With Stars in Their Eyes

With Stars in Their Eyes: Brain Science and Your Child’s Journey toward the Self

In this book readers will find not only a heart-filled rendering of the gentle ways young children have been traditionally raised and educated, but also cutting edge research that supports these practices. With love as the foundation, and through the neural tapestry created by joyful movement, music, art, stories, and play, we feed and bathe the brain of the young child. These deep connections with life are woven together during childhood to become the wholeness we call “I.”

Each chapter offers ideas for bringing this new science and these time-honored ways into the home and classroom. Parents, educators, and everyone who has ever loved and cared for a child will find research, humor, wisdom, and a new paradigm that marries ageless wisdom with the new science of the human brain and heart.

C O N T E N T S:

How to Use This Book

PART ONE

Introduction: The Science of Connection
1. Gentle Ways and Hard Science for the Early Years
2. The Love Connection
3. The Nature Connection
4. The Spiritual Connection

PART TWO

Introduction: The Science of Childhood
5. Exploring Self and the World through the Senses
6. Making Sense of Self and the World through Movement
7. Art and Stories: Tools to Imagine the Self
8. Creative Play: The Art and Practice of Becoming Oneself

Conclusion
Appendix
Notes
Color Images

About the Author

Sharifa Oppenheimer was the founding teacher of the Charlottesville Waldorf School, Virginia, where she taught kindergarten for twenty-one years and served as day care director of the early-childhood program. She has helped develop new teachers through teacher-training programs at Sunbridge College in New York State, and at Rudolf Steiner College near Sacramento as a master teacher offering practicum and internship opportunities. She has written many articles on Waldorf education, helping the parents of her students create supportive home environments. Recently she initiated a home-based kindergarten program, The Rose Garden. Sharifa is the mother of three grown sons, who received Waldorf educations. She lives in an enchanted forest in Virginia.