Second Grade

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

—Margaret Mead

Sharpening Learning Skills

Like waking from a dream, the second grader’s alertness and observation skills are sharpening, and the curriculum supports them in this period of discovering others and the world around them. In the Main Lesson, they learn about goodness and its opposite, overcoming hardship, and perseverance through fables and legend stories of extraordinary human beings who developed their capacities in exceptional ways to add great value to the world—lessons which magnify and clarify the second grader’s experience with the burgeoning binaries of their being. As with all grades in the Waldorf curriculum, the Subjects scaffold the Main Lesson for an all-encompassing approach to learning.

Main Lesson Block

• Fables, folklore, saints and hero stories
• Nature Study
• Number Patterns, four operations
• Poetry
• Speech

Subject Classes

Music

• Pentatonic Flute

• Folk Songs

Practical and Fine Arts

• Form drawing

• Beeswax modeling

• Watercolor painting

• Drama

• Crotchet

Movement/Spacial Dynamics™

• Large muscle activities –precision movement
• Developing directionality
• Folk Dancing
• Eurythmy (2 six-week blocks)

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

• Spanish: oral learning through poetry, stories, songs, crafts and games
• Mandarin

Download the comprehensive Second Grade Curriculum.