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A Glimpse Into the Waldorf Fourth Grade

Posted on May 14, 2018

By Tina DeSaussure, Class Teacher

As students advance into the fourth grade they are at the end of their 9th and beginning of their 10th year. The familiar bonds of authority are loosening and children may begin to feel fearful or uncertain in areas where before they were fearless or confident. Increasing self-awareness results in a distancing from the world around them, testing authority and asking questions about life and death and their own place in the family.

The aim of the fourth-grade curriculum is first and foremost to channel the powerful energy that these children bring to the classroom. The students need to be challenged and stretched in every possible aspect of their work. Our aim is to meet the growing interest of students in more concrete areas of knowledge and to provide them with opportunities for more independence in their work. Individually the children will need to find a new relationship to their work, their peers, and authority figures.

Third-grade students delve into the Creation myths of the ancient Hebrews. Through these stories, the children have the experience of a single, all-powerful, and infallible authority figure. In fourth grade, the exploration of creation myths continues, beginning with the great Finnish epic called the Kalevala. Fourth-grade students also study the vivid picture world of the Poetic and Prose Eddas, out of which comes the Norse mythology. Unlike the Hebrew stories, however, these stories offer a multiplicity of personalities, flawed and often powerless, that contribute both for good and for evil to the social whole. Norse mythology, in particular, presents to the children, in an unsentimental fashion, the consequences of past deeds, as well as pictures of courage and fulfillment, and, finally, the death of the gods and the dawn of a new world.

In addition, since this is a time when the children begin to perceive the mistakes and errors of judgment made by their parents and teachers, they can relate with sympathy to the frequent mistakes made by the very fallible Norse gods and goddesses. This is an age when children delight in playing tricks on adults. It is therefore understandable that the student will take equal delight in hearing of the escapades of Loki who is frequently engaged in playing tricks on the giants or deviously beguiling the gods into some foolish activity. The challenge for almost every fourth grade Waldorf teacher is to convince his or her students that all of them cannot play Loki in the class play.

In social studies, the children should form a sense of where they are in relation to their environment, in both a social and geographical sense. In Texas, fourth graders study the various Native American tribes of the region, including the Caddo, the Wichita, the Comanche, the Karankawa, the Apache, the Tonkawa, and more. The children learn about these peoples through dance, music, stories, and art. The Spanish conquistadors and missionaries play an important role in the curriculum, as well as Mexican ranchers and American farmers and cowboys. Historical figures such as Davy Crockett, Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston, Cabeza de Vaca, Coronado, and Jean Lafitte (the pirate of the Gulf) all had a part to play in Texas’s rich history.

Fourth graders study the geography of Texas and compare and contrast its vastly different regions. During the zoology (human and animal) block, the children learn about the native animals of Texas and make comparisons between humans and animals. They research and write reports about a particular animal, as they seek to make concrete connections to the world in which they live.

In the study of mathematics, children learn how the parts relate to the whole and how the whole can separate into component parts as they take up fractions for the first time. They learn how to find the least common denominator and how to do the four basic mathematical operations using fractions with similar and different denominators.

In form drawing, the students learn how to tie a variety of knots and then draw the knots they have learned. This leads into the challenge of Celtic knot drawing, something that third graders are often begging to do. The morning main lesson is followed by a full schedule of music, Spanish, German, eurythmy, strings, painting, movement, and handwork—it is a wonder how it all fits in.

“I like how creativity and individuality are integrated into community building and learning to achieve as a group.”