by Heather Church (Editor)
Birth to Three in Education and Care: Rudolf Steiner, Emmi Pikler, and the Very Young Child shares its title with the theme of the first conference of its kind to be hosted at Sophia's Hearth Family Center and Training Institute in Keene, New Hampshire. The keynote speakers, who have devoted their life's work to understanding the young child, to what the child's needs might be, and how we, as conscious adults, can welcome them most warmly into their physical bodies and onto their paths as human beings, explored how Emmi Pikler and Rudolf Steiner inform educators' work with very young children. In Waldorf early childhood education, we are so very fortunate that these two deeply sensitive, insight-filled streams have found each other, and that these four wise teachers, and those who take up their indications, continue to work with and for young children so that developing humans might be as free as possible to choose a path in life, to be who they came here to be, with the least hindrances and the greatest resources.