May is, above all, a tender month. The world outside is still soft. The mornings remain cool enough to carry dew well into the day. As we say in preschool, Lady Spring is still moving about with her paintbrush, painting rainbows into the flowers. The children feel this too. They are more likely to cup a roly-poly in their hands, watching as it explores their fingers and arms, than to set it loose immediately. I am inspired by a simple puppet show and story being told in the preschool right now: a fairy baby is left in a daffodil while the fairy mother helps Lady Spring bring leaves back to the trees and blossoms to the meadow. The creatures of the forest gather to watch over and sing to the sleeping baby. This instinct toward care, both in the story and in our children, is not accidental. It is the season speaking through them.
In Waldorf education, we understand tenderness not as sentimentality, but as a foundation for learning. When a seven-year-old feels the furry belly of a caterpillar, they are doing something quite sophisticated. They are learning through reverence. Rudolf Steiner argued that reverence is among the most important qualities we can cultivate in the young child.
As parents and educators, our task this month is to tend tenderness as we would a seedling, protecting it from too much wind or water. A student who sees their teacher pause to admire the unfurling of a fern frond, or stop to smell the jasmine vine growing along the fence at Hawk Creek Farm without plucking it, learns that the world is worthy of gentle attention.
In a faculty meeting last month, a colleague introduced an anthroposophical exercise: studying a piece of art by asking only observational questions. Whose eyes are those? How many apples are in the tree? Why is one side of the tree shaded while the other is not? We found that sitting with the questions, without needing answers, creates both space and strength. Answering them too quickly can undermine the work of the moment. In this spirit, we can borrow a tool from the early childhood teacher’s handbook: instead of answering each question that arises, we respond with, “I wonder.”
Consider, too, the tenderness and wonder we extend to ourselves and to one another in community. Spring brings a natural buoyancy, but it can also stir restlessness. Just as children long to be outside during long winter days, adults may feel the pressure of the year’s remaining months and their lengthening to-do lists. May is a good time to slow down rather than speed up, to lengthen our pauses and soften our expectations. Take a moment to celebrate wonder and curiosity. Let us treat one another with the same tenderness we hope to see in the children.
I invite you to try something: start a “wondering jar” in your classroom or home, a place where children and adults can add a small object that caught their attention, or leave a note of curiosity or a question. Make time each week to sit together and simply look at what has been gathered. No answers to the questions. No assessment. No judgement. No agenda. Only gentle, loving, tender attention.
