Grades 1-5

Note: we have an Early Release day (Wednesday at 1pm) each week at WIWS for the Grades students. 1st Grade students are invited to stay in our Spanish Immersion program until 3pm on Wednesdays.

Note: All currently enrolled and newly enrolling Rising 1st Grade children require sensory screenings before being enrolled into 1st Grade. When you choose a Waldorf education for your child instead of public schooling, you say "yes" to holistic assessments instead of standardized tests. Your child's physical, social and academic capacities and skills are observed and considered with caring attention.

These screenings will take place in April for currently enrolled students. The fee is included in the tuition. Screenings for newly enrolling children will take place at a later date. Payment for the screenings is required.

Taking time to focus on our Rising 1st Graders through a lens of developmental movement patterns and physical milestones is a great gift, not only to the child, but also the adults who care for them. 

Screenings will be conducted by the WIWS Early Childhood team, led by the WIWS Early Childhood Pedagogical Director.

First Grade

First Grade is a bridge between the kindergarten and the grades. The loss of the milk (baby) teeth indicates that the children have completed the formation of their physical bodies and are ready to begin to work with their minds. An important task for the teacher is to create a rhythm for the children's school lives to enable them to grow and learn in a healthy way. Towards this end the teacher designs a rhythm not only through the season's festivals and holidays but also within each day and within each lesson during the day. 

Note: children must be 6 by May 31st of the year they are entering into 1st Grade with WIWS. They are turning 7 the summer before or during their 1st Grade year.

this year’s Curriculum includes:

Fairy Tales from around the world, pictorial introduction to the alphabet, writing, reading, spelling, speech exercises, observation of the natural world, numbers and counting, Roman numerals, world language (Spanish - through to 8th Grade) through songs, poems, games, form drawing, watercolor painting, knitting, modeling with beeswax, pentatonic flute, singing, eurythmy (movement art - through to 8th grade), circle games & movement.

Each Grade participates in community service for a particular community organization. Community outreach work by 1st Grade is with the Whidbey Institute.

Spanish Immersion afternoon program in 1st Grade:

1st Grade students will have an afternoon of Spanish immersion with our Grades 1-4 Spanish teacher, Maestra Claudia, and assistant Alan Perez, following the close of their classroom with their class teacher at 1pm each day. This afternoon program is held outdoors. It is not a classroom lesson, but rather a time for the children to unwind, have fun and move their bodies while speaking with their teacher in Spanish and sharing stories, songs and games in Spanish.

This program is largely optional. Waldorf Schools practice a protocol of afternoons optional for 1st Graders, as some children find the day very long and challenging and must rest, physically and mentally, in the afternoons after a robust morning in school.

We encourage families to consider the afternoon program completely optional until our Fall Festival of Courage, at the end of September. After that, we would recommend families to have their 1st Grader stay for 2 of the 4 afternoons a week (Wed is an early release day for all the Grades at 1pm).

After February break, our ideal would be to have your child in the afternoon Spanish program all 4 afternoons.

If you do choose to have your child come 2 afternoons a week between end of September and February break, you do not have to plan ahead which days those will be. You can choose the day of to take your child home. Perhaps your child had a hard night’s sleep - you can choose that day to pick them up and bring them home after the morning is complete. Our wish is for the optional days to be stress free for families, and to reflect the day to day needs of your child.

How Reading, Writing, Literature, and Language are Taught in a Waldorf Education

By Dianne McGaunn and Kat Marsh

The Waldorf approach to literacy is unique in two very important ways.

First, Waldorf education builds a foundation for literacy learning through attention to the physical body and its importance in learning and the significance of social and emotional health in education.

Second, literacy education in Waldorf schools is an elaborate, thoughtful sequence starting with speech development, listening, and only then more formal academic learning.

A common misconception about Waldorf literacy education is that Waldorf schools do not teach children how to read until second or even third grade. While it is true that decoding (learning how to read through a phonics approach) is not specifically taught until later in first grade, early childhood educators and first grade teachers concentrate on building a strong foundation for literacy learning through drama, artistic endeavors, writing what students know by heart, healthy play and movement experiences, beautiful recitation of poetry and many other forms of learning that are multi-sensory experiences. Therefore, when students are taught a traditional phonics approach in second grade, they have a deep foundation to aid in the reading process.

Read the full article here: https://blog.waldorfmoraine.org/2019/07/early-literacy-learning-in-waldorf-education/

From the WIWS Early Childhood Teachers:

WIWS presents learning in an engaging way. A way that fosters creativity, imagination, and inquiry. This type of learning does take time. It focuses on a child's entire well-being. We offer another wonderful way to foster a lifelong love of reading in children under the age of 6 through various movements and imaginative experiences of literature, poetry, oral storytelling, and images to build a strong foundation for academic work in reading beyond the age of 6.

We are not in the business of rushing children to learn concepts. We are in the business of fostering a child's sense of interest, wonder and inquiry into how and why behind learning. In First Grade, the  ABC's are taught through imaginative concepts that build deeper, lasting meaning in reading - more than memorizing sounds and symbols - because it is an entire head/heart/hand experience.  The children will draw, write, sing, dance, and act out every aspect of learning reading, language arts and math.  This creates a lasting joy and desire to learn, firmly laying the foundation for reading, and all other subjects, that the child can then build upon over the years. This type of learning is not found elsewhere. Learning through the entire body in this holistic way gives children a confidence and certainty that they could not receive otherwise because it actually matches their developmental stage. 

It is worth the slower, careful ripening needed for the child to lay the foundation needed for a lifetime of learning.

From the Enrollment & Outreach Director:

Over and over again, WIWS Alums speak to these truths. Our Alum Panel in April ‘23 consisted of a pediatric physician, an engineer, and a public school pottery arts teacher. All spoke of the confidence they built while here, in themselves and in their relationships - both of which continued on through high school, university and their working life. All said they learned here that they can problem solve anything, because they were given time to learn so many different subjects in so different many unique ways. All agreed - the foundation built here at WIWS early on had equipped them with the confidence and the skills that helped support success in themselves and their lives.

Second Grade

A second grade child is like a butterfly who has just emerged from the hard imprisoning chrysalis and sits upon the leaf waiting expectantly for those glorious new wings to dry and strengthen. They are truly poised for flight. Rudolf Steiner has described the seven year life cycles and the importance of the moment when the forces working within the child cast off the baby teeth and construct a smile that gleams with permanence and strength. A second grader has this process well underway. They are on the threshold of newly awakening faculties. Energies freed from the process of forming the body now awaken the subjective world of feeling wonder, pity, joy, tenderness and sorrow. These are the currents of air upon which these new little butterflies will rise, on which they will find their relationship to the world about them.

this year’s Curriculum includes:

World fables, legends, folk tales, including stories from indigenous cultures- Native Americans, Maori, Hawaiian and Aboriginal peoples-along with Christian saint and Buddhist Jataka, writing sentences, rhyming, plays, choral speaking, observation of human-made environment, cooking, basic arithmetic operations, Spanish, singing, symmetry - mirror drawing, painting animal forms, folk songs, modeling beeswax, eurythmy, jump rope & other movement.

Each Grade participates in community service for a particular community organization. Community outreach work by 2nd Grade is with TBA.

Third Grade

The third grade is often called the turning point of childhood. Every age has its drama, but the eight or nine-year-old is going through a change that is particularly profound; you might hear Waldorf teachers referring to it as the "Crossing point", the "Watershed" or the "Rubicon". What is prescribed in the curriculum for this age? Farming and gardening, the Old Testament, Building and Grammar. Why these? Do you remember the time before your ninth year? Can you recapture even a hint of the qualitative richness of a home landscape, a certain house, particular relationships? And then, can you remember how things and people began to look 'ordinary'? 

this year’s Curriculum includes:

Creation stories of Indigenous peoples, stories from the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible), Jewish festivals, grammar, punctuation, poetry recitation, long division & multiplication, place value & large numbers, hunter-gatherer technology, house building, clay work, agriculture & gardening, crocheting, weaving, flute playing, singing, Spanish, eurythmy, movement.

Each Grade participates in community service for a particular community organization. Community outreach work by 3rd Grade is with Good Cheer.

Regional Waldorf Event - Plough Days at Sunfield Farm & Waldorf School in Port Hadlock, WA, one overnight

Fourth Grade

To understand the fourth grade curriculum and why it is so suited to the nine and ten-year-old, one must first look back to the preceding years of schooling, and especially the curriculum of the third grade. There the children who, up until then, had lived in a certain harmonious relationship to the world, were cast out of Paradise. They were no longer allowed to dwell in the fairy tale realm of the first grade or even to fluctuate back and forth between heaven and earth as in second grade when the stories of saints and fables were told to accompany this duality. They have arrived!  Now, how are they going to survive? 

This year's 4TH Grade Curriculum includes:

Local history & geography, Norse sagas, composition, book reports, mapmaking, times tables, long division, Ancient stories and cultures (First Nations of North America, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Nubia, the Maya & Greece), parts of speech, syntax, descriptive writing, decimals, fractions, form drawing, freehand geometric drawing, Spanish, singing, diatonic flutes, zoology and habitats, botany, national geography, sashiko and quilting, painting, eurythmy and strings.

Each Grade participates in community service for a particular community organization. Community outreach work by 4th Grade is with TBA.

Regional Waldorf Event - Coast Salish Cultural Sharing (hosted by WIWS, on Whidbey Institute land for 3 days/2 nights), Greek Games/Pentathlon

Hosted by WIWS 4th Grade

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