The 2008 Education Catalog is still available by request or download. As always, it introduces lots of new and recently published books for parents, teachers, and children—everything from boardbooks for very young children to guidebooks for parents and resources for Waldorf teachers and home-schoolers.

If you would like to receive one or more catalogs—or if you’d like to make sure a friend or colleague receives a copy—please write to friends@steinerbooks.org. Please be sure to include complete address(es). You can also download the complete catalog here as a PDF file (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader). Click on this link to begin download (13MB), or right-click (PC) and select “Save link as.”.

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THE ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE:

“The Importance of Play in Early Childhood” by Joan Almon:

“In over 30 years of working with children, families, and teachers in Waldorf kindergartens all over the world, I have observed one consistent feature of childhood: creative play is a central activity in the lives of healthy children. Play helps children weave together all the elements of life as they experience it. It allows them to digest life and make it their own....”

“Preface from The Therapeutic Eye: How Rudolf Steiner Observed Children” by Peter Selg:

Rudolf Steiner’s ability to perceive another human being, the intense attentiveness, connection and encounter, was extraordinary. It permitted insight and perception of the other at many different levels in a creative process which Friedrich Rittelmeyer was able to grasp and characterize in the above words. Rudolf Steiner himself spoke of an ability like this, here seen in Rudolf Steiner by a (then) Protestant theologian, or at least such an intentional effort and direction given to individual perception as the precondition for any form of educational and curative-educational work with children....”

“Introduction from A Grand Metamorphosis: Contributions to the Spiritual-Scientific Anthropology and Education of Adolescents:” by Peter Selg:

“My contribution begins with a contemplation of the physiological developmental shift that marks the onset of adolescence, the foundation for which has to be laid during the first two seven-year periods. When contemplating the much-discussed phenomena of puberty and adolescence we must not forget that any evident youth crisis has to be seen and understood in connection with the development and the omissions that led up to it. Adolescence leads the individual toward specific changes and challenges. Whether and how these will be mastered is not primarily determined during this actual phase, but mostly by the forces and conditions that were established during the first two seven-year periods....”

“Contemporary American Speech” from The Spirit of the English Language: A Practical Guide for Poets, Teachers & Students by John H. Wulsin Jr.:

“There are several habits of speech among contemporary American youth that may seem innocuous, but that deserve understanding among parents, teachers, and anyone concerned with language and consciousness. When we wonder about new ways in the third millennium, pondering the unpredictable changes ahead of us in the coming several decades, we find that one of the best tools for meeting what may come is to look at the way children speak throughout their waking lives. Teachers and parents need to work together on children’s language....”

“Colored Shadows and Afterimages: Research for the Physics Curriculum, Grade 12 Optics Block” by Catherine Read:

“Is color a relationship between light and the world, so that our sense of sight can be especially educated by experiences with color? The method of following clues does not necessarily lead one in a straight line in one’s thinking and observations. Indeed, Steiner described his course thus: ‘I would like to guide you to a certain insight into the natural sciences, so please regard everything I present before that as a kind of preparation, which isn’t done by progressing in a straight line, as is otherwise the custom, but by gathering the phenomena we need and creating a circle, so to speak, then pressing forward to the central point.’...”

“Children of the Future” from Traveling Light: Walking the Cancer Path by William Ward:

“The temptation to enumerate the things that need transformation in our society is so strong that there is a kind of fiendish pleasure in indulging it. Beware. That would only add to the gravity weighing us down. Breathe. Believe. Be. Playful, prayerful levity leavens and enlivens the fallen and leaden, lifting our lives like leaves into light and life in the sun of love resplendent in heaven.

“Children of the Future, Welcome! You sow the new seeds of Heart and Will that sun-ripen into Living Thinking. Dead thinking, the counterfeit image of our narrow conception of ourselves, falls away as an empty husk. The generation of children now streaming toward Earth is filled with Life, Love, and Light in such abundance that we rediscover our own, emerging humanity waking from enchanted sleep....”

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Download the complete catalog as a PDF file (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader). Click on this link to begin download (13MB), or right-click and select “Save link as.”.

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