Waldorf Education in the Grades
The feeling stage of a child’s development comes into force once first grade is started. This stage is marked physically within the child with the loss of baby teeth and the growth of the adult teeth – the child is now physically ready to chew and digest the abstracts of academics at around the age of seven. Earlier, the child knew the world through imitation; she is now ready to know it on a more conscious level by means of imagination. Whatever speaks to the imagination and is truly felt, stirs and activates the feelings and is remembered and learned. While teaching the necessary academics, the Waldorf elementary curriculum is also designed to cultivate this feeling intelligence and takes the child through a journey of human development that responds to each child as he progresses through the grades and develops. From the primordial, dreamy world of the fairy tale that the child hears in first grade as he begins to wake up from the first stages of childhood, to the stories of creation and the Garden of Eden he hears in third grade as he feels his own ego stirring and begins to feel separate from the world around him, to the study of the Renaissance in the sixth grade curriculum as he begins to experience the awakening of his own intellect, the macrocosm of the development of mankind is experienced within the microcosm of the child on his path to maturity.
The day begins in each class with morning circle – a verse will be recited, some form of movement activity is engaged, bean bags may be tossed around while the multiplication table is recited, seasonal songs are sung. After the circle, the children set to work in the main lesson in which the academic subject are taught during an uninterrupted period of time usually lasting about one and a half to two hours. Each subject is taught in an intensive block of three or more weeks – for example, addition may be taught for three weeks, followed by four weeks of reading. This way, students explore in depth a particular topic without distractions. The rest of the students’ day builds upon the academic subjects learned in the main lesson and some are taught by specialty teachers: two foreign languages are taught, Russian and Spanish, music, including singing, begins with pentatonic flutes in the first grade and onto stringed instruments in the third, handwork such as knitting, crocheting, embroidering and artistic activities such as water color, beeswax modeling and clay sculpting.
The lessons are represented to the students by way of oral tradition. For example, math is taught to the first grade by introducing the king of addition and the queen of subtraction – the concepts of each process taught via storytelling. There are no tests, textbooks or computers in the Waldorf elementary classroom, such items inhibit and close down the child’s natural creative ability and thinking processes. Ideally, the same teacher travels with his class through the grades and deeply knows each child’s strengths and weaknesses and works closely with the parents to enhance the child’s growth. The students listen and take in the teacher’s lessons, and then go to the blank page of their lesson books and recreate what they have been taught. Pictures are drawn of the theme of the lesson, and the younger classes will copy down what the teacher has written on the board while the older students will learn to use their own powers of composition in owning what the teacher has taught. In this manner, the students create their own textbooks of what they have learned in class; the thinking and creative processes are fully engaged in such work.