Welcome to Three Cedars Waldorf School!

Education continues to be an urgent question in today's complex world: how do we best prepare our youth to find their calling and their place in society? What do we offer them so they can effectively contribute to solving the worldwide problems they will inherit? Will we be able to give them the best tools so they remain engaged, successful, balanced?

Since 1919, Waldorf schools worldwide have succeeded in educating people to become who they really are - Mathematicians, artists, entrepreneurs, biochemists, teachers, leaders. Three Cedars is proud to belong to this tradition and to offer Waldorf Education to Bellevue and its region.

Based on the premise that children come to the world with a uniquely individual purpose, we believe our task is to develop the capacities that will support students to fulfill their purpose. We are committed to honoring the profound meaning of education offered to us by Dr. Rudolf Steiner, and to understanding, respecting, and nurturing each phase of childhood.

Early Childhood - Imitation

Learning to stand, talk, and think are the most remarkable achievements of a child's first years, and each child accomplishes these without formal instruction, through latent ability, instinct, which we call imitation -- that special talent which characterizes children up to around the age of seven. The young child mimics everything in the environment – the sounds and gestures of people, the attitudes and values of parents and peers. Our Waldorf Early Childhood program provides an environment worthy of imitation. Daily and seasonal activities form the core of the early childhood curriculum, delivered in a natural environment permeated by beauty and kindness.

Grade School - Imagination

These first years of intense growth quite literally transform the young child. By age seven the child is for the first time wholly herself, with a new and vivid imaginative life, and a readiness for more formal learning. As the child moves through the next years, faculties for more sequential and logical thought begin to unfold. The ability to be fully at home in the pictorial world of imagination remains the child’s most vital asset at this stage. At Three Cedars, students from Grades 1 through 8 develop their imaginative capacities and mastery of academics, arts, and movement through increasingly complex activities. They experience - rather than being taught - self-esteem and confidence, conflicts and their resolution, respect for the world and all its creatures within the enduring relationship with classmates and class teacher.

High School - Truth, Discrimination, and Judgment

Three Cedars Waldorf School offers Waldorf Education to students in preschool through Grade 8. Our school community is fortunate to be closely associated with the Seattle Waldorf High School, which many of our Grade 8 families select for their student's high school years.

Adolescents are on a search for truth, developing capacities for critical thinking and judgment. They begin to experience the power of their own thinking, along with a healthy, valuable idealism and a vulnerable sensitivity. The adolescent psyche needs worthy moral qualities to emulate and an expanded consciousness of the world within which to co-create one’s future. Through years of daily artistic expression and an academically challenging curriculum, Waldorf Education culminates in the High School grades with a conscious awakening of all the human capacities.

Community

Students - and their families - who attend Three Cedars Waldorf School find a place where they are truly welcomed and respected for who they are, and a community they can call home. We hope our website will inspire you to further discover our unique and vibrant school culture. We look forward to welcoming you for a tour, a festival, or a class play, and to sharing who we are with you.

Welcome!