To create your custom kindergarten curriculum, you’re going to start with the large picture and then fill in the details. Using a few sheets of paper or your favorite electronic device, you’ll brainstorm three categories: seasons, festivals, and monthly themes.
Celebrating Seasons
The seasons provide a broad base from which to start planning. On your first piece of paper, write “Autumn” as the title. Put “Winter” and “Spring” on the other two. You can include Summer as well if you wish to, and skip any seasons that you need to if you aren’t following the Northern hemisphere school year.
On each paper, write down your favorite things for each season. What comes to mind first? What do you like to see? What scents and food and drinks do you enjoy? What sounds do you like to hear?
Remember to customize your lists to fit your family, and don’t feel pressured to write down the typical ideas for each season if they don’t fit.
Some of the thoughts I wrote down were apple cider and donuts in the autumn, lights in the winter, and flowers and rainbows in the spring.
Celebrating Festivals
When you’re satisfied with your seasonal brainstorm, write the subheading “Festivals” on each page. Then list the holidays, birthdays, and other celebrations your family observes (or that you would like to observe!) for each season.
A few festivals we celebrate that aren’t commonly celebrated where I live are Michaelmas, Martinmas, and St. Lucia Day. The first two are common in Waldorf circles.
To break the seasons up more easily, I group all of September, October, and November together for autumn, the next three months for winter, and the three after that for spring. My daughter’s early December birthday is technically in Autumn according to the date of the winter solstice, but I put everything that falls in December into the winter category.
You can also include special activities your family already does or ones you would like to do in certain seasons, such as apple picking, canoeing, or going to a maple festival.
Monthly Themes
By now you probably have a pretty solid idea of what you want the seasons to look like overall. If you feel like your ideas for a season are sparse, my monthly plans are available on this website. You can also usually find ideas in Waldorf Facebook groups.
Next you will need a calendar printout for each month. You can do a quick internet search to find free calendars (for example, search “September 2025 calendar”) if you don’t have a planner. You’ll need a calendar that has a square for each day. For planning purposes, a monthly layout will give you the best visual and help you make decisions.
Once you have your monthly calendars, you can write in all of your festivals that have set days, like holidays and birthdays. If you can fill in other activities, that’s great, too. I wanted to go canoeing and visit Amish country in October, so I picked days that I thought would work the best and wrote in those activities, keeping in mind that the dates are still flexible.
Now you’re ready to choose a theme (or themes) for each month! Using your brainstorms of what you love about each season plus what you’ve written on your calendar, select a theme that makes sense. You can pick whatever you like most about a season, or you could choose something that’s common for a particular season.
Here’s a list of my themes in case you need an example.
September: apples
October: pumpkins
November: giving, light
December: festivals (We spend so much time getting ready for St. Lucia Day and Christmas that this theme made sense for us.)
January: snow, stars
February: love, birds
March: spring, rainbows
April: flowers
May: gardening
Once you have your themes written down, I hope you’ll see how your custom plan is starting to take shape. You’re ready to start on the details!
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