Unique whole-child curriculum
WSL currently offer Grades One through Five, Kindergarten, Pre-K, and Parent-Child. The school day begins at 8:30 a.m. for Pre-K through Grade 5, with a handshake and a warm “Good morning” from the class teacher. Pre-K and Kindergarten end at noon, and class is dismissed at 3:00 p.m. for elementary school. Afternoon care is available until 6:00 p.m. Parent-Child is offered several days of the week, but parents attend one session. Parent-Child meets from 9:00-11:00 a.m.
The Waldorf approach recognizes the simple but profound insight that children learn in distinctly different ways at different stages of their development. Waldorf schools introduce and teach in ways that correspond to the developmental needs of the growing child. It encourages the development of each child’s sense of truth, beauty, and goodness, and provides an antidote to violence, alienation, and cynicism. The aim of the education is to inspire in each student a lifelong love of learning, and to fully develop unique capacities.
Our strong academic curriculum is based on building and fostering the child’s natural abilities at each developmental stage. In classrooms full of light and life, Waldorf students receive a classical academic core of subjects through distinctive and time-tested teaching methods that serve their intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual development.
Unique aspects of the WSL Whole Child Curriculum:
Kindergarten – Kindergarten is play based. It provides a nurturing, homelike environment in which children are gently guided in their activities: creative play, painting, beeswax modeling, storytelling, puppetry, baking, hand work and nature crafts. The kindergarten curriculum is designed to enhance the young child’s physical development, including motor skills, language development, and sensory development. The harmonious daily rhythms strengthen the child’s sense of security, self-confidence, imagination, and creativity. Nature activities, festivals and seasonal rhythms, connect the child to the world and nurture a sense of caring for the environment and for others. This prepares the child for a more structured academic curriculum in the grades.
The Class Teacher – In traditional American Schools, students have a new teacher every year. In our program the class teacher will ideally take the same class of children through seven years of elementary school (grades 1-5), teaching all main subjects. For the teacher this means time to deeply know the children (and their families) and help them unfold their gifts. This long-term relationship provides enriched opportunities to assess students over a long period of time, allowing the teacher to better meet the individual needs of the child.
A Morning “Main Lesson” – A fully integrated two hour period of instructional activities begins each school day when the child is fresh and often most ready to learn. The main lesson can be, for example, Arithmetic, Legends, Ancient culture, or Nature studies, and involves story telling, movement, art, biography, drama, writing, and any activity that might help bring the topic to life. Main lessons are taught for a three or four week block – then ended – often to be continued later in the term. This approach allows freshness and enthusiasm, enriches content and skills by integrating them together as a powerful, concentrated, in-depth experience, and gives the children time to “digest” what has been learned.
The Arts – Drama, painting, music, drawing, modeling, etc., are integrated into the entire curriculum, including mathematics and the sciences. The arts are also offered as special subjects. In first grade students are taught to play the wooden flute. Other instruments are gradually introduced, leading to choir and orchestra in the higher grades. The art of eurythmy, taught in most grades, translates speech and music into body movements. This leads children to experience moods of poetry, qualities of sound, and elements of rhythm and music through their own movements. Other arts such as beeswax modeling, drama, puppetry, and painting are taught by the class teacher, and add to the child’s joy of learning.
Main Lesson Books – Textbooks are not typically used in the elementary grades. Instead, the teacher creates the presentation and the children make their individual books for each subject taught, recording and illustrating the substance of their lessons. These main lesson books are often artistic and beautiful, and are an invaluable tool for assessing the progress of individual students.
Foreign Language – Traditional American schools hold foreign language instruction until high school. Foreign Language is taught beginning in first grade, giving students language skills and insight into other cultures.
Practical Work – Crafts, handwork, and practical work such as knitting, woodworking, fabric arts, book binding, house building, and gardening, are an integral part of the required curriculum from Kindergarten through the grades. Boys and girls learn to knit in the first grade and crochet in second, creating many functional and colorful objects like cases for recorders or pencil boxes, puppets, etc. Decades before brain research confirmed the value of this kind of activity, studies recognized a relationship between body movement and brain function. Learning to knit and crochet in the early grades develops fine motor skills, and leads to lively thinking and enhanced intellectual development in later years. Coordination, patience, perseverance, and imagination are also schooled through practical work. Activities like woodworking, house building, gardening, and leatherwork, are specifically included in the elementary curriculum, and give the children an understanding of how things come into being as well as a respect for the creations of others.
Reading and Writing – Letters are learned in the same way they originated in the course of human history. Human beings perceived, then pictured, and out of the pictures abstracted signs and symbols. Early elementary students hear stories, draw pictures, and discover the letter in the gesture of the picture. In this way, writing is taught first, followed by formal reading instruction. Early reading skills are integrated in songs, poems, and games, establishing a joyful and living experience of language. Through the grades, texts taken from a rich humanities curriculum provide material for reading practice.
Mathematics – In grade school, math instruction begins by teaching from the whole to the part (for example, answering the question of what is 12, 12=3+9, or 12=4×3). This encourages flexible thinking and discourages the one “right” answer way of thinking. Movement, stories, manipulatives, and games are used to learn counting, and the four processes (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). Mental math problem solving is emphasized to develop and strengthen thinking.
Humanities – The philosophies, religions and cultures of the past have shaped humanity, and continue to influence today’s values and morals. Students learn about these from an historical perspective. Care is taken not to influence them toward any single belief system. The humanities curriculum begins in first grade with fairy tales, fables and legends from around the world, and takes children through a full sweep of our cultural heritage. Hebrew legends in grade three, Norse mythology in grade four, the ancient cultures of India, Egypt, Persia, Mesopotamia and Greece in grade five provide the background for the study of history and literary skills and are presented through excerpts from original texts. Native American, African, and Far East Asian cultures provide additional rich content to illustrate the accomplishments and interrelatedness of human cultures. Care is taken to include all cultures that are represented in the student population. By living into these cultures through legends, biography, and literature, the children gain an appreciation for the diversity of humankind. By the eighth grade the students have journeyed from Ancient Cultures, through Greece and Rome, to medieval history, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Exploration and up to the present day.
The Sciences – Science is taught experientially. Through experimentation, children observe carefully, ponder, discuss, and then discover the conclusion- the law, formula, etc. Through this process, rigorous critical and analytic thinking and sound judgment are trained.
