About the Teachers

Johanna J. Hose was born in the Netherlands and has lived in the U.S. for the past 20 years. She first worked in a pre-school in West Grove, Pennsylvania during High School and then embarked on an artistic journey through three Universities in Colorado, New York, and Connecticut respectively, ending up with two BA degrees, one in Fine Art and one in English Lit. She feels this love of art and literature has immeasurable usefulness as a teacher expressing the joy of language and art to her students.

She recently graduated from Sound Circle Center; the Waldorf teacher training program in Seattle.

Johanna and her husband David, have two boys Benjamin (10) and Yoshi (7). They live in Kirkland very near to the Kings Gate Library or just north of Evergreen Hospital, just off of I-405.


         Benjamin, David, Johanna, and Yoshi Hose

Tanya Preston was born in Belarus, in the pretty town of Grodno. Her educational journey led her to take degrees in History and Education, and Early Childhood Education and Psychology at the universities of Grodno and Minsk. She has worked for eighteen years as a pre-school teacher and principal in Belarus, and seven years as a Waldorf pre-school kindergarten teacher in Hawaii at the Honolulu Waldorf School. During these years, she completed training as a lead kindergarten teacher in the Kula Makua teacher training in Hawaii and also The West Coast Institute in Duncan, British Columbia.

She has a love for puppetry with its imaginative and therapeutic qualities and has put on many shows for children and parents. She is a member of the North American Association for the Renewal of Puppetry Arts. Her husband, Michael has been a Waldorf class teacher for twenty-three years and is teaching 8th grade at Three Cedars in Bellevue. Tanya has a grown-up daughter in Hawaii who graduated from the Honolulu Waldorf High School and a little granddaughter aged three.

This will be Tanya's 3rd year in Washington State, teaching with Johanna at Sweet Peas Preschool.


         Tanya Preston

Annika Fae was born in Honolulu, Hawaii and lived on the warm shores of the island for a magical couple of years. After a military directed tour of the East and West coasts, her family moved to Seattle when she was eight. Since then she’s been a thorough Seattle native, growing up hiking and camping, gardening, loving the rain, the ephemeral winter snow, the hot dry summers. She especially loved her summers at camp and has taught children of all ages at summer camp off and on since the age of 17. She received a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Seattle University and worked in the field for five years before realizing that this was not her true path. Upon discovering Waldorf education, she knew she had found her place in the world.

Annika taught at her own home preschool, Lavender Lane, for three years. Then, feeling the need to teach at a full Waldorf school, was an assistant kindergarten teacher at Bright Water Waldorf School. Having completed her Waldorf Early Childhood Education teacher training at Sound Circle Center last spring, she is now looking forward to having a small preschool class again.

Annika brings a love and enthusiasm for the Waldorf early childhood curriculum, delighting in bringing her artistic talents to the room, the circles and songs, stories and puppetry, festivals and crafts. She is also passionate about sensing the personal and developmental needs of each child and the class as a whole, and providing what is needed in the moment or in the long term to bringing balance, healing and wholeness.

Annika is thrilled to help form this newest addition to Sweet Peas Preschool, the Buttercups, and to be working with Tanya and Johanna.


         Annika Fae

The Waldorf Preschool; a time for imitation and play
Young children live in a rich world of play and discovery. They are completely open and deeply influenced by all that surrounds them. What they see and hear they imitate; unconscious imitation is the natural mode of learning for the preschool child. Everything around the child is absorbed. Accordingly, the preschool is a world of harmony, beauty and warmth. The teachers themselves, in their attitudes, feelings and actions, strive to be worthy of the children‘s unquestioning imitation.

In this secure and intimate environment, the children learn about themselves and their world. Their days are filled with artistic and practical work, imaginative play and fairy tales, puppetry and songs, circle games and healthy outdoor play.

Toys in the preschool are made from nature‘s gifts: wood, sea shells, stones, pine cones, lamb‘s wool. The simpler the toys the more active the children‘s imagination can be.

Formal intellectual schooling is quite purposely excluded from the Waldorf Preschool. With an active imagination, energetic physical development, and a true reverence for the world, children are best prepared for the challenges of formal schooling and later life.
(Paraphrased from the South African Federation of Waldorf Schools)

What is Waldorf Education?
Waldorf education balances artistic, academic and practical work educating the whole child, hand and heart as well as mind. Its innovative methodology and developmentally-oriented curriculum, permeated with the arts, address the child's changing consciousness as it unfolds, stage by stage. Imagination and creativity are cultivated as well as cognitive growth and a sense of responsibility for the earth and its inhabitants. Under the warm and active instruction of their teachers, children are provided with a creative and nurturing environment in which to develop, grow and learn.

Since its founding by Rudolf Steiner in 1919, the Waldorf school movement has grown to over 800 schools throughout the world, over 150 of them in the United States and Canada. Increasing recognition from parents and educators has led to rapid expansion and, with it, a shortage of trained Waldorf teachers.

Steiner's detailed psychology of child development, described early in the 20th century, has been supported by modern research in education and neuropsychology. Through Waldorf education, Steiner hoped that young people would develop the capacities of soul and intellect and the strength of will that would prepare them to meet the challenges of their own time and the future.
(Excerpt from www.steinercollege.org/waldorf.html )