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Lower School

Students in Grades 1 through 5 use head, heart, and hands to delve into a robust academic program that engages all their senses and creates lifelong learners.

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Main Lesson

Main lesson occupies the first two hours of each day. Lessons are structured in blocks of three to four weeks, allowing students to explore multiple subjects with depth and flexibility. Blocks rotate between language arts, history, math and science so that students engage in a varied curriculum. Separate skill building courses in reading, writing, and math run concurrently throughout the year.

A unique feature of Waldorf classrooms is the Main Lesson Book, a hand-crafted, hand-illustrated book written by each child that covers the subject studied in class. By creating their own “textbooks,” students move beyond being passive recipients of an educational program to being active collaborators in their own learning.

 

Math & Science

Students encounter math and science through looking at their environment. Outdoor play and nature stories awaken a sense of wonder. Math instruction begins through games, both visual and kinetic. Science learning continues through an investigation of the seasons, a crucial part of the students’ growing awareness of their place in the universe. Practical activities enrich these studies. As the students approach middle school, learning becomes both formalized and integrated. Math lessons build on students’ growing conceptual knowledge. Science lessons turn towards a more specific investigation of the physical world.

 

Mandarin & Castellano

At BWS, our Lower School students learn Castellano and Mandarin through dramatic storytelling, engaging the students in culture and movement, while implicitly teaching vocabulary and grammar.  In addition to developing their linguistic abilities, this narrative-based curriculum encourages our students to infer meaning through context clues.  Experiencing language through narrative engagement contributes to a meaningful lifetime relationship.

 

History & Social Studies

Students start to explore the world by taking in their local environment. Through map-making and field trips, they gain an understanding of New York geography. Students visit cultural institutions to study the history of New York City. As they learn to link the modern world to the distant past, students move on to study World History. Students become immersed in stories and myths to deepen their knowledge of early civilizations.

 

Music, Orchestra, & Chorus

Students begin their music studies in our early childhood classrooms, exploring cultures across the globe through song and rhythmic games. As they progress through the grades, students advance to choral and instrumental studies, gaining exposure to diverse musical genres.  Chorus and general music classes begin in Grade 1, with mixed-age choruses integrating Grades 4 and 5.  As students ascend the grades, their choral singing matures from simple songs to more intricate vocal arrangements, expanding their skills to blend and harmonize in group.  Students begin their instrumental studies with interval and C-diatonic flutes in the early Grades, before taking up a string or woodwind instrument in orchestra class beginning in Grade 3.  Students are encouraged to supplement their curricular orchestral practice with independent lessons (often in-house and funded by families).  Curricular orchestra practice begins with the entire class during the second semester of Grade 3, then combines for Grades 4 and 5. 

Handwork

Handwork is core element of every student’s educational experience from early childhood through the grades.  This work engages and expands the children’s creative, cognitive, and emotional development by synthesizing the mind and body experience.  Early grades students routinely explore soft materials like wool, yarn, and fabric.  Through various techniques in sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, spinning, felting, and plant dyeing, they enrich their understanding and appreciation of the materials offered by our natural world.  During the Fiber Block, for example, students embark on a deep exploration, following the journey of a single fiber from its animal or plant origin all the way to its eventual form as a finished crafted object.

 

Games & Movement

Movement is heavily incorporated into our curriculum. Equipped with the foundational physical knowledge they have gained through our Early Childhood program, grades students will go on to participate in Games and Movement classes. In Middle School, they are able to join our basketball teams and compete against peer schools across the City.

 

Class Trips

At BWS, each grade has a chance to explore Brooklyn, greater NYC, and as the students grow older, take overnight trips. Traveling outside of our urban environment allows students to interact with natural conditions. Spending time together outside of the classroom guides students towards developing strong bonds, building leadership skills, and continuing to work on the act of collaboration.

 

Art

Artistic expression lies at the core of Waldorf education. Our Lower School teachers invoke music and the visual arts–such as drawing, watercolor painting and beeswax modeling–as fundamental classroom instruments, enlivening daily lessons and igniting imagination.  Singing is woven into every day to unify group energy, ease transitions, and complement linguistic and mathematical lessons.  Students learn songs spanning many cultures, further deepening their relationship to language.  Instrumental music begins in Grade 1 with interval flutes and percussion instruments and progresses with age to C-diatonic flutes and recorders, and string and woodwind instruments. 

Teachers emphasize the artist within each human being.  In the area of the visual arts, students follow their teacher’s artistic example within their own Main Lesson books, creating unique interpretations of the stories they are learning.  While these works depict similar imagery by design, each student’s representation expresses their individual being at that moment in time, and captures a personal understanding of the subject at hand.

 

 

Woodworking

The teaching of woodworking is a traditional piece of our Waldorf curriculum beginning in Grade 4, when a student is developmentally ready for the challenge and resistance of the material.  Woodworking requires tremendous mindfulness, spiritual engagement, and the sense of will that comes only from the doing.  Students work diligently over several sessions to create everyday items such as spoons and bowls, generating mental and physical endurance and skillfulness of hand.  The work contributes to fine motor development, appreciation of natural materials, and fosters a sense of perseverance that our students carry with them into the world.