When everyone plays, everyone wins.

Uday believes in a lot of free play in the early years so that children have an active body and develop good gross motor skills. Children spend an hour playing outdoors daily, running, jumping and playing in the mud.

By the time they come to grades, they have confidence in their physical abilities and they are testing it out. With grades comes skipping games and other non competitive games to challenge their skills and body movement.

Parents who worry that their children will be left behind if they haven’t participated in team sports at an early age will be pleasantly surprised as their children step onto the field and their teams, after a few warm-up games, win! Because they have grown up moving freely in their bodies throughout the day, not just in gym, they now have the capabilities to adapt to all kinds of sports and excel in them. In the upper elementary grade years, children are given the knowledge of Indian team sports like Kho-kho and Kabaddi. With the basic knowledge of these sports, when they reach Grade 5, the Inter school Waldorf Olympics awaits the celebration of the culmination of their elementary schooling.

At the end of the Fifth Grade, when a child is of secondary school age, it is a tradition amongst Waldorf schools to hold an athletics event, that we call the Olympics, based very loosely on the original Olympics game held in Ancient Greece. In the fifth grade curriculum, pupils study Ancient Greek and Ancient Civilisations, so by the end of the school year they are very familiar with Ancient Greece.

Waldorf schools consider children of 11 years (grade 5 age) to be at the height of their strength and stamina, before the onset of puberty, and what better way to mark this time than this unique athletics event.

And the best part is that, the children have fun learning the athletic sports like Shot put, Javelin, discus, long jump, and many more.

In middle school, children play and try out different sports. There are no tryouts or “cuts” from teams in the middle school age bracket; the goal being to give all students the opportunity to participate in—and learn about—sports they are interested in.