The first grade is a time of awakening to the wonders of literature, music, knitting, movement, numbers and letters, painting, drawing and writing, and foreign language. The basic mode of learning for the first grade student comes through picture images, stories, and rhythmic movement.
Out of the wealth of fairy tales from all over the world come the picture images which lead to an introduction of the letters. For example, from the story The Fisherman and his Wife can come the letter W sprouting out of the waves and an F emerging from the fish. The letters are presented in the same manner as language itself developed – from picture to hieroglyphic to symbol. The children hear the stories, draw the pictures, paint and draw the forms, then write the letters. The writing of words follows letter learning, and from these words reading is introduced.
These same principles are used in the teaching of song, dance, circle games, and flute playing, as well as mathematics. Students are introduced to the processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, the qualities of numbers, and rhythmic counting. Concepts combined with movement, the imagination, and artistic activities serve to enhance the learning process and integrate the entire curriculum.
A loving artistic atmosphere surrounds the students in grade one as the teacher guides them to develop the joy of learning and a respect for one another and the world around them.
The second grade builds upon the foundations laid in the first grade. Learning continues through picture images, rhythmic movement, music, art, games, foreign language study, and handwork. Longer, more complex fairy tales and nature stories are told along with fables, legends, local folklore, and stories about the lives of saints. The animals in the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine illustrate the different aspects of human nature, whether noble or cowardly, vulnerable or strong.
Reading and writing instruction evolves from these classical stories and legends. Work with the four basic math processes continues and progresses to mental arithmetic, carrying, and borrowing. Multiplication tables are introduced through rhythmic movement. Crafts, games, music, foreign language and nature walks complete a well-rounded curriculum that focuses on the whole child.
Life takes on a different quality in the third grade. Just as fairy tales in the first grade and fables and legends in the second grade nourished the children, so do stories from the Old Testament form a treasury of sustenance for third grade students. The powerful story of the casting out of Adam and Eve from the Garden closely parallels the third grade child’s own experiences; she leaves behind the paradise of early childhood as she becomes more aware of good and evil. Third grade students grapple with their earthly existence through experiences of farming, clothing, housing, and social relationships.
The study of farming and gardening is a fun filled block that develops an awareness and understanding of the interrelationships of all forms of life. Planting, harvesting, cooking, and composting all bring a sense of wonder and delight. Making butter, grinding wheat, and baking bread are a few of the meaningful activities brought to our third grade children.
The study of animal and human shelters, emphasizing different times and climates, develops an understanding of animal’s and man’s creativity and their use of materials and tools. Students make models of shelters and frequently do some real construction. Practical domestic arts are visited such a soap making or the processing of wool from sheep to shawl.
The basic theme of practical life is integrated into all subjects. Students begin regular library visits and read about the things they are experiencing. Cursive writing is introduced and the study of grammar, spelling, and punctuation commences. The composition of original stories becomes the focus of writing. Students study time, money, weights and measures, all used as tools in dealing with life.
Children of this age have an innate feeling of awe and wonder for the world and are alive to the magic of nature. Nature stories abound in the third grade, and students experience nature first hand with walks and trips to forest, field, and stream. Much information is transmitted through these studies, and an important goal is to develop a positive attitude toward nature.
Third grade students have several specialty classes including foreign language, handwork, movement, and music. Singing instruction continues, and the diatonic flute and traditional musical notation are introduced.
Between nine and ten years of age children begin to awaken to a new independence in their feeling life. This is a turning point, when basic attitudes formed about themselves and the world may very well be carried through life. In the fourth grade students study the human being as mirrored in the animal kingdom, and they learn to feel in themselves the qualities that each animal has developed as its own: the fierce clarity of the eagle, the courage and enormous heart-breathing system of the lion, the open, sensitive feeling of the mouse with its rapid breathing, the loving calmness and powerful metabolic system of the cow and buffalo. The children can feel in themselves the balance of all these qualities.
But unlike the animal, man stands upright with free hands and can adapt to many different environments. He thinks and laughs, and he has self-consciousness. Several themes run through the man and animal blocks, but a common thread is to gain insight into the human being and to develop a love and responsibility for the animal kingdom. With their new awareness students will dramatize different animals, paint and sketch them, and write descriptions of them in their main lesson books. Consequently, the introduction to the study of nature and science is imaginative and artistic.
Also in the realm of feeling are studies of the Norse, Celtic, and Finnish myths. The mighty characters of Thor, Odin, and the cunning Loki move through Middle Earth to their last battle Ragnorak, the twilight of the gods, the end and the beginning of all things. As they listen to these powerful stories fourth grade students experience the same full range of emotions that they are beginning to experience and apply independently in their own lives.
Norse Mythology is integrated into form drawing as students sketch the weaving designs, symbols, and decorative motifs of the Norse people or the Celts.
Geography is introduced in the fourth grade, and study begins locally. Initially students draw maps of the classroom, the school building, and their route to school. They gradually branch out to their town, county, and state. Geography is experienced in a very real way. Students delight in stories of local towns, mountain ranges, deserts, great valleys, the coastal regions. Crops, minerals, and water resources become alive in these places, a part of their inner space.
Reading is an important activity in the fourth grade, and composition and grammar are emphasized. Math problems become more complicated and fractions and decimals are introduced. Cross-stitching commences in handwork and meter and time signatures are presented in music. Painting, games, gardening, foreign languages, and eurythmy keep fourth grade students very busy.
Greek mythology is taken up in the fifth grade. The debates and struggles of the Greek gods with one another are more complicated and engage the children’s mental powers more than did the simple, powerful action of the Norse myths. A constant theme of metamorphosis in the Greek stories — evolutionary, organic change in all things in dramatic and even unexpected ways — perfectly sets the stage for the fifth grade nature study of the plant kingdom with all its incredible changing forms growing out of one another.
Seed to root, and shoot to leaves of changing shape and size, to expanding flower petals, flower parts, fruit, and seeds once more. From tiny algae to towering oaks, a sense of oneness in the cycles of life is slowly felt. The unity of the plant kingdom with the earth’s surface is a major theme the children can wonder at as they sketch, paint, and write descriptions of the plant world.
The children of the fifth grade are crossing the bridge from imaginative thinking to the beginning of historical or time consciousness. They are introduced to the development of Western man as it evolved from ancient India to ancient Greece. They are given the flavor of ancient India and its Vedas, the Ramayana, the Mahabarata, and the stories of Buddha, or of Krishna. They learn of old Persia and Zoroaster, they relate to Babylonia through the Epic of Gilgamesh and cuneiform writing, and to Egypt with its mythology, monuments, and hieroglyphics. Finally, they take up the richness of ancient Greece: the Iliad and the Odyssey in story form (as they were once originally told), the biographies and stories of the Persian Wars and the Golden Age of Greece when history as we know it first began to be written down.
Also in the fifth grade, the children continue to work in geometry (begun pictorially in the form drawing of earlier years), up to a pictorial presentation of the Pythagorean theorem. They continue in handwork and crafts, often by making parts of their own clothing, needle knitting socks, hats, and mittens, and making toys such as animals, dolls, and doll houses.
In math, they work through fractions and decimals applied in as real and practical ways as possible. With geography, they expand their work to include all of North America. Colorful freehand map drawing helps them to develop a clear, personal understanding of geography. Composition work and spelling are also woven into the main lesson work.
Along with the regular class presentations and plays throughout the school year, woodworking, music, modeling, foreign languages, painting, drawing, gardening, sports, and eurythmy are all part of the fifth grade curriculum.
Main lessons continue through all the childhood and adolescent years, in singing and instrument work beginning with recorders and violins in first and second grades, and later adding ensemble, choir and orchestral work. In sixth grade, the children study the acoustics of musical notes.
They have a further introduction to physics in optics (lenses and light refraction), heat, electricity and magnetism, so that the child gets a complete overview of what many can experience observing the inanimate world while he is at an age to see the outer world with a special clarity just before the storms of adolescence set in.
The mineral kingdom is treated in the geography main lesson, as is the study of South America. Astronomy is introduced by observation, tracing the moon, planets and constellations through the night sky. Geometry (including making geometric string figures), the beginnings of geometric proofs, and light and shadow drawing are all taken up in sixth grade.
Historical stories continue in later Greek and Roman history. The children at this age feel a special connection with the biographies of the definite personalities of Roman times. There is real interest in the stories of Hannibal and the idealistic struggles of the Republic with the brothers Gracchi, Cicero, and the Caesars. They learn of the great deeds of the Roman Empire that were lost but still echo in our own time: roads, order, organization, laws, and mastery of the physical world. They also learn of the slavery, greed, and materialism that were washed away in the breakdown of the Empire. They study the development of Christianity as it related to the Roman Empire. The study of the life of the Middle Ages becomes a satisfying entrance into a world of outer order and authority (similar to the order of geometric drawing). This helps to bring a certain balance to the students themselves. In handcrafts, the children may make leather sandals, perhaps very like those of the Romans.
Critical thinking blossoms between the ages of 12 and 14, and the warmth of the earlier years of Waldorf education now begins to bear real fruit. Students have developed a rich store of understanding and connections with themselves and their world which leads to the ability to think more clearly and to meet, with confidence, the challenges of adolescence. Seventh grade Waldorf students find great satisfaction in the ideas and feelings echoing out of their childhood, instead of an emptiness and alienation that frequently meets the thinking of middle school age children.
Seventh grade is a year of discovering and exploring the self, the beginning of the growth of individuality. The time is ripe to study the Renaissance, an age when man dared to reach beyond his limits, to rebel against authority and chose to see the world through new eyes. In the arts these qualities were exemplified through the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Students find out about noble, far-reaching thinkers such as Galileo, Copernicus, Brahe, Visalius, and Paracelsus. The word science comes from the Latin world scio — to know. The scholars of the Renaissance were not content to read Aristotle; they had to know — so like seventh-graders themselves!
During the Renaissance a whole new age was born. Seventh graders learn of the accomplishments of Prince Henry the Navigator, Marco Polo, Vasco de Gama, Magellan, and Columbus, and their horizons expand through the study of Asian and European geography. A preoccupation with the Renaissance appears in many aspects of the seventh grade curriculum; students study astronomy and the human body, learning how captivated Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were with the body’s movements.
Science studies also include nutrition and hygiene and such practical tasks as a complete study of bread making from field and mill to bakery. Physics topics include a continuation of electricity and magnetism and an introduction to simple mechanics. The first principles of chemistry, such as the processes of combustion, are introduced.
Seventh grade students study English Literature, in particular the Arthurian Legends, and continue to develop their writing composition and speech skills. The work of spelling and grammar also continue. Mathematics includes work with powers and roots, positive and negative numbers, algebra, and perspective geometry, another subject of the Renaissance.
Throughout the year core academic subjects are balanced by artistic and practical activities such as gardening, charcoal drawing, painting, clay modeling, woodworking, handwork and movement. Students continue with one or more foreign languages. Music study includes the introduction of madrigals and other Renaissance music as well as music theory and recorder ensemble work. As always, the curriculum strives to maintain a healthy balance of thinking, feeling, and willing activities.
The eighth grade is the final year under the guidance of the main lesson teacher. After that students will have a different teacher for each subject area. In the eighth grade students come to grips with present day life by looking at the personalities and forces of today. But to understand the present it is necessary to first gain a perspective of the past. Students and teacher explore earlier times including the American and French Revolutions and the Industrial Revolution.
Through stories and biography students take a look at representative democracy in its infancy and learn about some of the brilliant personalities that shaped American history. Because they have journeyed through the preceding ages – developing an understanding of the Greeks, the Romans striving for law, the deep reverence of the people of the Middle Ages, and the powerful individuality of the Renaissance – students begin to see how the formative years of our modern times had its roots in the past.
Science studies include organic chemistry, anatomy, physics and nutrition. Eighth grade students, who are experiencing a growth spurt, explore the mechanics of the human body including the skeleton and supporting muscle. The ear and eye are also studied. Simple mechanics is broadened to include the steam engine and hydraulics which were among the first developments of the Industrial Revolution. Also studied are the internal combustion engine and the introduction of the assembly line which lead to economic growth on a world-wide scale.
World geography is explored from an economic point of view: the “have” and “have not” nations, the problems of development and resources, and the new interdependence of man on a global scale. Students are introduced to China and Russia, and climatography and meteorology may also be studied. An overview of art history is presented.
Mathematics study includes bookkeeping, business math, algebra, and geometry Students construct mobiles of the five regular Platonic solids, explore linear equations and algebraic sentences, and apply their knowledge of algebra to practical problems such as horsepower and Fahrenheit-Centigrade comparisons. The geometric concepts of the locus in ellipse, hyperbola, and parabola are introduced.
A rich and varied study of the language arts include a continuation of reading, spelling, and grammar with a special focus on the composition and presentation of scientific reports. Waldorf grades classes perform plays each year, but in Eighth Grade the production is usually longer. Many classes perform a Shakespeare play in their last year of grade school.
Specialty classes include foreign language, woodworking, pottery, modeling, music, handwork, painting, and movement. Music study will include ensemble work, note reading, and music theory.