Class 1: Mr. Siepker (2024/2025)
Live Zooms in Pacific Time
Parent Office Hour: Monday 11 am
Family Testimonial
Class Description
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.
Class 1 Steiner pedagogy:
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
Sample Video with Mr. Siepker:
Enrichment is incorporated in your full class experience!
Meet your Four Fold Enrichment teachers!
Handwork With Ms. Maggie
We will begin the child’s handwork journey in first grade by exploring raw wool, where it comes from, and how it is spun into yarn. We will learn how to dye wool and learn the meditative process of winding wool. The children will make wooden knitting needles, hear a knitting story and verses while learning to cast on. Color theory will be introduced as the children choose two colors, one dark and one light, to knit a striped pattern that moves from dark at the bottom to light at the opening of a flute case. Mathematics will also be practiced as the children keep track of their knitted rows by counting by twos. The children will also learn to shape an animal from knit squares. This will introduce them to basic sewing and stuffing techniques. All of these activities will be a wonderful introduction to knitting and help stimulate the child’s mental development and awaken their tactile sense through use of natural fibers.
Eurythmy Inspired Movement With Ms. Tiffany
The theme for first grade is “Discovery.” In this class we use eurythmy gestures through seasonal storytelling and imagination which help in the discovery and building of the will-forces. Along with contraction and expansion, polar contrasts, and rhythmical principles, we will also work with geometric forms and basic copper rod exercises and activities.
German with Mr. Dornemann
The aim of the course is to experience the German language, to get used to its sounds, acquire basic vocabulary and speaking skills. It is intended for beginners with no or little previous exposure to the German language.
In the recorded part of the lessons there will be listening and speaking activities, poems, songs, stories and tongue twisters. Students will practice speaking by repeating what the teacher presents. In our live sessions we will engage in speaking and conversation as well as call and response.
The vocabulary covered will include actions, counting, phrases, cultural references and many words describing aspects of everyday life.
Music with Mr. Mark
In Music Class 1 we use singing games, dancing games, sing-alongs and stories to create music together. We explore physically the steady beat, how the beat relates to rhythm, and how beat and rhythm relate to melody in a naturally organic progression. The material we use incorporates the season we're in as well as aspects of the students’ Main Lesson blocks. Emphasis is on creative expression and musical exploration, where everyone participates together in the creation of beautiful music. Music Notation is introduced in a fun, organic way that relates to the Feeling Life of the music rather than the Intellectual. We will also introduce Beginning Recorder!
