Free Waldorf Homeschool Lessons
First Grade
This lesson is designed to help you improve your storytelling skills. We will take a look at simple skills that enhance the entire experience of storytelling, for the storyteller and for the listeners. We will look at classic and archetypal gestures, the overall mood appropriate for the audience you have, how to use the five physical senses to engage the full imagination of the audience, and how to appeal to the four classic temperaments.
In Waldorf Education, we strive to bring every lesson in a meaningful context. With language, this means that we can derive our language lessons out of stories and other imaginative sources that are already familiar to the child. From the images that have lived in the child's imagination, we draw artistic pictures and then find symbols from within those pictures. From the symbols, we find that the letters we use today have evolved.
In Waldorf Education, we strive to bring our lessons out of stories and other imaginative sources. The ability to count forward and backward by 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, 10's, and 11's are very important skills to master in first grade. We will work with such patterns in all of the processes: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. As we do this, we learn to see the same patterns according to the view of certain characters. We will meet Prince Plus in this lesson.
This tips and tricks course is created to augment the course titled "First Grade Math." First Grade math is a main lesson course that provides you with example lessons for introducing concepts and patterns, as well as a bit of practice work. This tips and tricks course complements the main lesson work with more of the daily practice outside that really helps students practice those things that have already been introduced.
This course is for parents and teachers in any educational setting who
want to bring Painting to first graders. The course is composed of 36 painting lessons that take you from start to finish for each of the 36 paintings. In addition, there are primer lessons to help you understand the materials and techniques used in first grade painting. There are also lessons for how to look back at and review the paintings you have completed with your student(s) so that they will feel good about their creative process and so that they continue to develop
positive self-esteem.
Try out this free Waldorf recorder/flute lesson and see how simple and easy playing the flute can be for you and your homeschool child. This lesson is for parents and teachers in any educational setting who want to bring music to their own program.
The course takes the student, step by step, through the process of developing skills and dexterity for modeling with clay. The projects start very simply and continue building upon the previously practiced skills for the completion of more complex projects. These lessons are also designed to allow for flexibility. For example, a child might struggle with the diamondback pattern on a rattlesnake. If so, the project can be simplified to just modeling the shape of the snake with the rattler tail, leaving out the patterning.
This course is for anyone who would like to learn easy new songs. These songs cover a variety of simple topics and are nice to add to your repertoire! You can have them to share with others whenever you might have that desire. This is a beginning level singing course. The course is composed of 36 lessons. Each lesson takes you from start to finish with a single, new simple song. The themes are simple, often inspired by nature, but also ranging from bedtime songs, mealtime blessings, and even bubble baths! Young children will especially enjoy them!
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Second Grade
Wondering how to implement your second grade homeschool curriculum? Try this free storytelling lesson for a second grade Waldorf curriculum. Simply Waldorf courses make Waldorf homeschool easier. These simple, easy to follow video lessons will deepen and enrich your child's educational experience.
In Waldorf Education, at the very core of its principles, requires the teacher to consider the child first, not the curriculum. So, before we consider what goes into a second grade course, let's consider the second grader. The second grader is a 7/8 year-old child. While there are many things we can say about this age of childhood, let's keep it simple. Children love stories. Also, at this age the child has a consciousness dawning to the experience of duality or polarities. In other words, the child is beginning, just beginning to have an awareness of right/wrong, good/bad. Before this, they may have understood the behaviors that we have taught them, but now they are sensing the "goodness" itself within their own arising conscience. Naturally, as adults we know that life is not so simple as duality. As the children grow and mature, they will transcend this simplistic way of understanding the world and of understanding themselves. For now, however, this is right where they are. It is with this understanding that we can proceed.
Wondering how to implement your second grade homeschool curriculum? Try this free language arts and drawing lesson for a second grade Waldorf curriculum. Simply Waldorf courses make Waldorf homeschool easier. These simple, easy to follow video lessons will deepen and enrich your child's educational experience.
In Waldorf Education, at the very core of its principles, requires the teacher to consider the child first, not the curriculum. So, before we consider what goes into a second grade course, let's consider the second grader. The second grader is a 7/8 year-old child. While there are many things we can say about this age of childhood, let's keep it simple. Children love stories. Also, at this age the child has a consciousness dawning to the experience of duality or polarities. In other words, the child is beginning, just beginning to have an awareness of right/wrong, good/bad. Before this, they may have understood the behaviors that we have taught them, but now they are sensing the "goodness" itself within their own arising conscience. Naturally, as adults we know that life is not so simple as duality. As the children grow and mature, they will transcend this simplistic way of understanding the world and of understanding themselves. For now, however, this is right where they are. It is with this understanding that we can proceed.
Wondering how to implement your second grade homeschool curriculum? Try this free math lesson for a second grade Waldorf curriculum. Simply Waldorf courses make Waldorf homeschool easier. These simple, easy to follow video lessons will deepen and enrich your child's educational experience.
Children love stories. With math, this means that we can derive our lessons out of stories and other imaginative sources that are already familiar to the child. They are familiar because we tell these stories to them. The stories we choose meet their evolving consciousness. We tell them fables and stories of good people, virtuous people. The fables most often give a picture of beings, usually animals, living into a trickiness, a lower nature. They are rascals. The good people stories offer the child a picture of people striving toward the highest ideals of human behavior. Thus, we have a duality that meets the child's soul. When we bring the lessons through the imaginations of such stories, the student experiences a process that is more immediately connected to their inmost being. The result is that they feel more connected to these lessons.
This free Waldorf homeschool handwriting development lesson can also be used to enhance any second grade Waldorf language arts curriculum. This lesson outlines some daily practice routines that will support healthy development of handwriting. These lessons are appropriate for the early grades and they focus on exercises that will support print as well as exercises that will support cursive writing. Your student will engage in Waldorf handwriting practice that will serve them for years to come.
This course is for parents and teachers in any educational setting who want to bring Painting to second graders. The course is composed of 36 painting lessons that take you from start to finish for each of the 36 paintings. In addition, there are primer lessons to help you understand the materials and techniques used in first grade painting. There are also lessons for how to look back at and review the paintings you have completed with your student(s) so that they will feel good about their creative process and so that they continue to develop positive self-esteem.
Third Grade
In third grade, watercolor painting takes a step toward clearer forms, more advanced compositions, animal forms, and more use of the human form and human faces. We continue the color process from earlier grades in order to establish color "washes" for our background and to set up the basic composition. From there we create the actual compositions. Therefore, control of the medium becomes even more important in third grade. It is a balance of managing the colors and the forms along with the wetness-to-dryness of the paper. It is an ongoing practice.
This course provides thirty-six start-to-finish paintings, one for each week of a 36-week school year. These are designed to correlate to the lesson blocks being taught during the third grade year. Most come from the stories presented in the storytelling course, as listed in the included document "Third Grade Blocks, Stories, and Paintings". Some are created for the Food, Clothing, and Shelter Blocks. There are also four additional paintings to correspond to the seasons. These Bonus Paintings could be substituted instead of that painting for that week or used in addition to the painting for the week.
Fourth Grade
We are building on the skill sets that have been introduced, practiced and developed in previous painting courses. If you have not taken a previous painting course from us, I highly recommend you sign up for "First Grade Painting" or perhaps "Second Grade Painting" as a way of building the skills and comfort so that this course is not too difficult. We continue using the color process from earlier grades in order to establish color "washes" for our background and to set up the basic composition. From there we create the actual compositions.
A big theme of this course is the painting of animals. We are working on simply ways to capture the form of the animal as well as some signature gestures that will bring the animal "to life". At the same time, we also devote attention to landscapes, natural features, such as trees, rivers, clouds, etc, as well as the human form, both from afar and up close.
This course provides thirty-six start-to-finish paintings, one for each week of a 36-week school year. These are designed to correlate to the lesson blocks being taught during the fourth grade year. Most come from the stories presented in the storytelling course. There are also three additional paintings to correspond to the seasons and one additional painting of a horned owl. These Bonus Paintings could be substituted instead of that painting for that week or used in addition to the painting for the week.
There are also lessons for the teacher to understand how to review paintings. There are a few techniques we can employ in looking back at what we (teachers and students) have created together. Often, the student needs help learning ways to review their work that will be aimed at positivity, creativity, and contentment with our best efforts. Particularly with the arts, it can be easy for the child to begin a habit of self-criticism and negativity unless we actively engage them in creating a more positive and supportive soul habit.