AUTUMN 2006 In this weekend conference Kim will give teachers and other professionals the tools to introduce these life-bringing concepts to families. He will expand and extend the content of the theme from a professional standpoint. What qualities of listening and sharing need to be present for fruitful conversation around these themes? How can we become more conscious in facilitating such conversations? What elements comprise the movement of a living discussion and group process? Kim will lead the group into insights that are fundamental to supporting such work. Participants will actively engage in guided practice in creating support circles with parents, and exploring approaches to introducing the concept of simplifying life with children. On Sunday morning, participants will have an opportunity to develop personal planning tools for their work with Kim’s guidance. A group discussion and plenum for questions will complete the weekend.

About Kim John Payne, M.Ed
Kim Payne is an Australian who has for 20 years worked as a counselor, adult educator, consultant/researcher and educator. He has been helping children, adolescents and families explore issues such as social difficulties with siblings and classmates, attention and behavioral
issues at home and school, emotional issues such as defiance, aggression, addiction and self-esteem.

Kim has researched and implemented a Social Inclusion Approach in many communities which helps overcome anti social behavior, bullying and teasing in school and at home. He is engaged in an extensive research project, focusing on exploring and developing a drug free approach to Attention Related Disorders.

He is a Professor at Lesley University’s Peaceable Schools and Mediation graduate program and a clinical supervisor and adjunct faculty at Antioch University New England’s education and applied psychology departments.

He is the Project Director of the Waldorf Community Collaborative Counseling Program at Antioch University New England, a course aimed at training teachers and future collaborative counselors to better understand social and emotional issues of children and teens and to support home and school life. He also regularly consults in colleges, clinics and schools throughout the USA and abroad, focusing especially on helping teachers and parents remove emotional and social obstacles from the paths of their children. He is based in Harlemville, New York. He is the author of the book The Games Children Play, (1996) published by Hawthorn Press and is presently working on two new books, Simplicity Parenting and The Soul of Discipline. Kim strives to deepen understanding and give practical tools for life that arise out of the burning social issues of our time.

Cost: $195 includes Saturday lunch and dinner, Sunday lunch, daily coffee, tea, and snacks. Housing with breakfast is available at Camp Glen Brook – please call the camp directly at 603 876-3342 to reserve a room.

SUMMER 2006 brings the widest choice of professional development courses that Sophia’s Hearth Family Center has ever offered.  This summer’s faculty brings depth of experience and knowledge developed over years of caring for young children and their families and studying the development of the child.  The inspiring themes for the coming summer are intended to offer new directions, new capacities, new potential for our work as early childhood educators, as we strive to strengthen humanity’s potential for meeting the ever-changing needs of children in our cultural and family life of today.

The educational approach for all Sophia’s Hearth’s courses is that of experiential transformation.  The daily work engages each participant in the active course content, and our community experience extends this process.  Application of the content and experience to the individual’s vocational and personal situation is fostered and supported by our faculty through small group, and large group discussion; through artistic activity and personal reflection.  Each participant will discover her or his own learning modalities and receive encouragement in strengthening them.  Each course speaks to the needs of very young children and their families in ways that offer a path toward nurturing and spiritual enlivening.

The daily schedule is full, with seven hours of class each day.  Each day begins with movement activity including Spacial Dynamics experiences.  Tuition of $440 for each five-day course includes delicious daily organic midday meals shared in community.  Generous lunchtime, together with morning and afternoon breaks, create a balance of activity and rest throughout the week.  In addition, occasional late afternoon organized and spontaneous hiking, swimming, and picnicking bring time for play and a rich community life in New Hampshire’s beautiful summertime mood.  We invite you to join this special learning community.

July 3 – 7	Helle Heckmann
	Simplicity:  a Guiding Ideal for Creating Festival Life with Young Children
	Festivals have been a sustaining element in the life of communities from time immemorial, and offer a healing balm for contemporary life.  The celebration of festivals is an essential foundation for the young child in his process of coming to know the rhythm of the year and the deep sources of human spiritual life.  This course will focus on creating festivals for young children and families in a way that emphasizes simplicity in their development and fulfillment.  The week will be filled with practical experiences in building up a life-filled festival rhythm step by step through the days, weeks, and seasons of the year.  With simplicity as the guiding ideal, Helle will bring fresh insights into festival life that will lead to sustenance and inspiration. A special aspect of this course will be the opportunity to develop a personal independent project related to the celebration of festivals, arising out of participants’ own professional or family life. Helle will work as an advisor with each student. Time will be devoted for this project throughout the week, and each participant will leave at the week’s end with a project well underway. A 3 % fee will be added to couse total to cover  Pay Pal processing .
	HELLE joins us from Copenhagen, Denmark, where she is the founding director of Nøkken, a mixed age Waldorf childcare program. Helle is active in teacher education throughout the world, visiting classrooms and supporting teachers in North and South America and Europe. Her books, Nøkken, and More News from Nøkken, have inspired many early childhood teachers.
July 3 – 7	Jane Swain & Susan Weber
	Nurturing the Very Young Child from Birth to Three
	What is it that is so distinctive about the child in the early three years of life?  This period brings many questions and needs for sensitive care. Designed especially for playgroup leaders, childcare providers, parents and expectant parents, this 5-day course offers an understanding of the sensitive processes taking place in the beginning of the human being’s journey.  Out of these insights we will build up a foundation for caring for infants and young children.  We will develop a picture of the spiritual, physical, cognitive, and emotional growth of the child from conception through age three, in which the insights of Waldorf early childhood education are complemented with the work of Emmi Pikler and the staff of the Pikler Institute in Hungary. Practical exercises will provide direct experiences into the early gross and fine motor development, the sensory development of the infant and young child, reflex development, and the unfolding of language.  The course also looks at ways in which these understandings enable us to create various approaches to programs for infants, toddlers, and parents. Afternoons will offer songs and games for language development, hand gesture games from Wilma Ellersieck, together with handcrafts including natural dyeing with silk, felting with wool fleece, and simple puppet crafting. A 3 % fee will be added to couse total to cover  Pay Pal processing .
	SUSAN WEBER is the director of Sophia’s Hearth. She is an experienced Waldorf early childhood teacher and adult educator.  She has completed RIE level I training and studied at the Pikler Institute in Budapest, Hungary. She leads Sophia’s Hearth’s “Joyful Beginnings” Parent Infant playgroups. JANE SWAIN is a pediatric physical therapist with sensory integration training practicing in the Keene area. She has completed training in Spacial Dynamics and is currently doing advanced training. She is the Co-Director of our Training Course.

Course Descriptions: Week #2

July 10 –14	Bernadette Raichle
	Developing a Caring Environment for Very Young Children (Mornings) with Connie Manson, Singing, Music, & Puppetry with Young Children (Afternoons)
	A childcare program arising out of Waldorf education offers the child and family an environment that allows the child to unfold her potential in a healthy, unrushed manner, where she can learn to become truly social through empathetic guidance and supportive rhythms; where the family can experience sound practices of the archetypal home. It is an environment where respect for the human being is paramount . . . for the child, for the family, our fellow co-worker and the environment. In this course, we will explore the environment for infants and very young children from a 4-fold perspective.  We will begin with the development of physical environment, where the little child can experience an aesthetically prepared space that offers the qualities of warmth, beauty, and a true relationship to the natural world, as well as providing possibilities for a right and healthy development for movement, play and exploration.  We will then explore the ‘rhythms of life’ and relate these to the life of the child, the center, and the family; we will look at the working together of colleagues; and finally, we will look at the aims, aspirations, or the spiritual motif of the initiative.  The course will include the making of the child’s first dolly, the sleeping dolly. Connie will bring exercises that encourage confidence and freedom with the singing voice, and participants will learn and create simple age appropriate songs to weave throughout the day with children. There will also be time to work with simple instruments, including the kinder lyre.  Participants will use a simple felting needle technique to create beautiful table puppets from wool fairy fleece, and explore meaningful gestures accompanied by music and verse. A 3 % fee will be added to couse total to cover  Pay Pal processing .

	Connie Manson is a Waldorf early childhood teacher in Sarasota, FL where she offers “Tea ‘n’ Puppets” to delighted parents and young children. She is the founder of StarLite Puppets and is trained in Verbeck singing.  She is a member of the visiting faculty of Sunbridge College. She received her master's degree with a thesis on Montessori and Waldorf education.	Bernadette Raichle is the founder of Awhina, an anthroposophically inspired childcare program in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand. She is a Waldorf kindergarten teacher, mother and grandmother, and a gifted doll maker.  Her photographs of Awhina have brought the center to life for early childhood teachers throughout the United States

July 10 –14	Carol Pinto
	Infants and Toddlers – the RIE™ Approach (Mornings) with Singing and Music, & with Young Children (Afternoons)
	This course will focus on RIE’s foundation principles for caring for young children. RIE encourages basic trust in the child to be an initiator, an explorer and a self learner; an environment for the child that is physically safe, cognitively challenging and emotionally nurturing; time for uninterrupted play, freedom to explore and interact with other infants; involvement of the child in all care activities to allow the child to become an active participant rather than a passive recipient; sensitive observation of the child in order to understand his/her needs; and consistency, clearly  defined limits and expectations to develop discipline. Practical exercises, videos from RIE, and morning talks will be part of the week. RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers) is based in Los Angeles, CA. RIE was founded by educator and infant specialist Magda Gerber, who was trained by pediatrician Dr. Emmi Pikler, director of the Loczy Institute for orphans in Budapest.  Loczy has been recognized as a leader in emphasizing the importance of a baby's freedom and initiative. Magda Gerber adapted the methods developed by Dr. Pikler to the home, hence making it useful for mothers as well as professional caregivers. Afternoons will bring Connie Manson and exercises that encourage confidence and freedom with the singing voice, and participants will learn and create simple age appropriate songs to weave throughout the day with children. There will also be time to work with simple instruments, including the kinder lyre, and soft doll making with Bernadette Raichle. A 3 % fee will be added to couse total to cover Pay Pal processing .

 

 

 

The photos here express the rich program that Bernadette and her colleagues have created in New Zealand, integrating a rich use of the garden and natural world into the children's experience. Her July course will include sharing of many more photographic illustrations of her work at Awhina.

 

Sophia’s Hearth Family Center is a national organization for education, research, study and observation.  Our family center is a living model for community building where we nurture the holistic development of families and professionals in their care of the child from conception through age three.

Sophia’s Hearth was founded in 1998 to support families and educators of very young children, through providing educational programs for parents and professionals.  Our vision is based upon the work of Rudolf Steiner and Waldorf education, building bridges to others with compatible insights.  We work especially closely with the insights of Hungarian pediatrician Emmi Pikler, who founded the Loczy Institute in 1946 in Budapest.  We share active relationships today with the co-workers who have continued her work at the Institute. RIE (Resources for Infant Educarers in Los Angeles) was founded by Magda Gerber, a colleague of Dr. Pikler’s, and brings insights to our work as well.  

Sophia’s Hearth is in the early stages of designing a new early childhood facility in Keene that will serve as a demonstration-model research center.  Our new home will include nurturing environments for full-time childcare, professional coursework, and programs for parents and children together. 

Comments from participants:

[I was grateful] to be affirmed with other professionals that my work has so much meaning.

. . . The personal growth factor that wends itself throughout, the personal space, and the freedom – for this I am deeply grateful.

Coming October 27-29, 2006 at Camp Glen Brook, Marlborough, NH:
Kim John Payne will join us for our annual conference for those interested in themes of working with parents and children together.  The weekend will bring Kim's theme «Simplicity Parenting» into relationship to our work with the whole family as facilitators and playgroup leaders.  From Kim: «So much of modern life seems to be about more. This weekend presents ‘do-able’ daily ways in which we can simplify families’ lives and by doing so build resiliency within children.

Kim Payne, M.Ed., counselor, adult educator and consultant/researcher who has worked for the past 20 years with individuals, families, and schools is presently at work on two new books, Simplicity Parenting and The Soul of Discipline.