Waldorf Playroom - Welcome to The Tree House!

Here is The Tree House. Sort of a screened-in porch, this leaf green room has windows stretching along three walls that overlook the forest out back, and a sliding glass door on the fourth that opens into Free Range Academy Central Office.

We get a lot of queries, and a lot of hits from folks searching for information about Waldorf toys. The basic idea is that toys should be simple, (relatively) few, made from natural materials, handmade by humans if possible, and 'open-ended'.

'Open-ended' means the toy encourages imaginative play - the child needs to 'complete' the toy using their mind.


The classic illustrative example is the Silk Play Cloths. Squares and rectangles of coloured silk, of different sizes, become doll clothes, dresses, capes, hats, mermaid costumes, flags, rivers, mountains.... Scooby stuffed a white one into a bucket once and proudly announced she had finished milking her cow.


The Waldorf dolls, which I've already raved about, have simple features so the child can imagine them to be having any emotion. We had ours made by the delightful Joy at Joy's Waldorf Dolls, and I can't say enough nice things about her and her work.


If I may shamelessly support another family business, these are the specific elves that Helen made for us, over at Kinder Dolls. She uses this picture of them on her "about the artist" page but they live at our house and are much loved.


These are Tree Blocks, nice and rustic, sanded smooth and precision cut so they stack properly. All the sensory input of real natural materials, all the safety of modern crap.


Another great open-ended toy, the sack of Herbal Bean Bags, each one a different nasal sensation, used as pillows for toys, furniture for dolls, food for stuffed animals, thrown around like hacky sacks, sniffed...


This deceptively simple thing is All The Math You Need. The latest thing is to count out beads to show how old various people are, and marvel at "How Many Beads Someone Has Been Alive For."


Of course there are puppets, hand puppets, finger puppets....lots of story telling going on...


...and although Waldorf is anti-plastic, and I usually agree, I drew the line at the incredible, anatomically correct German Schleich animals, which were just WAY too cool to ignore.


Imagination is King in the playroom, helped along by little props like this gauzy canopy which becomes so many, many magical things.

HW