Grades 1 - 6 » South Shore Waldorf School

Grades 1 to 6

The school day begins with a long, uninterrupted main lesson, as children are freshest for academic work in the morning. Main lesson topics include language arts, science, math, history or geography and are taught in blocks of three to five weeks. This main lesson allows the teacher to develop a wide variety of activities around the subject at hand. In the younger grades, lively rhythmic activities get the circulation going and bring children together as a group; they recite poems connected with the main lesson, practice tongue twisters to limber up speech, and work with concentration exercises using body movements. After the day’s lesson, students record what they learned in their lesson books.

Following recess, teachers present shorter lessons, including foreign languages, drama, art, gardening, poetry, movement, music and Eurythmy. Knitting, crocheting, needlework, weaving, sewing and other handcrafts are introduced in an exciting progression as the childrens’ abilities develop.Thus the day has a rhythm that helps overcome fatigue and enhances balanced learning.

All students participate in all basic subjects regardless of their special aptitudes. The purpose of studying a subject is not to make a student into a professional mathematician, historian, or biologist, but to awaken and educate capacities that every human being needs. Naturally, one student is more gifted in math and another in science or history, but the mathematician needs the humanities, and the historian needs math and science. The choice of a vocation is left to the free decision of the adult, but one’s early education gives one a palette of experience from which to choose the particular colors that one’s interests, capacities, and life circumstances allow. In a Waldorf high school, older students pursue special projects and elective subjects and activities, nevertheless, the goal remains: each subject studied should contribute to the development of a well-balanced individual.

Curriculum Overview by Grade

Grade one:

Pictorial, experimental and phonetic introduction to letters
The qualities of numbers and introduction to division, multiplication, addition and subtraction, mental arithmetic through experience
Form drawing as preparation for writing and geometry
Speech, drama, fairy and folk tales and nature stories
Making needles and beginning to knit

Grade two:

Nature legends and animal fables
Reading, writing and arithmetic with larger numbers
Elements of grammar
Crochet and knitting

Grade three:

Old Testament stories introduce history
Study of practical life: farming, housing, clothing
Reading, spelling, original compositions, grammar, punctuation and parts of speech, cursive writing
Higher multiplication tables, weight, measure and money
Crocheting, knitting and sewing