A CLOSER LOOK: Grades One, Two & Three in a Waldorf School

The First Grade

The morning begins for the first graders with the group recitation of a poem. After the morning exercises, the children go on to what is known as the main lesson period, which occupies the first two hours of the morning, and is devoted to a single subject for two to four weeks. The first main lesson subject is painting and drawing until the children have a facility in handling crayons, paints, and paint-brush, as writing, reading, numbers, nature study and handwork are all taught in ways involving color and design.

Letter writing is presented in a lively pictorial way with the help of fairy stories. “S: may be a fairy tale snake sinuously slithering through the grass on some secret errand; the motion of the sounds becomes dynamic. The teacher shows on the blackboard drawing how the letter is embedded in the picture, how perhaps the W is hiding in the drawing of the waves. The children draw the letter in the air with their hands and on the floor as a large pattern to move on with their feet; their whole being participates in the writing experience. Then the children make their own pictures of waves, and then W’s, creating an illustrated book as each letter is presented.

When the children have mastered the sounds and can name and write them, they are ready for their first reading experience. The episodes of a story are illustrated by a series of pictures drawn on the blackboard by the teacher and in notebooks by the children. The class composes short descriptive sentences to accompany each picture. The wording is then copied from the teacher’s model. Through these activities the children learn word and sentence structure without conscious effort and have the joy of creating their own illustrated books for reading material.

Exploration of numbers begins with solving riddles such as, “What is one thing in the world that there can never be more than one of” (Me!) So the characteristics of one, two, three, etc. are explored in the children’s inner experience and in nature. Children take delight in counting, especially when the strong, rhythmic choral-speaking of the numbers is accompanied by stepping and clapping. Through activities the children befriend themselves with the form and movement of the number element, and then begin to practice the four arithmetical processes, always proceeding from wholes to parts.

Nature study takes the form of an experience of hearing the world speak, talking of life and its adventures. The child learns the true facts of nature, but always in vivid, dramatic, story form.

Handwork serves several important purposes. Knitting is an indispensable first-grade activity as there exists a close relationship between finger movement, speech and thinking. Modeling is done with honey-fragrant beeswax. Music periods are devoted to singing and playing the pentatonic recorder flute, which also helps develop finger dexterity.

The imitative genius of early childhood is still active in the first-grade child making this an ideal time to learn through hearing and speaking two foreign languages, chosen for the appropriateness to the time and the school’s location.

Eurhythmy, an art of movement developed by Dr. Steiner, is taught by specially trained teachers. Exercises affect the children’s grace of movement, sensitize hands and fingers, heighten drawing and modeling ability, relieve strain and tension, and stimulate musical, poetic and dramatic senses.

Grade Two

According to the Waldorf plan, the teacher progresses with his pupils from first to second grade; in fact, he continues with them through all eight years of their elementary schooling wherever this is feasible. The class teacher who can look back on all his pupils’ previous learning experiences and build step by step on his own foundation can endow his teaching with real unity. And primary children, who are very sensitive to readjustments and changes, are given the security of knowing one personality and method intimately and thoroughly.

English now becomes a special subject assigned its share of main lesson periods. Based again on the spoken languages, fables satisfy the children’s deep interest in the animal kingdom while legends offer lofty striving and highlight the noblest human qualities. These fables and legends are now the focus of writing material. The children learn cursive writing by joining up the printed letters of last year. The flowing script pictures far more truly than printing the movement of the breath as it streams through sound after sound and links them together in smooth continuity. Grammar is introduced with liveliness and humor by acting out stories in which the children can experience the contrast between doing words, naming words and describing words.

In arithmetic, the children carry out more complicated operations with the four processes. Imaginative stories still form the basis of these problems. Through rhythmic counting accompanied by accented clapping and movement of the whole body, they learn to county by twos, threes, fours and fives and can begin learning the multiplication tables.

Nature study continues in connection with poetry, legends and imaginative descriptions of natural processes.

Painting and modeling are drawn into constant service in other activities in the main lessons. Crocheting in introduced, and small projects of the children’s own creating always observe an important principle: that handwork products can be useful and functional as well as beautiful.

Foreign languages, singing and flute lessons continue to be taught as in the first grade with eurhythmy leading the children into a more conscious forming of vowels and consonants.

Grade Three

Quickened physical growth takes place during this transition periods in which the age of dream is passing and a new age is beginning to dawn. Now there is shifting emphasis as the child’s relation to the world around him changes: to the extent to which the child feels separate from the world he seeks knowledge of it and his studies will now have a more realistic, practical character.

In the transition to realism, social studies are now introduced into the main lesson. The children learn how the kingdoms of nature mutually support and complete on another, and visit the farm for concrete experience of the dependence contrasting their home with those of other times and people and climates. All teaching is done through the teacher’s spoken work and direct experience from excursions, thus keeping the learning warm and human.

Arithmetic becomes practical, applied to “real life situations” such as measuring, cooking and money. Rhythmic reciting and stepping of tables continues with added mental gymnastics.

Stories and poems of the Old Testament dealing largely with real persons and happenings whose drama parallel the 8-year-old’s own experiences are the children’s first introduction to history. Their own illustrated book soon emerges from the Old Testament drama with stories retold in the children’s own words. Grammar studies continue, often expressing parts of speech in colors suitable to their nature. Spelling receives much attention. Painting, drawing, and modeling continue in connection with all main lessons rather than as a separate period. In music they begin to learn notation. Simple sewing is introduced, and useful articles are crocheted and knitted.

Unifying these first three years is the child’s need for living pictures requiring the teacher to become an artist at knowledge, engaging the activity of his own being, developing in the child the capacity for inward picturing out of which at a later age thought is born. Stories here are the teacher’s chief means of making learning live.

The above descriptions are paraphrased from Teaching as Lively Art by Marjorie Spock.