Grade 1 in Waldorf Education

Founder Melisa Nielsen chats with our teacher Ms. Tiffany about:

1. The power of waiting till the time the child is ready for the content.
2. The changes that happen in first grade.
3. Taking the fear our of fairytales.

Class 1 

Once upon a time, a class full of knights, wizards, fairies, princes, and princesses set out on a journey to discover new places, stories, and many new things in the world around them. … It is a great privilege to guide them as they continue their journey down the Class One path.

The weeks of this school year are woven together with magical threads of fairy tales.  As the children experience this significant transition time from Early Childhood years into Grade School, they are enveloped by the mists of the fairy tale realm encountering various characters and events that bring to them the experiences of various archetypes of the human being reflecting the brightly shining virtues of courage, honesty, and goodness.

The entire curriculum is presented in a way that appeals to the child’s sense of wonder and fosters the child’s capacities of imagination supporting them in building their own inner pictures from the stories, songs, and learning experiences.

The letters of the alphabet are introduced through storytelling and beautiful drawings that give rise to letter symbols.  Sound and symbol relationships are practiced through the writing of short sentences that gradually become a little longer as the year nears its end. Children prepare to begin reading. 

Numeracy skills and familiarity with the four basic math processes are developed during this school year. Qualities of the number are explored first through story and movement followed by the experiences that engage the children in their quantitative and ordinal aspects. Rhythm, speech, and physical movement activities assist the children in the development of balance, coordination, and left/right recognition. Furthermore, nature stories, songs, music, poetry, handwork, painting, guided drawing, and beeswax modeling weave together each lesson block, bringing it to life in beautiful and lively ways.

Main Themes of Class 1 

Language Arts: introduction to letters and writing, Introduction to reading Fairy tales (Grimm’s and fairy tales from around the World)

Math: Quality of numbers, counting, skip counting to introduce times tables (2, 3, 5, 10, 4), ordinal numbers, Roman numerals, Introduction to the four basic processes (add, subtract, divide, multiply)

Arts: Watercolor Painting, Beeswax Modeling, Crayon Drawing, Form Drawing, Knitting, Sewing, Pentatonic flute, Songs, Reciting Poems and Verses

Full video is available in our Candle access HERE.