“Acacia Waldorf School recognizes that how lessons are taught makes a big difference in a child’s learning. True learning is a lifelong process of discovery that engages the human being. Here, the passion to seek and discover is awakened and enlivened in every child. Waldorf Steiner education sees the child, not as an empty vessel to be filled by an adult and worldly concepts, but as a being of unfolding capacities who must be nurtured so that he or she may become his or her own person – balanced in the head, heart, and hands, fully upright, and consciously engaged in society and the world.”
– Panjee Tapales, AWS parent, 2008
Morning Circle
Each class day begins with a morning circle. As one settles down in a classroom to learn, rather than jump straight into a first lesson of the day at the sound of the bell, a morning circle forms a prelude to the Main Lesson. Morning circle activities are varied and may serve the theme of the main lesson and aid a Student’s development over a range of domains: spatial awareness, rhythm, balance, gross motor skills, fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, maths, language, music, speech, and drama.
Music and choral speech recitation work towards developing a sense of how individuals strive and work together in harmony towards a whole. A morning circle may include coordination games with bean bags, balls, sticks, or rods; numbers, songs, or verses accompanied with simple rhythmic actions such as clapping, tapping, walking, stomping, hopping, or skipping; and playing themed music on pentatonic flutes.
As the children grow older, music learned in a morning circle may evolve into round songs or two-part harmonies, and later, multi-part harmonies; multiplication tables recited during a morning circle make their way into regular Maths practice. The experiences of rhythmic exercises, tone and rhythm in music, and choral speech recitation also allow Students to experience how a class of individuals can work rhythmically, and in harmony towards a whole.
Main Lesson
After a morning circle, a Student in Grade School and Upper School is immersed in the Main Lesson class for the rest of the first two hours of each school day. Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, History, or Geography Main Lessons are taught daily for three or four weeks each.
Daily lessons are presented in creative and artistic ways that engage the students’ feeling life, and not just the intellect. Concepts are introduced through stories, images, verses, music, art, and experiential activities that allow each student to engage and connect one’s thoughts and feelings in deeper ways to learn about a subject. The Students also make their own Main Lesson books, which is a portfolio or record of a Student’s own learning, created with a Student’s own imagination, will, and sense of responsibility. New ideas introduced in the Main Lessons are practiced in regular Skills Practice classes a few days each week.
Art and Music
Art and Music in a Waldorf Steiner curriculum are valuable not just for their own sake, but whose nature offers much that is useful for one’s education, albeit in many intangible ways. Fine Arts
at our Waldorf Steiner school typically includes crafts, painting, drawing, and clay modeling. Although there are separate subject periods to focus on experiencing particular aspects of these, Art and Music are also integrated into daily class experiences, such as singing a song in morning circle in connection to the Main Lesson theme or festival or creating drawings and tasteful borders to frame a Main Lesson book page.
The musical experience of tone and rhythm enhances a mood as the music unfolds. While music and art allow for the inner experience of a mood, a Student also engages one’s heart and will to create and behold beauty, while a piece is being sung, drawn, crafted, and completed. In Early Childhood and Kindergarten, a child hears and sings simple, gentle melodies within a pentatonic scale. A lyre or glockenspiel, with its mellow, twinkling sound, and simple pentatonic songs accompany many transitions and rituals in a Kindergarten day. The warm, enveloping quality of music without any jarring elements provides a soothing experience for young children.
A young child takes up a C-flute or Soprano recorder in Lower School. String musical instruments such as violin or cello are learned in Class Three onwards. Ensemble playing is introduced in Middle School. In Upper School, a Student may join an ensemble or jazz band and may learn to play other musical instruments of choice, such as trumpet, guitar, or drums. As a student grows older, music becomes more complex, and each time, playing music is a meaningful activity that engages the Student, enhances learning, and is supported with regular practice in class and at home.
Painting
In Kindergarten and Lower School, a Teacher uses stories to lead children on wet-on-wet watercolor painting. For a young child, each painting exercise is a wonderful experience of immersing oneself in a color or a combination of colors and gestures, along with the theme of a season, festival, or Main Lesson. The manner of working with wet-on-wet painting is enhanced by creating colored veil paintings in Class 7 and up. Upper School students engage in textile painting, woodblock, and linocut printmaking.
Form Drawing
Perhaps unique to Waldorf Steiner schools is Form Drawing in Lower School. Regular Form drawing exercises serve to artistically and creatively prepare and support a young child for writing, reading, and later, geometry. All drawings are done entirely freehand and thus allow a child to practice straight and curved lines and the up-down, left-to-right orientation. A child draws lines and rhythmic patterns on paper towards a specific movement, and later draws running forms, like those of a castle wall or waves. In the succeeding years, Form Drawing activities use symmetry along a horizontal or vertical axis. Closed, interlacing loops are learned in Form Drawing of Celtic knots in Class 4.
Drawing
In Class 5, students learn to draw mandalas and geometric patterns in freehand. In Class 6, a student is introduced to two chief drawing tools, the straightedge, and compass. Precise geometric forms are constructed with their aid, intricate patterns are found within the forms and are highlighted with thoughtful use of colors. In Class 7, a Student also begins to learn to work on perspective drawings, with tools to help render lines with precision. Black and white and colored chalk and oil pastel and pencil drawing activities are done in Middle School and Upper School.
Handwork and Woodwork
The Practical Arts provides lots of opportunities for a young Student to develop holistically. By the nature of these subjects, a Student engages in learning by doing. A student imbibes a reverence for people, nature, and the world, and learns what it takes to bring practical tasks into reality.
In our Waldorf Steiner school, working with different crafts materials and practical handwork and woodwork projects hold opportunities for each Student to develop fine motor skills, cultivate patience, perseverance, appreciation, and respect for the skills of others, and respect for people in our society, whose practical skills contribute to the fabric of our daily lives.
Young Kindergarten and Lower School children do finger knit and finger crochet. Over the next school years, a Student will create one’s own projects that one will knit, crochet, weave, do macramé, and sew by hand and then by machine. All the work is practical and self-directed and there is a sense of fulfillment when one completes a project that has a useful purpose, such as a bag, a cushion, a stuffed toy, or a piece of clothing such as an apron.
A woodwork project may start with a simple piece such as a wooden egg, and a wooden spoon in Lower School, and wooden frames in Middle School. Carpentry and joinery, weaving, and bookbinding are undertaken in Upper School crafts workshops.
Gardening
Our school has an abundance of natural and organic open spaces with a variety of plants, trees, herbs, and vegetable gardens. Each classroom is surrounded by nature, and a Student experiences nature on a daily basis. Kindergarten and young children experience the seasons and the gardens as they play outdoors every day.
Older Students also gain first-hand experiences and a deeper understanding of how nature works through practical gardening and farming work. A Student in Middle and Upper School may plant a variety of plants and vegetables and may prepare and maintain an individual or shared garden plot. A Teacher works with older Students on practical gardening ideas, such as nurturing seedlings for transplanting, making compost, intercropping, and writing nature journals.
Movement, Games, and Athletics
Movement in our Waldorf Steiner school includes dance, rhythmic physical exercises, Eurythmy and/or Bothmer gymnastics, circle and running games, and athletics. Eurythmy and Bothmer mentors visit the school regularly for Eurythmy or Bothmer activities of the students and faculty.
Class Five Students learn Greek pentathlon games in connection with Greek History Main Lesson. Class Six Students experience Medieval Games and Archery on campus, in connection with Medieval History blocks. Class Seven Students learn how to sail, in connection with Explorers History Main Lesson. Team and individual athletics such as fencing, gymnastics, volleyball, basketball, running games, table tennis, badminton, and Martial Arts such as Aikido are included in Middle School and Upper School.