Grade 2 in Waldorf Education

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

• Why Grade 2 is for the child that is 7.5 turning 8 year old child.
  
  
• This child has the foundation of letters, four processes and knows the process of main lesson time.
   
• Bridging into learning and doing more. 
  
  
• Some are reading and some are stumbling into it. There’s a desire to learn to read. It’s totally ok if they haven’t mastered reading yet. 
  
  
• The gift of second grade, the bloom of reading opening. 
  
  
• Behaviorally: hungriness to learn. Why am I learning this? 
  
  
• Behavior shift from the beginning of second grade to the end. We expect a little more from them. The 9 year change can begin at the end of second grade. 
  
  
• Curriculum, most important part about the literature. Fables, nature stories, and Saint stories. 
  
  
• Fables differ from fairy tales. We never give them the moral of the story. We let them hear and feel it. Fables have the trickster.  
  
  

Class 2

During this school year, children find themselves on the threshold of the awakening glimpses of the middle years of childhood. They begin to wonder and experience in new ways qualities and contrasts of virtues and shortcomings, kindness and cruelty, honesty and trickery, joy and sadness, and so on. They begin to question others’ honesty and might even wonder about their own nature. To meet them in this realm of feeling, curriculum brings stories of heroes, legends of Saints, and various animal fables from around the world. While the striving and noble human deeds are highlighted in the stories of heroes and saints, the arising contrasts in the children’s experience of the world are met with the fables and tales that bring an imaginative connection to the traits of a trickster and a mischief seeker.

During this year, the sense of belonging and familiar rhythms continue to be of great importance for the children as they move through a new way of experiencing the world. We begin to observe their growing interest in the unique traits of others and their expanding social awareness. 

Basic academic skills are practiced at a faster pace than they were the year before. Writing and reading practice make a big leap in pace and expectations. In the world of numbers, the experience of the qualities of numbers gives way to the recognition and work with their quantitative aspects expanding further into their relationship to space and time. Classwork builds upon the processes children learned the year before and takes them further towards mastering the times’ tables and working with larger numbers and place value. Rhythmic movements and experience of sequence and number patterns, and the work with word questions all continue. 

An experiential exploration of a child’s immediate surroundings expands through nature walks, nature stories, and practical work, planting the seeds for future science studies in upper grades. 

The class continues watercolor painting practice as an experience in color, moods, light, and relationships. Beeswax modeling, as well as crayon and form drawing, bring the children further into the realm of beauty found in color, light, and form. 

Main Themes of Class 2

Language Arts: extending and deepening the skills learned in class one, continuing the work of learning to read, fables, hero stories, saint legends 

Math: extending and deepening the skills in working with the basic four processes 

Nature Studies: Observing nature and immediate surroundings, observing time, times’ tables, place value and introduction to adding and subtracting larger numbers, patterns 

Artistic Work: Watercolor painting, crayon drawing, form drawing, beeswax modeling, knitting, pentatonic flute, songs, recitation (poems and class plays)

Full video is available in our Candle access HERE.