A Lifetime of Joy

A Lifetime of Joy: A Collection of Circle Games, Finger Games, Songs, Verses and Plays for Puppets and Marionettes

A compilation of verses, finger games, stories and plays for puppets and marionettes, collected, created and adapted by a longtime teacher at the Rudolf Steiner Kindergarten in Vienna, Austria. This is an expansion of the original volume, Plays for Puppets.

Along with much additional material, it also includes the articles: “In Praise of Early Childhood”, “Movement, Gesture, and Language in the Life of the Young Child” and “The Pedagogical Value of Marionette and Table Puppet Plays for the Small Child”.

About the Author

Bronja Zahlingen (1912–2000) joined the Anthroposophical Society in 1932, at the age of twenty. The kindergarten she built up in Vienna brimmed with life until 1938, with the invasion of Austria. She went to Britain and, after the war ended, returned to Vienna to re-establish a Waldorf kindergarten. In her later years she worked with colleagues in the United States to develop the Waldorf kindergarten movement. Colleagues Brigitte Goldman and Elisabeth Gergeley write, “Creating a space for children in which their future humanity could develop—this was the life task to which Bronja Zahlingen devoted herself. . . . We have learned much from her.”