Waldorf CurriculumIntroduction
A curriculum could be compared to the list of ingredients
for a recipe. However good the recipe, the quality of the ingredients is crucial
but to make a start the components also need to be available. When they are to
hand, the next question is whether the cook is skilled enough to combine and
adjust flavors so that each item plays its part without overwhelming the others.
An experienced cook may be able to substitute one ingredient for another, even
to improvise in such a way that something new is created. But we should not
forget that emotion, even love, goes into the preparation of food and this will
influence how it is received. And, of course, the expectations, health and
culinary experience of the diners also makes a difference.
A curriculum guides an entire learning process. It should not, like a dish into which a chef has thrown every possible taste, explode in an overwhelming, sensation-bursting blowout; it should bring to the table ingredients that are well- balanced, digestible and nutritious, that promote health and stimulate, not stupefy, the senses. Over time, as with diet, a curriculum can introduce items that may not be immediately appealing, stronger tastes or more subtle and complex ones: intellectual chillis, subjects initially sour or astringent, as well as flavors, textures and scents that help to educate the palate. A primary school curriculum, in particular, sets out ingredients for the hors d'oeuvres of lifelong learning. Of course, many school curriculums share common ingredients, but the distinctive qualities of the Steiner-Waldorf curriculum framework are, we believe, unique:
Course OutlineSophia Institute Waldorf Courses: The Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 2
Lesson 1 / Waldorf Curriculum / Introduction Lesson 2 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 1 - 3 (Part 1) Lesson 3 / Waldorf Curriculum / Grades 1 - 3 (Part 2) Lesson 4 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Introduction Lesson 5 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Reading / Grade 2 Lesson 6 / Waldorf Methods / Reading and Math / Math / Grade 2 Lesson 7 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Chemistry / Introduction Lesson 8 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Physics / Introduction Lesson 9 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Life Sciences / Introduction Lesson 10 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Geography / Introduction Lesson 11 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Geography / Grades 1 - 8 Lesson 12 / Waldorf Methods / Sciences / Gardening and Sustainable Living |
Tasks and Assignments for Art of Teaching Waldorf Grade 2 /AoT210Please study and work with the study material provided for this lesson. Then please turn to the following tasks and assignments listed below.
1. Study the material provided and look up other resources as needed and appropriate. 2. Find and comment on 5 additional resources for the subject in question and appropriate for grade 2. 3. Submit comments and questions, if any. Please send your completed assignment via the online form or via email. 
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Study Material for this Lesson
Geography/Earth Sciences/Environmental Studies/Human Geography and Economics/Introduction
The child shows a motivation and striving to go out over the environment, to form a unique world image as a part of achieving a singular identity. This is part of humankind's yearning and capacity for individualisation. Every child must integrate a world image with a corporal awareness, in order to know where she is and who she is.
Geography, in all its various aspects, forms a key integrating subject within the whole curriculum. Defined at its broadest it encompasses many aspects of the world around us. Learning about the world around us is a complex subject covering many fields that relate to many other subjects. Essentially though, the methodology of geography teaching in Steiner- Waldorf schools has fundamental themes:
* Physical or natural geography
* Social geography
* Inner or developmental geography
The first systematically describes the phenomena of the earth, its surface, interior and atmosphere. The second considers the human influence on the environment, its economic consequences and the relationship between the particular character of a geographical region and the social and cultural development of the people who live there. The third refers to how individuals' awareness of their environment is reflected in how they see the world and experience themselves within it and follows how this process evolves through the child's development. The methodology of the Waldorf curriculum seeks to integrate these three approaches.
The core of this method is to proceed from the whole to the inter-related parts and to start in the known world and proceed to the unknown before returning to the known. It is a voyage of discovery.
The regions of the earth are not to be studied as mere divisions of the earth's surface, but rather that the areas of the earth's surface are to be studied for their particular character which is a product of their phenomena. It is their inter-relationship with each other which fills the areas with their content ... Geography in Steiner- Waldorf education entails the use of a comparative method?
Furthermore, as Alexander von Humboldt pointed out, geography must contain something aesthetic, which proceeds from a premonition of the inter-relation of the sensual with the intellectual towards a feeling of universality.
Descriptions of nature can be sharply limited and scientifically exact without thereby losing the living breath of the power of imagination.
This aspect is fundamental to geographical education.
The basis for geography teaching is the concept of the earth as morphological and physical totality, or the earth as an organism. This implies a consciousness both of the inter-relationships of the parts within the whole and also of the whole as a developing being. This highlights the importance of climatic geography in which we can readily see the parts as aspects of a whole earth climatic system (ocean currents are another related example). Exploring the characteristic phenomena of the different climatic zones can be done either generically, as types regardless of location (tundra or equatorial zones) or by specific reference to actual regions. Both methods belong within the Waldorf curriculum.
The relationship to true regional diversity is also important. It is important for the pupils to be able to visualise both the similarities with what they know and the differences in distance and scale of unfamiliar parts of the earth. Steiner stressed this:
In dealing with space we densify the spirit and soul of the child, we drive it down to the ground. By teaching geography in such a way that the child sees what we are telling him we bring about this consolidation in him. But there must be the true seeing in space. The child must, for example, be conscious that the Niagara Falls are not the river Elbe! We must help him to realise that a vast space stretches between the two.4
Geography is a subject that can lead the children 'down to earth' and thus prepare them for earthly maturity. Before they go to school and even during their first two years at school, children have a rather dreamy awareness of the world as a totality. Learning about the environment leads them to more wakeful and differentiated perceptions. Up to the age of seven or eight this unity exists of its own accord; thereafter it needs cultivating by means of ever more contact with the world. This includes vivid and colourful descriptions of the archetypal professions, crafts and the locality. Such descriptions are complemented by practical activities such as farming, processing cereals, house-building, gardening. How this is done will vary in ways that depend on the nature of the locality. The production and processing of natural materials is the basis of human economy and this relationship to nature is an important aspect of geography.
If we want to help the children enter into a partnership with nature we must enable them to go beyond mere intellectual knowledge of the kind gained by learning of nature indirectly, such as through electronic media, and penetrate to real feelings for the natural world, feelings that will always lead to activity and a responsible relationship between human beings and nature.
For Classes 1 to 3 the general aim of learning about the environment might be formulated as: getting to know and feeling connected with one's surroundings and with the work human beings do. In Class 4 differentiation begins to be more pronounced. Local knowledge of the immediate area widens spatially (to include geography, simple astronomy, and the study of human beings, animals and plants) and temporally (history). From Class 4 onwards the differentiated subjects are named accordingly, but they ought to remain integrated within an overall experience of the world around us.
Environmental studies would thus be part of history lessons, for example, how the consequences of the Greco-Latin culture, of the Middle Ages and of recent history, as well as the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution's inventions, still influence our life and environment today. Similarly, environmental studies in geography lessons would show how climate and soil are related to the transport and trade, the economy and way of life of different societies. Environmental studies also relate to English lessons in the form of business essays and to arithmetic lessons in the form of commercial arithmetic. Steiner even considered that religion lessons would also be a part of environmental education, as his suggestions that the steam engine or something astronomical might be included in them.
The general educational aim for the children's ninth to twelfth year is thus to meet the children's need to experience reality, i.e. the overall meaning of the realities of nature and the world, so that they can develop their love for the world. This is a cross- curricular aim.
Environmental studies also play an essential part in the sciences of nature (physics and chemistry). Steiner considered it important for the youngsters in Classes 7 and 8 to have physics lessons about life, lessons that give them an understanding of their relationship with their surroundings:
We are living in a world made by human beings, shaped in accordance with human thoughts, a world that we use while knowing nothing at all about it. That we do not understand something made by human beings, something that is, to all intents and purposes, human thought, is a fact that is of great Significance in connection with people's mood of soul and spirit ... The worst thing of all is to share in the experience of this world made by human beings without taking trouble over it.5
This leads, from the pupils' twelfth year onwards, to the formulation of the general educational aims with regard to the way in which 'the world and the life around us' influences all lessons: the children should attain elementary concepts, knowledge and skills with regard to the more important functions of life. This is not only to give them confidence but also to give them the longing to know all about what is going on around them.
In summary one can say that up to the age of twelve, the task of the geography curriculum is to bring the child down to earth; to awaken them to the world around them. From this point on the curriculum moves through cultural geography in Classes 7 and 8 to relating to the world as a whole living organism in the Upper School.
In some schools, Class 8 pupils carry out year-long projects in connection with which environmental studies offers them opportunities to deepen their knowledge of life subjects, thus satisfying their curiosity, or developing it further.
We should point here to environmental studies within the curriculum in the Upper School, as practised in the various practical projects, and also the subject 'technology and life' which Steiner introduced as early on as 1921. Some Steiner- Waldorf schools have made this integrated environmental approach as the basis for developing quite new forms of the Upper School.
Geography, in all its various aspects, forms a key integrating subject within the whole curriculum. Defined at its broadest it encompasses many aspects of the world around us. Learning about the world around us is a complex subject covering many fields that relate to many other subjects. Essentially though, the methodology of geography teaching in Steiner- Waldorf schools has fundamental themes:
* Physical or natural geography
* Social geography
* Inner or developmental geography
The first systematically describes the phenomena of the earth, its surface, interior and atmosphere. The second considers the human influence on the environment, its economic consequences and the relationship between the particular character of a geographical region and the social and cultural development of the people who live there. The third refers to how individuals' awareness of their environment is reflected in how they see the world and experience themselves within it and follows how this process evolves through the child's development. The methodology of the Waldorf curriculum seeks to integrate these three approaches.
The core of this method is to proceed from the whole to the inter-related parts and to start in the known world and proceed to the unknown before returning to the known. It is a voyage of discovery.
The regions of the earth are not to be studied as mere divisions of the earth's surface, but rather that the areas of the earth's surface are to be studied for their particular character which is a product of their phenomena. It is their inter-relationship with each other which fills the areas with their content ... Geography in Steiner- Waldorf education entails the use of a comparative method?
Furthermore, as Alexander von Humboldt pointed out, geography must contain something aesthetic, which proceeds from a premonition of the inter-relation of the sensual with the intellectual towards a feeling of universality.
Descriptions of nature can be sharply limited and scientifically exact without thereby losing the living breath of the power of imagination.
This aspect is fundamental to geographical education.
The basis for geography teaching is the concept of the earth as morphological and physical totality, or the earth as an organism. This implies a consciousness both of the inter-relationships of the parts within the whole and also of the whole as a developing being. This highlights the importance of climatic geography in which we can readily see the parts as aspects of a whole earth climatic system (ocean currents are another related example). Exploring the characteristic phenomena of the different climatic zones can be done either generically, as types regardless of location (tundra or equatorial zones) or by specific reference to actual regions. Both methods belong within the Waldorf curriculum.
The relationship to true regional diversity is also important. It is important for the pupils to be able to visualise both the similarities with what they know and the differences in distance and scale of unfamiliar parts of the earth. Steiner stressed this:
In dealing with space we densify the spirit and soul of the child, we drive it down to the ground. By teaching geography in such a way that the child sees what we are telling him we bring about this consolidation in him. But there must be the true seeing in space. The child must, for example, be conscious that the Niagara Falls are not the river Elbe! We must help him to realise that a vast space stretches between the two.4
Geography is a subject that can lead the children 'down to earth' and thus prepare them for earthly maturity. Before they go to school and even during their first two years at school, children have a rather dreamy awareness of the world as a totality. Learning about the environment leads them to more wakeful and differentiated perceptions. Up to the age of seven or eight this unity exists of its own accord; thereafter it needs cultivating by means of ever more contact with the world. This includes vivid and colourful descriptions of the archetypal professions, crafts and the locality. Such descriptions are complemented by practical activities such as farming, processing cereals, house-building, gardening. How this is done will vary in ways that depend on the nature of the locality. The production and processing of natural materials is the basis of human economy and this relationship to nature is an important aspect of geography.
If we want to help the children enter into a partnership with nature we must enable them to go beyond mere intellectual knowledge of the kind gained by learning of nature indirectly, such as through electronic media, and penetrate to real feelings for the natural world, feelings that will always lead to activity and a responsible relationship between human beings and nature.
For Classes 1 to 3 the general aim of learning about the environment might be formulated as: getting to know and feeling connected with one's surroundings and with the work human beings do. In Class 4 differentiation begins to be more pronounced. Local knowledge of the immediate area widens spatially (to include geography, simple astronomy, and the study of human beings, animals and plants) and temporally (history). From Class 4 onwards the differentiated subjects are named accordingly, but they ought to remain integrated within an overall experience of the world around us.
Environmental studies would thus be part of history lessons, for example, how the consequences of the Greco-Latin culture, of the Middle Ages and of recent history, as well as the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution's inventions, still influence our life and environment today. Similarly, environmental studies in geography lessons would show how climate and soil are related to the transport and trade, the economy and way of life of different societies. Environmental studies also relate to English lessons in the form of business essays and to arithmetic lessons in the form of commercial arithmetic. Steiner even considered that religion lessons would also be a part of environmental education, as his suggestions that the steam engine or something astronomical might be included in them.
The general educational aim for the children's ninth to twelfth year is thus to meet the children's need to experience reality, i.e. the overall meaning of the realities of nature and the world, so that they can develop their love for the world. This is a cross- curricular aim.
Environmental studies also play an essential part in the sciences of nature (physics and chemistry). Steiner considered it important for the youngsters in Classes 7 and 8 to have physics lessons about life, lessons that give them an understanding of their relationship with their surroundings:
We are living in a world made by human beings, shaped in accordance with human thoughts, a world that we use while knowing nothing at all about it. That we do not understand something made by human beings, something that is, to all intents and purposes, human thought, is a fact that is of great Significance in connection with people's mood of soul and spirit ... The worst thing of all is to share in the experience of this world made by human beings without taking trouble over it.5
This leads, from the pupils' twelfth year onwards, to the formulation of the general educational aims with regard to the way in which 'the world and the life around us' influences all lessons: the children should attain elementary concepts, knowledge and skills with regard to the more important functions of life. This is not only to give them confidence but also to give them the longing to know all about what is going on around them.
In summary one can say that up to the age of twelve, the task of the geography curriculum is to bring the child down to earth; to awaken them to the world around them. From this point on the curriculum moves through cultural geography in Classes 7 and 8 to relating to the world as a whole living organism in the Upper School.
In some schools, Class 8 pupils carry out year-long projects in connection with which environmental studies offers them opportunities to deepen their knowledge of life subjects, thus satisfying their curiosity, or developing it further.
We should point here to environmental studies within the curriculum in the Upper School, as practised in the various practical projects, and also the subject 'technology and life' which Steiner introduced as early on as 1921. Some Steiner- Waldorf schools have made this integrated environmental approach as the basis for developing quite new forms of the Upper School.
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