What is the curriculum at a Steiner Waldorf school like?
The Steiner Waldorf curriculum is designed to be responsive to the various phases of a child’s development. The relationship between student and teacher is, likewise, recognized to be both crucial and changing throughout the course of childhood and early adolescence. The main subjects, such as history, language arts, science and mathematics are, as mentioned, taught in main lesson blocks of two to three hours per day, with each block lasting from three to five weeks. The total Steiner Waldorf curriculum has been likened to an ascending spiral: subjects are revisited several times, but each new exposure affords greater depth and new insights into the subject at hand. A typical Lower School curriculum would likely look something like the following: Primary Grades 1 – 3 • Pictorial introduction to the alphabet, writing, reading, spelling, poetry and drama. • Folk and fairy tales, fables, legends, Old Testament stories. • Numbers, basic mathematical processes of addition, subtraction, mult
