GRS HomeGreat River School Currently offers Grades 1 -4, with a new grade added each year.
Grade One
Across all subjects, our curriculum is designed to introduce academics gradually while engaging the young child’s intellect, imagination and body in the joy of learning.
Mathematics
First graders learn about numbers, counting, and the four basic math operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The math curriculum includes stories that feature the quality of numbers and movement exercises that help imprint math operations kinaesthetically through stomping, clapping, and tossing bean bags back and forth in defined patterns.
Language Arts
The gradual Waldorf method of teaching reading is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the curriculum, especially in an era when most schools are pushing formal learning to earlier and earlier ages. The first grade language arts curriculum moves from the spoken word, in the form of fairy tales from around the world which are told to the class by the teacher, to learning the letters of the alphabet as shapes and sounds, to writing basic sentences toward the end of the year. Reciting poems and verses out loud is also an important part of the curriculum.
French
In first grade, the children learn through songs, stories, games, and puppetry. The focus is on learning to love the sounds of another language, becoming flexible in pronouncing sounds very different from those of the child’s own language, and appreciating other cultures.
Music
First graders learn to play the pentatonic flute. They also do a great deal of singing as part of morning circle time. Songs taught in grade 1 generally have a nature theme. The class play typically includes singing as well.
Art and Handwork
In grade one the children are introduced to an appreciation of beauty as art is an integral part of every subject in the Waldorf academic curriculum. First graders draw numbers and letters with beeswax crayons, have weekly painting lessons with the Waldorf wet-on-wet watercolour method, model small sculptures with beeswax during story time, and create seasonal art projects such as paper lanterns, nature crafts, etc.
Handwork is taught as a distinct subject in Waldorf schools. In first grade handwork, the children make their own wooden knitting needles and learn to knit.
Physical Education
The children typically begin every day with a 30 minute circle time that involves moving as a group while singing and reciting poems, verses, and number games. They have recess twice a day for free play outdoors. They also take regular nature walks to observe the seasonal cycles of the year. In addition, the children participate in games classes, where movement through various cooperative games is practiced. Finally, we try to offer eurhythmy, an art of movement developed by Rudolf Steiner which uses gestures and body movements to express the sounds of the spoken language.
Form Drawing
It is a Waldorf technique of drawing geometric shapes to help develop concentration and other helpful qualities in young children. Form drawing lessons focus on two elements throughout the first grade year: straight lines and curved lines. The children learn how every shape in nature consists of either straight lines, curves, or a combination of both.
Drama
Each Waldorf class typically performs a play every year. In first grade, the play is usually a fairy tale such as Snow White and Rose Red.
GradeTwo
Children become aware that humans can be both generous and selfish, brave and cowardly, loud and quiet. The Waldorf second grade curriculum responds to the tensions in human behaviour with a year of fables, nature stories, and folktales about two themes: Saints and holy people whose strength, courage, and compassion represent the best of human nature and Fables whose antics give light-hearted lessons in what happens when humans let themselves be ruled by laziness, greed, and other negative impulses. Helping children begin to learn that they can choose to follow their higher impulses is the underlying spiritual theme of second grade.
Mathematics:
Children start the year by reviewing the qualities of numbers and the four basic math operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. They start to explore the concepts of place value and begin learning to carry and borrow. As in first grade, they play math games in morning circle time, learning the times tables with games such as tossing bean bags, clapping, stomping, tapping, counting rhythmically by ones, twos, threes, reciting the times tables backward, and so on. They do mental math exercises and solve word problems. By the end of the year, they will typically have memorized the times tables up to 12 x 12.
Language Arts: Reading and Writing
The reading curriculum retains its strong focus on creating mental pictures for the children by introducing the spoken word first, then writing, with reading as the final step. The typical learning sequence starts with the teacher telling the class a story such as "Androcles and the Lion" from Aesop’s Fables or the story of Saint Francis of Assisi taming a wolf. Next day, the children act out or retell the story. Then the class works as a group to come up with sentences about the story, which the teacher writes on the board. The children copy the sentences from the board into their blank Main Lesson books. Finally, the children read aloud the sentences they’ve written. The children also memorize poetry, write it in their Main Lesson books, and read the poems out loud. Toward the end of second grade, the class may break into groups to practice reading from Easy Reader books. Those who still aren’t reading well aren’t pressured to learn faster. Many children only become really comfortable with reading in third grade, when reading practice intensifies. The class also works on writing. They may learn the lower case letters if they didn’t already cover this in first grade, and begin punctuating their sentences. They often start learning cursive writing.
French: Pronunciation and Games
Students continue the French they began studying in first grade. The focus is still on learning the sounds and proper pronunciation of the language through songs, stories, games, and puppetry.
Music: Pentatonic Flute
The children continue regular lessons in the pentatonic flute, which they started learning in first grade. Music classes occur twice a week. Singing remains an important part of the curriculum. Second graders sing regularly during morning circle and as part of their class play.
Art and Handwork: Drawing, Watercolour Painting, Knitting, Crocheting
Art is an integral part of every subject in the Waldorf academic curriculum. Second graders draw with beeswax crayons, have weakly painting lessons with the Waldorf wet-on-wet watercolour method, where they focus on the interplay of primary colors. They model small sculptures with beeswax during story time, and may do seasonal art projects such as making paper lanterns or tissue paper window transparencies. In handwork, the children learn to crochet and also continue knitting .
Physical Education: Circle Time, Recess, Games
Children begin the day with a 30 minute circle time that involves moving as a group while singing and reciting poems, verses, and math games. Some circle time exercises focus on integrating the children’s ability to move smoothly across the body’s various midlines: left/right, forward/backward, top/bottom. The students have recess three times a day for free play outdoors. They also take regular nature walks to observe the seasonal cycles of the year. In Games class the focus is on learning to cooperate, being a good sport, and enjoying the act of movement. Competitive sports are not played at this age in Waldorf schools, and are usually discouraged outside school until the children are older.
Form Drawing: is a Waldorf technique of drawing geometric shapes to help develop concentration and other helpful qualities in young children. Form drawing lessons in second grade are more complex than the simple lines and curves the children drew in first grade. They may include running and repeated forms that change from one shape to another. These forms are designed to help the children with the flowing movements of cursive writing. Second grade children also work on drawing midline symmetrical forms.
Drama: Play Based on Saints/Animals Curriculum
In second grade, the play is usually based on the story of a saint or animal. Across all subjects, the Waldorf second-grade curriculum is designed to gradually build a child’s academic
skills while engaging the young child’s intellect, imagination and body in the joy of learning.
Grade Three
Children enter their ninth year no longer content to accept what once they accepted unquestioningly. Like Adam and Eve, who perceived their nakedness after eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, the nine-year old begins to see differently, with the result that they are full of questions, criticisms, and doubts.
The nine-year old is experiencing a transformation of great significance. Rudolf Steiner says that before the age of nine the major part of our being is not yet incarnated, and so we do not sense ourselves as particularly separate from the world. If we watch young children, we notice how fully they relate to the world; how they imitate unconsciously whatever surrounds them. We see small children mimicking exactly their parents' stance or expression and kindergarteners who begin to follow the teacher's finger play with no prompting. As the child approaches nine, however, this unconscious imitation and relation recedes. Now the child begins to feel a sense of self as something apart, separated from what was whole. The nine year old may feel insecure about his position in the world. Parents and teachers have faults; nature is sometimes destructive; and death becomes a perceived reality. The children need strong support to move securely through this transition.
The stories of the Old Testament serve as a metaphor for the children's inner experience at this age. Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden, and the Grade Three children see that they must one day leave the parental nest and make their own way in the world. The children's need to experience how we provide for the basic necessities of life is met in the curriculum through the study of farming, gardening, food preparation and house building.
The children develop an appreciation for the important work of the farmer in nurturing, cultivating, and protecting each of the kingdoms of nature. Experiences may include baking, canning, and a two night visit to a working farm. The children also plant and harvest a small garden at the school.
The study of house building starts with the discovery that our first home on earth is our body. The children learn about many different dwellings that people have built over the course of time and in different parts of the world. The children may work on a small house building project in class or on the school grounds.
The children learn the ways that we human beings have developed to orient ourselves on the earth through the study of measurement. The class discovers that ancient peoples marked the passage of time by observing the cycles of nature. They relive the invention of various devices to measure time, and may make their own sundial or water clock. This leads naturally to a discussion of how distance was originally measured by time, for example, a day's journey. The children learn that modern units of distance measure originated in the human body, the king's foot became our foot and the king's thumb width became our inch. Thus the Grade Three students see that "the human being is the measure of all things."
In the third grade the fundamentals of grammar are introduced. The children learn that there are different kinds of words. Some words (nouns) tell the names of things, while "doing words" (verbs) describe what happens in a sentence. Regular reading practice becomes part of the class rhythm; cursive writing skills are introduced and/or strengthened. We see in the flow of cursive writing an image of the breath's movement as it links together one sound after another.
The children, through the curriculum, experience the multitude of ways in which the one separates into the many. From learning to tell time, to linear measurement, to the parts of grammar, we sense the new importance of individual parts.
The stories of the Old Testament: the Exodus, the struggles of the Hebrew people, the wrestling with moral issues speak deeply to the children's inner questions. The Grade Three play may be Samson and Delilah or Noah and the Flood. Just as the Grade Three students delight in forming clubs, us-against-them battles, boys versus girls, they truly love plays that show good versus evil, and Old Testament justice.
So, the "nine year change" presents a challenging time for parents, children, and teachers alike. As the child becomes more conscious, new relationships must be formed, and awareness, though it brings great gifts, is not easy.
Click on the first image to begin the slide show.
