The Main Lesson

In all Waldorf-method elementary schools, the Main Lesson is the cornerstone of the day, a two-hour period in the morning when children are most awake and eager for academic work. The class teacher focuses on one subject over several weeks so students have an opportunity to develop a strong relationship with every subject studied.

In each main lesson block, the teacher incorporates storytelling, movement, music, poetry, drama, drawing, painting, modeling, reading and writing, presenting vivid descriptions and experiential opportunities each day that engage the student in a harmonious and joyful way. Students record and illustrate the lesson content in their Main Lesson books, which are treasured for years to come.

The ideal is for the Class Teacher to remain with the same class throughout the eight elementary years, enabling close, secure relationships with each child and a deep appreciation of individual needs. This allows a close partnership to develop between parents and teacher as well, which fosters a much deeper understanding of the ever-changing stages of child development.

After the morning Main Lesson, the students engage in practice periods that deepen the academic skills introduced in the main lesson and attend special subject classes including Spanish, handwork, games, violin and woodworking. Most special subject classes at Woodland Star begin in the First Grade, although Spanish is introduced in Kindergarten.

Grades 1-4

The Waldorf-methods curriculum is designed to give children meaningful experiences at every age. An approach is taken that strives to maintain the protective veil of childhood for students in the first four years of grade school. Through fairy tales, fables, legends, creation stories and Norse mythology, the teacher slowly builds a bridge that crosses from the innocent, imaginative world of childhood to the more conscious, empirical world of adolescent life.

Grades 5-8

In Grades Five through Eight, the developmental capacity for thinking radically shifts and the curriculum grows progressively more complex from year to year. The beginning of this transition is marked by the "nine year change," a time when the child's individuality becomes more pronounced and when a child first begins to view everything in his/her surroundings with a "critical eye." At this time, many children begin to question their place in the world, which was hitherto taken for granted.

With this "birth of individuality" comes a growing interest in the world around them. In their studies, the upper grades move from mythology to recorded history, the birth of logic and abstract thought. The curriculum weaves together the natural sciences, history and the arts in a much more sophisticated manner, and students begin to synthesize the application of skills learned in the early grades. Arithmetic leads to higher mathematics; form drawing leads to complex geometric and perspective drawings; poetry and singing lead to formal reading and writing with more concern for grammatical structure and composition in language and music.

Storytelling is a large part of the First Grade curriculum encompassing Fairy Tales, Folk Tales and Nature Stories from around the world.

Explorations of nature, pictorial and phonetic introduction of the alphabet, word recognition, qualities of whole numbers, Roman numerals, introduction to the four processes in arithmetic, mental math games, lower multiplication tables, form drawing.

• Legends, Animal Fables and Native American Indian Legends and the multi-cultural studies of noble and heroic people.
• Small letters, reading, basic elements of grammar and sentence structure, form drawing.
• Broadening arithmetic processes, continue observations of natural phenomenon (i.e. weather, seasons, etc.)

• Ancient legends and creation stories from many cultures.
• Study of practical life: farming, housing, clothing. The children grow food, cook meals and build a simple housing structure like a garden shed or playhouse.
• Reading, spelling, cursive writing, original compositions, grammar, punctuation, parts of speech.
• Higher multiplication tables, weight, measuring, money, primary numbers, word problems.

• Stories from Norse mythology and Celtic sagas and legends.
• California and local history, geography and cartography.
• Study of animal kingdom.
• Fractions, long division, square roots, averages, factoring.

• Ancient Civilizations of India through classical Greece. Participation with other Waldorf-methods Fifth Grades in a spring Pentathlon
• Composition and poetry, spelling, reading, grammar.
• U.S. Geography related to vegetation, agriculture and economics.
• Decimals, ratio and proportion, freehand geometry, decimals, metric system, mixed numbers.
• Study of plant kingdom.

• Roman and Medieval history, composition and poetry, reading, formal letter writing, grammar, spelling, North and South American geography.
• Mineralogy, physics (acoustics, electricity, magnetism, optics and heat), astronomy.
• Percentages, interest, profit and loss, ratios, proportions, geometric drawing with instruments.

• Renaissance, Reformation and Age of Discovery, literature and poetry (Chaucer and the crusades, Arthurian legends), biographies.
• Composition, complex grammar, spelling.
• World geography and ocean currents.
• Physics (mechanics and electricity), physiology, research, inorganic chemistry.
• Business math in depth, graphing and powers of numbers, pre-algebra.

• Shakespeare and Elizabethan Age to modern poetry, writing short stories, dramatic scripts and journalism, spelling, grammar.
• Continue world geography and climatology.
• Age of Revolution to Current Events.
• Physics (hydraulics), physiology, organic chemistry, meteorology. Applied mathematics (review of solids and measurements), set concepts, algebra, solid geometry.

As a public school, Woodland Star accepts all students. Special education needs are currently met by a part time Speech Therapist, Resource Teacher, School Psychologist and a Woodland Star staff member who works with identified children.

In the 2007-2008 school year, Special Education services are fully provided by the Sonoma Valley Unified School District