STRONG FOUNDATIONS FOR LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Our Bridge programme is pre-academic and provides children with the strong foundations they will need for Class 1 learning. Experienced teachers support and guide each child’s imaginative capacities, practical skills, social development, and emerging intellect.

The overarching themes in the Bridge years are Celebrations, Festivals and Rhythms of Time; these themes are ever present throughout the whole primary school experience.

DAILY ACTIVITIES

Circle time and story-telling provide a foundation for language arts. Rhythmic games, songs and guided movement help children develop a relationship to space, numbers, and mathematics. Exposure to the natural world provides the foundation for the life sciences. Creative play lays the foundation for self-motivated learning; and artistic activity fosters creative problem solving and the development of integrated life skills. Self-directed creative play, music and handcrafts are the ways in which the Bridge child encounters the wide variety of topics introduced in the first few years of the primary school experience.

CURRICULUM

English & History: Story & Time

The children hear stories in prose and verse, with rich vocabulary and syntax from classical and traditional sources. Stories help the child understand the natural world of the landscape, weather, plants, animals and people; their interaction with each other; human work, family and community life.

Science & Geography

The Living World, The Elements of the World, Rhythms of the Sun, Moon and Earth. The children learn the way in which the world of nature provides a home for all living things and sustains their needs. The Bridge class will concentrate on changing seasons and weather and how it changes the environment and the child’s experience in it. The children will also focus on how the human work of all contributes to the family and community, and how they can contribute and care
for the world.

Mathematics

‍Mathematical concepts in Number, Measurement and Probability are experienced through
both child and teacher led activities.

Language

Introduction of both Irish and French through song, poetry and story. Each language is taught
by a dedicated subject teacher and will be continued, built upon and academically formalised in the grades.

Music

Music Theory is introduced in the Bridge Class with rhythmic and movement exercises. Music Theory will be taught by a dedicated music teacher, and will be continued, built upon and academically formalised in the grades.

festivals

The celebration of seasonal festivals lies in the heart of a Steiner Waldorf school, providing the children with a healthy and secure rhythm to their year – full of seasonal curriculum, songs,
games and crafts.

The Bridge Programme runs five days a week from 9am – 1:40pm

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