Elementary
Mountain Song Community School adheres to the curriculum standards established by the Alliance for Public Waldorf Education
Kindergarten
THE WORLD IS GOOD
Beauty, simplicity and order supports the gentle unfolding of the Kindergarten child. Our teachers prepare warm, loving environments that reflect as closely as possible the best elements of care found in a healthy family. Children experience a sense of security surrounded by predictable daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms.
In our play-based environment, our Kindergarten teachers serve as worthy role models for their children who, at this age, learn primarily through imitation.
By maintaining appropriate play spaces, teachers help children nurture their power of imagination. Toys are handmade using natural materials, or rocks, pinecones, stones, and pieces of wood are used for play. Carefully selected nature stories and fairy tales are told or presented through puppet shows to foster creativity in the children’s imaginative play.
Throughout the year, festivals mark the seasons with special stories, songs, verses, artistic activities, food, and treasures from nature. Many celebrations, including the child’s birthday, are tucked into the year. All the celebrations bring a sense of sharing, participation, fellowship, and gratitude for life.
Numerous research studies, spanning from the 1970s to current day, show that early formalized instruction makes only short-term gains but it is the play-based kindergarten that leads to greater success in reading, math and the development of the imagination.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM KINDERGARTEN
Fairy Tales & Folk Tales from around the world
Songs, rhymes and tongue twisters
Rhythm and pulse in music
Social and emotional learning through modeling, play, and puppetry
Counting games
Pattern forming & finger-knitting
Practical tasks such as baking, making soup, chopping, setting the table
Watercolor
Beeswax modeling
Circle dances and finger game
Outdoor and indoor free play
Early food relationships
Practical and simple gardening tasks
First Grade
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
The First Grade experience is a pivotal one in the development of the child. A transition from the nurturing communal experience of kindergarten is beginning to unfold into a more traditional academic school experience. It is here that the rhythms and habits of classroom life and work are established that form the foundation for all subsequent school learning.
The children look to their teacher as their loving authority and experience oneness with their environment and their peers. Fairy tales are shared in First Grade, which convey in vivid oral pictures the basic archetypal dramas of the human experience. Children tend to resonate deeply with each story because all is good in the end. Oral storytelling provides a basis for teaching from year to year and helps children in creating an authentic and relevant connection to the curriculum. This connection engages the children and allows them to create pictures in their imagination leading to a greater capacity for comprehension. Students connect more deeply with the qualities and function of letters and numbers as the teacher brings them to life through stories. For example, a story of the Mighty Mountain will be told and the students will draw a mountain in the shape of an M, and they also will bring the quality of M to their movement and speech exercises: “The mighty, mighty men marched up the magic mountain.”
HIGHLIGHTS FROM FIRST GRADE
Nature stories & multicultural fairy tales, traditional and seasonal rhymes and verses
Written letters, grammar, and spelling from story to imagination
Reading predicated by recitation and writing, speech exercises, phonics, plays
Four math processes through story imagination and manipulatives, quality of numbers, counting, multiplication tables through rhythm and movement, mental math
Nature observation through stories, poetry and walks
Awareness and appreciation of plants, animals, and minerals
Simple form drawing based on straight and curved lines, wet-on- wet watercolor painting, modeling from beeswax
Finger knitting, making knitting needles, knitting with two needles
Imaginative games, jump rope, swinging, skipping, hopping, climbing, string play
Songs in pentatonic scale, seasonal songs on flute and singing.
Songs, games, poems and plays, cultural traditions, vocabulary and numbers.
Simple practical tasks and garden skills learned through imitation, developing awareness and respect for nature.
Second Grade
My Two Hands are
Being Prepared for
So Many Good Deeds
The Second Grade student now begins to sense that there is more to life than the innocent, imaginative, “the world and I are one” experience of First Grade. The child becomes more aware of the greatness and the failings of human beings. Thus, it is timely that we bring fables, often illustrating exaggerated human traits such as greed, boastfulness, stubbornness, and the lives of exemplary people who demonstrate the higher qualities of humanity.
Duality is explored in Second Grade through the use of animal fables, such as the fox who tries and tries but gives up on the grapes, in juxtaposition with stories of exemplary people such as George and the Dragon, Wengari Maathai and White Buffalo Calf Woman. This is a picture that is coming into the social life of the child and practiced daily in their peer relationships. These stories live and grow in the child and hold their interest as they delve deeper into language arts and writing. In written work and creative movement, students will advance in the four mathematical processes by mastering the times tables and working on advanced addition and subtraction processes such as place value and transferring.
2ND GRADE HIGHLIGHTS
HISTORY AND LANGUAGE ARTS
Animal fables, legends and folklore from many cultures, stories of heroes and exemplary people, oral poetry and storytelling, individual and group recitation, cursive writing, reading lesson books and literature, spelling, plays
MATHEMATICS
Practice of four math processes, computation, rhythmical counting by 1s-12s, mental math
GEOGRAPHY AND SCIENCE
Relationship and responsibility between human beings and nature, nature observation
FINE ARTS
Dynamic and flowing forms and symmetry, introduction of cursive writing, wet-on-wet watercolor, beeswax modeling
HANDWORK
Knitting and purling, casting on and binding off, increasing and decreasing
GAMES & MOVEMENT
Contraction and expansion, concentration, dexterity and opposites, forming circles and figure eights, circle and singing games, jump rope and hopscotch
MUSIC
High and low tones, rhythm of language, singing, flute
SPANISH
Songs, games, poems and plays, cultural traditions, vocabulary and numbers
AGRICULTURE ARTS
Simple practical tasks and garden skills emphasizing cooperation, food vocabulary, traditional foods from around the world, caring for chickens, nutrition, remarkable people in agriculture
Third Grade
3RD GRADE HIGHLIGHTS
HISTORY AND LANGUAGE ARTS Stories and legends from the ancient Hebrew people, Native American tales; grammar, narrative writing, daily recitation and recapitulation, independent and group reading, spelling, plays
MATHEMATICS Applications of the four math processes, times table, double-digit multiplication, long division, measuring concepts, mental math
SCIENCE Study of human shelters, clothing and fibers; Building projects
FINE ARTS Form drawing, expressive drawings, wet-on-wet watercolor painting, modeling in clay and beeswax
HANDWORK Crocheting useful items, dyeing, spinning and weaving wool
GAMES & MOVEMENT Circle games, introduction to circus arts
MUSIC Further development of unison singing, Introduction of C flute, Reading and writing musical notation, singing in simple rounds
SPANISH Oral language practice, longer and more complex phrases and vocabulary, conversational work
AGRICULTURE ARTS Planning, planting, maintaining and harvesting. Create seasonal garden journals, seed starting, pest control, farm-to-table cooking and food preservation, harvest celebrations and holidays around the world
Here I Stand Upon the Earth
Significant psychological, cognitive, and physiological changes happen in third grade, often called the “nine year change.” Children become more self-aware, and with this awareness comes the realization that they are disconnecting from their surroundings in ways that can be both disconcerting and self-empowering.
Independence in thought and action is becoming more evident in the third grader as they begin to transition from the ‘we’ to the ‘me.’ Stories of courage and determination of the ancient Hebrew people finding home are embraced by the third grader who is beginning to feel a strong departure from how they’ve sensed themselves in the world for their first eight years. Meaningful and practical work including gardening, cooking and construction helps to develop the child’s relationship to the self and the Earth. These practical arts require the development of measurement, which carries forth into math lessons along with weights and time.
Multiple learning modalities are engaged giving all different kinds of learners routes to successful comprehension and daily the children have the opportunity to work both independently and in groups at all grades at Mountain Song Community School.
Fourth Grade
STRIDING BOLDLY OVER THE LAND
The first phase of childhood has been left behind as the children begin to exhibit characteristics of their emerging individualities, both as gifts and talents, as well as challenges. Through the study of Norse myths, they are able to “try on” some of these personality traits in a dramatic way and by focusing on animals and the land around them, they continue to form this new relationship with their surroundings.
The courage needed for growing into an independent and free human being is illustrated deeply in grade four through Norse mythology. The language arts curriculum deepens, as does the developing consciousness of the child about the risks and gifts of impending independence. In fourth grade, the world, which beginning in first grade was whole and good, is now separating and being seen as parts. This breaking apart leads to a deepening of fractions and the child seeing a whole new world between each whole number.
A look at animals and their specificity in contrast to human capacities is part of the sciences studied. The children also dive deeply into local geography beginning with map making of their immediate surroundings and moving outwards.
4TH GRADE HIGHLIGHTS
HISTORY AND LANGUAGE ARTS Local Native American studies and Colorado history; Norse myths and sagas; Local geography and history, poetry; Grammar, essays, descriptive writing and book reports, daily recitation, reading of historical fiction and myth, plays
MATHEMATICS Factors and multiples, four processes and fractions, proper and improper fractions, mental math
GEOGRAPHY AND SCIENCE Local and Colorado geography, Ute people study, map making, animal kingdom in relationship to humans
FINE ARTS Drawing Celtic knots, braiding forms, animal studies in clay, map making, wet-on-wet watercolor painting
HANDWORK Embroidery and sewing, cross-stitching, mirrored patterns
GAMES AND MOVEMENT Circus arts, cooperative games, orienteering
MUSIC Songs in both minor and major key, musical theory and notation, singing simple rounds, canons, descants, partner songs
SPANISH Introduction to written work, basic grammar, main lesson themes, including the importance of Spanish roots in local history, vocabulary
AGRICULTURE ARTS Study the people, places, and wildlife of Colorado; Phenology; Colorado Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and Western Slope; Colorado National Parks
Fifth Grade
I LOOK INTO THE WORLD
Balance is the goal, as the attainment of a degree of ease and grace of physical movement is intrinsic to this age. Cognitively, the students have evolved to a stage of approaching their studies, and life, in a more realistic and reasoning manner. Thus, the very significant transition from mythology to recorded history seeks to meet this emerging consciousness.
The fifth grader progresses from myth to history, learning about a broad and diverse range of human civilization including India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece. The fifth grader experiences the roots of modern day culture as they work with freehand geometry, architecture and early forms of writing. Botany provides an opportunity to highlight the beauty of the natural world from both a scientific and artistic approach.
From the ancient Greeks, the students learn about balance and harmony and they begin to practice the five events of the Greek Pentathlon: wrestling, javelin, discus, running and long jump. In the spring, our fifth graders join with peers from schools to compete in a Pentathlon. The self-determination the students experience in participating in the Pentathlon mirrors the steadfastness of Alexander the Great, an epic biography that is studied at the end of the 5th grade year.
5TH GRADE HIGHLIGHTS
HISTORY AND LANGUAGE ARTS History and mythology of Ancient India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece; Golden Age of Greece up to the time of Alexander the Great; Rise of democracy; Sanskrit, hieroglyphics, and the Greek alphabet; American folklore; Grammar, compositions, emphasizing description, editing and self-correction, oral and written book reports, words with Greek roots, plays
MATHEMATICS Four processes with fractions and decimals, geometrical figures, acute, obtuse and reflex angles, Pythagorean theorem, mental math
GEOGRAPHY AND SCIENCE North American geography, Botany, simple to complex plants, plant species
FINE ARTS Freehand geometrical drawings, wet-on-wet watercolor, creating mood through color
HANDWORK Knitting in round using four needles, sewing, stitching skills, reading and following a pattern
GAMES AND MOVEMENT Rhythmic exercises, Pentathlon and classical Greek sports: javelin, discus, long jump, wrestling and running
MUSIC Folk ballads, rapid sight-singing, basic principles of composition, musical terminology
SPANISH Studies of Mexico and Latin America; Increased complexity of oral and written work through songs, poetry, plays and stories
AGRICULTURE ARTS Agricultural history of the United States and India; Exploring food traditions; Culinary herbs and spices; Grinnell journaling