Rimbayu Playgarden is a Waldorf inspired kindergarten situated near the woods and greens of forest reserves at Selayang, which is 21km away from the city center.

In 2014, a Waldorf elementary school was set up by few like-minded families, who wish to provide education to the development of human individuality, eventually, an initiative to have a kindergarten emerged to provide care especially to teachers’ young children. We started with only 6 children.

Thought out the years, we expanded and moved to our very own location in 2016. With a yard full of greens, flowers and trees, we are blessed with shades and fresh harvests which adds to our daily meals.

Rimbayu Playgarden believes in cultivating an appreciation of life, connecting children to nature and develop the love for Mother Nature. Therefore our weekly program consists of 4 days in Playgarden with every Friday, our picnic day, where parents are also invited to join us in our park hopping.

“To receive the child in gratitude from the world they come from; to educate the child with love; and to lead the child into the true freedom which belongs to man.” - Rudolf Steiner

Waldorf education is a pedagogy developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner based upon a profound understanding of human development and the needs of growing child. For the Waldorf student, learning is not simply ingested and tested. Through experiences, Waldorf students cultivate a lifelong love of learning as well as the intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual capacities to be individuals certain of their paths and to be of service to the world.

A Waldorf kindergarten is designed to respond to the developmental needs of 3 to 6 year old children. The key elements in the program are:

• Regular daily rhythms. Predictability and repetition are profoundly soothing to children. For this reason, life in the Waldorf kindergarten follows a predictable rhythm – Monday is always baking day, Tuesday is painting day, Wednesday is soup day, and so on – adapting the daily schedule to the changing seasons and festivals of the year. The annual cycles of the seasons and holidays like Christmas and Chinese New Year are celebrated with stories, songs, and art.
• Learning through practical activities. Young children before the age of seven learn primarily by trying things out, using their bodies, and imitating the adults around them. The Waldorf kindergarten responds to these drives by focusing on practical activities, such as baking, painting, gardening, and finger knitting. Teachers prepare the daily snack right in the classroom. The children help by mixing the flour, cutting carrots for vegetable soup, and fruits for salad and kneading dough on bread day.
• Art. Art is a vital part of the Waldorf curriculum from the very beginning. In kindergarten, the children paint with water colors in the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, to learn the basic relationships between the colors. They model with beeswax and draw with beeswax crayons.
• Singing, movement, and storytelling in groups. During daily circle time, the children sing, do finger plays, and recite poems. The teacher also tells the children fairy tales – always telling them, never reading from a book. The same story is repeated every day for as long as three weeks so the children can absorb the images deeply. At the end of the story cycle, the fairy tale is performed as a puppet show or a play with children acting out the parts and the teacher narrating the story.
• Free play, both indoors and outdoors. According to David Elkind, author of The Power of Play [Da Capo Press, 2006], imaginative play is the catalyst for social, physical, emotional, and moral development in young children. Play based on the children’s own spontaneous ideas is one of the Waldorf kindergarten’s primary activities. The simple, open-ended toys in the classroom lend themselves to that kind of play. A piece of driftwood can become a car one minute, and a house the next. Often children will act out the fairy tales they hear during story time.
• Rooting in nature. As children run, dig, explore, play, and overcome challenges along the way, they build self-reliance, resilience, and stamina; improve their motor skills; and, as part of a group of other children, learn about social interaction. Yes, we have a park day as our special picnic day every Friday. The idea behind of including outdoor education in early childhood is that youngsters have a strong connection with nature and benefit from using it as a learning environment. What’s more, but you could bring your family along!

• No plastic. Everything in the classroom is made of natural materials – wood, stone, metal, cotton, silk, and wool.
• No electronics. Waldorf educators believe that computers have no place in the three-dimensional, sensory, and open-ended classroom appropriate for the young child.
• No reading, writing, or arithmetic. No drills, worksheets, or homework. Teaching of academic subjects doesn’t start in Waldorf schools until first grade at age 7. Reading at home is not discouraged – and some children do begin to read – but it is not taught in the classroom. There are two reasons for this. One is that many children at 5 or 6 haven’t developed the fine motor tracking or intellectual focus needed to be successful readers. And even among those who have, Waldorf educators believe that early academics take the child’s energy away from his or her real developmental task, which is learning through play.