The Magic of Movement
When I first encountered Waldorf education years ago, one of the things I found so compelling was the way teachers seamlessly included movement in the classroom learning experience.
This was not an education where children were constrained to their desks. Not at all! In the many classroom observations I did as part of my teacher training, I witnessed so much joyful and purposeful physical movement that clearly supported learning. And, I wanted to be a teacher who could bring this kind of joy and depth into my teaching as well.
Movement is an integral part of the Waldorf classroom experience. Yet, not all movement is the same – different types of movement support different learning goals and outcomes.
When I reflect on the term “movement” in relation to Waldorf classroom teaching, I can identify three specific types that I intuitively incorporate into my teaching practice:
Integrating movement
Rhythmic movement
Social movement
Becoming at Home in the Physical Body
The first category of movement I call integrating movement. This is the type of movement that we do with our early childhood and youngest grades students. Integrating movement helps the children become at home in their bodies and become aware of themselves spatially. It supports them in working through any minor physical and developmental hindrances that may be impacting their ability to meet classroom expectations when they enter first grade.
It could be that sitting in a chair at a desk is hard and uncomfortable for a child. A child might have an inclination to lean belly-down on top of the desk instead of sitting in the chair. Some children display discomfort in bringing their hands, arms, legs, and feet to a quiet and still place. Integrating movement activities help children gain comfort in “being” in their bodies.
For guidance in this type of movement, I lean heavily on my colleagues who are trained in the Extra Lesson, which is supported by the work of the Association for a Healing Education (AHE). I have learned so much from their work, which is aimed at helping children be at home in their physical bodies. You can learn more about this important work and how to integrate it into your classroom setting here: Association for a Healing Education
Over the years, I have adapted my morning “circle” time to be less circular in order to incorporate more of these balancing, strengthening, and health-giving movement activities.
These activities are powerful educational tools for first and second graders especially, but I also continue to bring strong elements of these movement activities into my third grade classroom. They include the Floor Exercises that come directly from the Extra Lesson, as well as activities on the balance beam and integrating movements with bean bags.
With my most recent first grade, two years ago, I was inspired by a conversation with my Extra Lesson teaching colleague, Connie Helms of AHE, to include three specific movement activities every day: the balance beam, and two floor exercises that I call the “lizard” and the “sausage roll”. We did do these activities as a class every single day. While I can’t cite scientific data that these exercises created measurable outcomes for my students, I can definitively say that my class of students is calm, centered, and able to sit quietly at their desks. They are consistently able to focus on the desk work at hand, they engage enthusiastically with the learning content I bring, and they love to work! I attribute this capacity in large part to these healing and balancing exercises that we did every day in both first and second grades.
Of course, I don’t limit my morning movement time to these three activities. I rotate other activities in and out according to the seasons and vary them depending on the learning objectives for the block I’m teaching.
Not all of the movement activities that come from the Extra Lesson lend themselves to full-class participation, so I take the ones that make sense for my classroom teaching, and let my Extra Lesson colleague, Connie, work individually in smaller segments of time with students who need a bit of additional support.
Rhythmic Movement
Rhythmic movement is the second type of movement I use in the classroom. I differentiate rhythmic movement from integrating movement, though there definitely is some overlap.
Waldorf classrooms are well-known for incorporating rhythmic movement, and it’s a major tool I use for teaching math in the younger grades.
Rhythmic movement that aligns with speech is a powerful way for children to engage their memories. I use it regularly to support oral memorization of multiplication families. When speech is combined with intentional rhythmic movement, my observation is that magic happens, and the children can really learn those times tables verbally. This later becomes a strong support when they encounter these math facts purely in the abstract visual form.
The types of rhythmic movement I lean on most are jumping rope and hand-clapping partner activities, but I’m always interested in exploring new activities and seeing how they work out.
I’ve always had a strong intuition that movement and learning are linked, simply from observing children in the classroom over many years. Recent research continues to support and confirm this observation, which many of us Waldorf teachers just know to be true! If you’d like to explore this further, you can start with this article that cites research on this topic:
Using Actions to Enhance Memory
Social Movement
The third type of movement that is a marvelous teaching tool is what I call social movement. Social movement can have a component of rhythmic or integrating movement, but it doesn’t need to.
Social movement builds class community and brings joy. It activates social interactions and collaboration among students. It helps children break out of tight social subgroups and expand into interactions with others they might not otherwise initiate. Social movement offers in-the-moment problem solving opportunities; it provides non-threatening challenges to work through collaboratively.
My preference for social movement is offering short and energetic group games, though other activities such as folk-dancing or team-building challenges could also provide a similar outcome. My movement teacher colleagues have been very gracious and adept in supporting me in the classroom with short, developmentally appropriate games I can weave into ten or fifteen minutes of my main lesson.
As a class teacher, I tend to use social movement activities more with the upper grades, and the rhythmic and integrating movement more in the lower grades. However, activities like rope jumping, which I use heavily in the lower grades, can be refurbished and enhanced to meet the needs of older students. I have had 8th graders begging me for more time to do “double-dutch” rope jumping, with two ropes swinging instead of just one as they try to see how many classmates they can get into the moving ropes without tripping up.
Many online resources promote group games that could be adapted for the classroom setting. I’ve found some interesting ideas (with instructions for games included) on this website:
Movement Games for the Upper Grades Waldorf Classroom
Incorporating Movement into the Classroom
The way that movement is woven into the learning experience is one of the visible ways Waldorf education stands out from other models of education.
It has not always been easy for me to know how to effectively incorporate movement into my teaching practice. Coming up with creative circle activities and engaging morning movement games is not a natural strength for me. Yet, by taking small baby-steps, adding one activity at a time, I have been able to strengthen and deepen my teaching in this realm.
Pedagogically meaningful movement is available for all of us to draw upon! It doesn’t have to be perfect. Just a little bit can bring joy and enthusiasm into the children’s learning experience, and for some, could be the favorite part of their day!
