide for grade 1 covers that block.

Movement through the grades

Kindergarten. Movement is mostly imitation. You move, your child copies, and there's no teaching. A bean bag might be a little bird that hops from hand to hand in a song. Waldorf string games and finger games are the small-movement side of the same circle.

Grade 1. Passing games with a verse, simple counting tosses, stepping and clapping rhymes. Your child starts to keep the beat alone. The best Waldorf homeschool curriculum for grade 1 compares how different programs build circle time into the morning.

Grade 2. Longer verses, faster passing, bean bags carrying the times tables. Two bean bags at once for a child who's ready.

Grade 3. Movement stays, with harder patterns and more to remember. Tossing and catching with a partner across a longer distance, counting in 6s, 7s and 8s. If you'd like a book to go further, try Kim Brooking-Payne's Games Children Play (Hawthorn Press). It starts with singing and finger games for the youngest, then moves on to string games, chasing, cooperative throwing and skipping.

Making bean bags

You need one for each person, and a spare. A small square of cotton, filled with dried beans or rice and sewn closed, is all a bean bag is. Keep them light enough to catch without stinging and small enough to sit in your child's palm.

Sewing them can be a handwork project in itself. A child in grade 2 or 3 can sew simple running stitch round a felt square with a large needle, and then the bean bags in circle are ones they made. Keep them in a basket by the rug, with the candle and the verse card, so circle has its own corner of the room.