How to Make a Waldorf Nature Table, Season by Season

To make a Waldorf nature table, choose a low shelf, windowsill or small table your child can reach. Lay a cloth over it in the season's colour. Then add a few things the two of you picked up outside, such as a handful of acorns in autumn, a branch of blossom in spring. Raise some of them on a stone or a block of wood so they sit at different heights, and add a simple figure if you have one. When the season turns, change the cloth and the figures. Your child can keep bringing in new finds all season.

That's all it needs to be. The rest of this page goes through the four seasons, when to change the table, and how children can look after it themselves.

What is a seasonal table in Waldorf?

A nature table, also called a seasonal table, is a place in the home where you follow the year as it turns. The leaves, stones and flowers you bring in show, in a small way, what the season is doing outside. Waldorf kindergartens usually have one, usually a corner or low shelf the children can reach and explore. Many Waldorf-inspired homeschooling families keep one in the living room or kitchen.

Why Waldorf families keep one

Young children often take in the seasons through their senses and feelings long before they could explain them. Waldorf teachers and parents use the nature table to meet them there. The child sees the cloth turn from green to orange. The conker they picked up yesterday is sitting under the wooden tree. They know something has changed, and nobody had to give a lesson on it.

The table also gives a walk a purpose. Instead of "let's go outside", it's "let's find something for the table". And because it changes on a rhythm, it becomes one more thing in the week a child can count on, like the same verse each morning or the same story before bed. If you're building a rhythm at home, the Waldorf homeschool daily rhythm guide shows where small things like this fit in the day and the year.

Adults tend to get something from it too. Keeping a nature table means you start noticing what's actually growing, falling and budding near your home, week by week.

How do you make a Waldorf nature table?

1. Choose the spot. A low shelf, a windowsill, the top of a chest of drawers, or a corner of a small table. Put it somewhere your child passes every day, at a height they can see and reach.

2. Lay a cloth. A piece of silk, cotton, muslin or wool in a colour you see outside right now. Draping it loosely, rather than folding it flat, gives the table some shape. A second cloth pinned up behind in blue can be the sky.

3. Add a few natural things. Go outside together and let your child choose three or four things. Don't worry about making it look right on day one.

4. Build some height. Put some things on a flat stone, a tree block, or a small upturned basket under the cloth. Nature isn't all at one level, and a table with hills and hollows invites play.

5. Add a figure or two, if you like. A wooden animal, a small felted or knitted doll, a gnome. You don't need many.

6. Keep one thing all year. Many families keep a beeswax candle or an interesting root on the table through every season, so the table changes around something that stays.

7. Leave space. A crowded table stops being interesting. Leave room for what your child brings in next week.

When you collect, take things that have fallen or that there's plenty of, leave nests and protected plants alone, and check the rules in parks and reserves. Shake finds out and let them dry before they come indoors.

How do you make an autumn nature table?

Cloths and colours: deep reds, oranges, browns, gold and dark forest green.

Natural things: fallen leaves, acorns, conkers, chestnuts, nuts, pinecones, seed heads, dried berries, small gourds or a pumpkin, a gnarled root. Autumn is often the easiest season, because children find far more than will fit.

Figures: animals getting ready for winter, such as a squirrel, a hedgehog or a fox by its den. A small basket of harvest treasures.

Festivals: in autumn many Waldorf families bring in a harvest basket for the harvest festival, then a small dragon, a sword or a figure of St Michael for Michaelmas. In November, a lantern scene for Martinmas.

How do you make a winter Waldorf nature table?

Cloths and colours: white, silver, grey, pale or deep blue, and purple.

Natural things: bare branches, evergreen sprigs, pinecones, holly with berries, a crystal or a clear stone, white wool laid out as snow. If you have frost or snow outside, the table can show it. If your winter is grey and rainy, that's what goes on the table.

Figures: a figure of King Winter, animals sleeping in a burrow under the cloth, a single candle.

Festivals: the table usually becomes quieter and more candlelit through Advent. Some families add a small wreath of greenery with a candle for each week of Advent. The Advent spiral page has more on the season. A nativity scene can come in the week of Christmas, and the kings arrive for Three Kings in January.

How do you make a spring nature table?

Cloths and colours: light and fresh green, pale yellow and pink.

Natural things: budding twigs in a small jar of water, the first flowers, moss, a feather, pieces of blue eggshell, a pot of seeds you've planted together and can watch sprout.

Figures: Mother Earth waking her root children, spring fairies or a figure of Lady Spring, a hen with chicks, a sheep with lambs, a bird on a nest.

Festivals: decorated eggs for Easter, and a small ribbon pole or a crown of flowers for May Day.

How do you decorate a nature table for summer?

Cloths and colours: yellow, light green and orange, with a strong blue sky behind.

Natural things: shells, sand in a shallow dish, smooth river stones, dried grasses, seed pods, a small vase of garden flowers that you change as they fade.

Figures: bees, butterflies, a sun figure, water animals by a blue cloth river.

Festivals: white doves for Whitsun, and a small fire made of red and orange cloth or a candle for St John's at midsummer.

For all four seasons, the Waldorf festivals page walks through the festival year in order, and the festival guides have a page for each one.

If you live in the southern hemisphere

In Australia, New Zealand and South Africa the seasons are the other way round, so your autumn table goes up around March and your winter table around June. Follow what's outside your door, not the calendar in a book written for Europe. Families there often put up native flowers, like wattle in Australia, and some add local festivals such as Matariki in New Zealand.

When do you change a nature table for the seasons?

A simple pattern many families use: change the cloth and the main figures four times a year, at the start of each season. In the northern hemisphere that's roughly March, June, September and December. Then add a small scene for each festival in between, and take it away again after.

The natural things change far more often. Leaves dry out, flowers fade, new finds arrive. Some families find the table ends up changing a little every week, which is exactly what the season is doing outside.

A few things that help:

• Make the change an event. Choose a quiet afternoon at the start of the season. Take everything off together, wash the cloths, and put the new season on.
• Return what came from outside. Old leaves and flowers go back to the garden or the compost. Children often like this part.
• Keep a box for each season. The figures, cloths and any favourite stones go in it, ready for next year.

Letting children tend the nature table

The nature table works best when it belongs to your child as much as to you. Children who can walk can help collect. Let them choose what goes on, even when it's the fifteenth pinecone. You might check finds for bugs and mud, but try not to edit their choices.

Give them real jobs:

• Bring in something new from each walk. One find at a time keeps the table from overflowing.
• Water the flowers and the seed pot.
• Tidy and dust once a week. In the kindergarten-at-home rhythm, this fits neatly into a Friday cleaning day.
• Play with it. Let them move the animals, build a den under the cloth, and tell stories about what's there.

Older children can make things for the table themselves. A school-age child can finger-knit a snake, a doll or a tree. By around age 10, some children like whittling a small wooden acorn or building a little structure from sticks. A wet-on-wet painting in the season's colours makes a good backdrop.

A nature table for this week

If you'd like to start today, you only need one cloth and one walk. Clear a small shelf. Find a piece of fabric in the colour you see most outside right now. Take your child out for twenty minutes and come back with three things. Put them on the cloth, raise one on a stone, and leave the rest of the table empty for whatever turns up tomorrow.