About Us

The Flame Tree Kindergarten Fiji was officially established in the year 2012 and was given a Certificate of Recognition of a School under the Ministry of Education. This wonderful haven was founded by a lovely lady by the name of Anja Grapentin. The kindergarten is a stand-alone establishment. 

It's a community-focused kindergarten based on Waldorf Steiner's principles of teaching and learning. Waldorf Kindergarten Fiji is a parent initiated nonprofit, organization arisen from the need of a truly holistic and nurturing early childhood education in Fiji.

We aim to follow the educational principles of Rudolf Steiner. The children are from 3 to 6 years old. The children learn in a warm beautiful and natural environment and the teachers work with the rhythm of the day/ week/ seasons and the child’s inner force of imitation and will power. According to Rudolf Steiner children follow a 7-year rhythm in their development and modern science confirms this in terms of neurological and social maturity which assures much faster learning. Therefore, our older children should ideally be 6 1/2 years old when leaving the kindergarten. But this also largely depends on the primary school of your child. Our overall aim is to “instil a life-long love for learning”.

Generally, one can speak of the development of the hand, heart and head. The hands are an image of the physical development through increasingly challenging movement on play equipment outside or through finer activities inside and its deep connection to MASTERING THE WILL. The heart is a image of the emotional development through social activities, sharing tasks, perceiving oneself and the other people’s personality. The FEELING WORLD is growing here. The head is of course an image of the development of the intellectual capabilities through the language and conceptual tasks. This is the WORLD OF THINKING which is so vital for the school entry and yet cannot be achieved without the foundation of the other two.

We will look at each child, at its movement skills on the physical and neurological side, at its perception as a way to receive the other, at its speech as way of expression, the clarity of it, the diversity or bilingual issues at the imagination and creative energy as it changes from immersed play to creative fantasy play (this will tell us about the child being more or less grounded), at its ability to concentrate and its motivation and at the social skills and its moral and ethical ability to judge.

We will assess each child (unnoticed by your child) before entering primary school as a help to the parent and the future teacher. Ask us about the criteria and we will happily share our knowledge with you.