How to Apply.
1 – Visit
Schedule a Daycare visit with your child by calling or texting 0939 925 0848, or emailing st.michael.playhouse@gmail.com. Visits are usually scheduled Monday to Friday, 4:00 PM.
2 – Apply
After the visit, you will be emailed a General Info Form. Please email filled out form to st.michael.playhouse@gmail.com. This form is required before an orientation with the SMP Nurturers is scheduled.
3 – Orientation
SMP will contact you to schedule a orientation for both parents with an SMP Nurturer.
4 – Notification
After the orientation, you will be given an Enrollment and Authorization Form and Tuition Agreement Form. Please fill out the form and submit to SMP together with the 4-week trial fee.
5 – Trial
All new children for the Daycare program undergo a 4-week trial. After submission of form and payment, you will be emailed instructions on what needs to be prepared for the first day of class. You will also be given a copy of the Handbook for Parents, as well as the date of the Parents’ Orientation.
6 – Feedback
Close to the end of the 4-week trial, a meeting will be scheduled between the parents and the Nurturers. This is the opportunity for you and the Nurturers to provide feedback to each other.
Once you and the Nurturers have come to a mutual agreement to enroll your child for the rest of the term, the remainder of the tuition is to be deposited to the St. Michael Playhouse Banco de Oro account. Details for this will be provided. Term payments with post-dated checks are accepted, and details are indicated on the Tuition Form.
FAQs.
Daycare Program.
• Philippine-government-declared holidays;
• typhoon signal no 1 declared by the weather bureau for Metro Manila;
• the City Government of Makati suspends classes due to weather conditions or for other emergencies;
• during the 5-day health break of the Nurturers, scheduled in August;
• in between terms, from late October to early November;
• holiday break from mid-December to early January of the following year;
• the full month of May
• gives a chance for the child to slowly integrate into the Daycare;
• provides the Nurturers an unhurried opportunity to get to know the child;
• allows the parents to fairly determine if the Steiner/Waldorf approach is the kind of early childhood care they would like for their child.
The Nurturers meet with new parents before enrollment, and just before the 4-week trial is completed, meet with the parents again. Feedback is exchanged on the child’s adjustment, and the parents then decide whether or not to keep their child at SMP for the remainder of the term.
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adapt the practical activities of daily life so that they are suitable for the child’s imitation through play. . . . The activities of children in kindergarten must be derived directly from life itself rather than being “thought out” by the intellectualized culture of adults. In the kindergarten, the most important thing is to give children the opportunity to directly imitate life itself.
—Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
The daily life of the child is the only curriculum needed at this age. What is essential for the development of the young child are the presence of adults who perform meaningful activities; an environment that fosters healthy, imaginative play, surrounded by an atmosphere of love and warmth in an environment that nourishes the senses. Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic are then best suited for older children.
Real, meaningful work with a purpose, adjusted to the needs of the child, is in accordance with the child’s natural and inborn need for movement, and is an enormously significant educational activity. The teacher focuses on the meaningful activities that nurture life in the in the classroom “home,” such as cooking and baking, gardening, doing laundry and cleaning, creating and caring for the materials in the immediate environment, and taking care of the bodily needs of the children.
—Susan Howard, The Waldorf Kindergarten
Stories, songs, rhymes and folk tales are constantly heard by the child in a Waldorf kindergarten. These become the basis for the learning of speech, writing and reading later on.