Each grade holds a special curriculum designed to given the child a developmentally appropriate academic challenge that is carefully balanced with the integration of arts, movement, music, and extensive time in nature. As children progress developmentally, the curriculum transforms to meet their changing inner requirements.
One of the greatest strengths of Waldorf education is the class teacher. In First Grade your child will meet the teacher than remains with the class for up to eight years of progression. Because children learn and grow under the guidance of the same adult, the classroom atmosphere is one of familial comfort and trust.
Our hope is to provide a curriculum that will educate your child in a supportive, creative manner that provides them with the tools to go forward as emotionally healthy, confident individuals.
Curriculum
Arts, drama, and speech enrich Main Lessons, and help the children integrate beauty, form and intellect. Each student creates an ongoing record of studies in Main Lesson books, which are filled with compositions, observations, diagrams, and illustrations. In addition to academic excellence, teachers encourage colorful, artistic presentation.
First Grade
The First Grade is a time of creating wholeness and a sense of rhythm in this new world of the classroom becoming one class, learning and growing together. When the child is ready for first grade, it is appropriate to use the powers of understanding for more abstract matters, including writing, reading, and arithmetic. The class begins to learn music with the pentatonic flute, and the Main Lesson book is introduced where children learn to create their own textbooks. Letters flow from picture form: the mountain will form the M, the swan will form the S, or through an active movement, then the children will write in their main lesson books and read their own writing.
Second Grade
Literature from every culture provides fables of saints and heroes, which allow the children to form their own inner pictures of moral character. Second Grade will will broaden math skills to more complicated operations with the four processes, reading skills are expanded, and writing continues into cursive. In honor of St. Martin, who cut his cloak in two and gave half to a poor beggar, Second Grade will collect and count pennies to donate along with baked goods to those in need at Ploughshares Peace & Justice Center.
Third Grade
The Third Grade continues to work on expanded grammar and spelling, and math moves into long division. This year is often called "the turning point of childhood." The eight- or nine-year-old is going through a change that is particularly profound; you might hear Waldorf teachers referring to it as the "Crossing Point." The third-grader is becoming independent and questions everything. They are also taking special interest in practical work, which is facilitated through farming and gardening experiences, including a working stay at Live Power Farm and grape stomping at Frey Vineyards, as well as cooking, weights and measures, and a challenging building project.
Fourth Grade
In Fourth Grade, we begin to take an intense interest in our local environment. This is manifest in a study of animals we find locally as well as their various habitats. Whether we're watching whales or bearing witness to migrating birds, we strive to find a way to be true to the animal in our writing and in our visual artwork. We also look around us at the geography of this place, and look back into the past, wondering who has lived here and how they might have adapted to this environment. The children study the myths and stories of the Pomo and other regional Native American tribes, and examine how the world has changed here since various European peoples have come to the area, including Russians, Spanish and Mexican, and American. In math, we delve deeply into the world of fractions, breaking the unit into smaller and smaller pieces and finding ways to build it back up again. Truly, the world becomes more complicated the more closely we examine it! Through the nurturing, encouraging environment the teachers strive to create in the classroom, the children are led to a place of confidence in their ability to meet the world in their own way, with their own unique challenges and strengths.
Fifth Grade
In Fifth Grade, the child begins to experience a healthy balance between early childhood and approaching adolescence. It is appropriate, therefore, that the curriculum this year encourages a theme of balance. Study of ancient history begins in India, continuing with the civilizations of Persia and the great cultures of Mesopotamia. A field trip to the Egyptian Museum studying the pyramids and pharaohs precedes the civilization of the Greeks, during which students participate in a classic Greek pentathlon with activities of running, long jump, wrestling, javelin, and discus. As a continuation, of their study of the living earth, Natural Science is approached this year through Botany and Geography with a year end field trip to Yosemite National Park, enhancing the child's understanding of local geography and plant life. Building on their years of form drawing, free-hand geometry is introduced. Higher work with fractions, ratio, and proportion are studied. Decimal exercises are practices in preparation for business math, which they will study more extensively in Sixth Grade.
Sixth Grade
Boys and girls are becoming more aware of gravity and weight as they enter their sixth year of school. One of the subtlest developmental changes is a hardening of the bones. With the increasing awareness of their physical bodies the time is right for the study of the physical body of the earth. Sixth grade begins the study of geology and minerals and includes a field trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park. The study of earth is balanced by studying the sky in astronomy. Physics, acoustics, optics, magnetism, and electricity are also explored. History hollows the transition from ancient to modern, ancient Rome and the Middle Ages, to European geography. Students will learn practical math skills by starting their own business.
Seventh Grade
The Seventh Grade child is adventuring across a basic threshold experience on their way to selfhood. They enter a year of great spirit and inquiry that will lead them on an exploration into the Renaissance and Reformation. Birth in the Renaissance parallels birth in a student's thinking, feeling, and willing. World geography, physics, physiology, poetry, composition, grammar, spelling, inorganic chemistry, and pre-algebra enter this year. As an enhancement to the curriculum, students will also learn teamwork and confidence by visiting a ropes course challenge and adventuring down the river on a white water rafting excursion while visiting Ashland, OR, for the Shakespeare Festival.
Eighth Grade
The task of elementary education is to give children an understanding of humanity and the world they live in, to offer them knowledge so rich and warm as to engage their hearts and energy as well as their minds. Such an understanding is the basis of all real learning in later years. With the completion of the Eighth Grade the students should have a well-rounded general picture of human life and the universe. The Grade 8 curriculum strives to span through time with modern history and world geography. Literature, composition, and algebra are readying the student for high school. Eighth Grade students will experience such adventures as kayaking and sea cave explorations and will finalize their class fundraising efforts with a cultural experience through service. This last year of elementary school should not only bring all previous experiences to a new peak, but enable the students to enter fully and potently into the life of their own time.
