Primary School
7-11 years old
Primary School
Madu engages primary-aged children through hands-on and imaginative experiences. In this way, conceptual thinking lights up in the child easefully and naturally. Pictorial language invites curiosity and creativity and a life-long love of learning. Children go deeply into the Main lesson subjects of Language Arts, Mathematics or Nature Studies over 3 week blocks. At Madu, we cultivate reverence, centred-ness and care for one another. All Madu teachers commit to forming a deep and lasting bond with the children and their families over several years. Our Indonesian teachers embody the warmth, passion and generosity of spirit ideal for Waldorf education.
The Daily Rhythm
Morning Circle: Each day begins with the teacher greeting each child personally, before enlivening activity involving movement, coordination, speech and song.
The Main Lesson: The heart of the curriculum is taught each morning for approximately 90 minutes. Children engage with one theme, related to either mathematics, language arts or nature study, for 3-4 weeks. The themes are taught through story, observation and hands-on activity. Content is digested through discussion, writing, drawing, diagrams, etc. Students make their own beautiful and meaningful Main Lesson books, rather than referring to text books.
Short break
Practice lesson upper grades have a 45 minute lesson where they practise numeracy and literacy concepts learnt in their Main lesson.
Subject Lesson 1 Weekly Subject lessons at Madu are: Music, Handwork or Craft, Form Drawing, Indonesian, Painting and Sculpture (wax or clay) and outdoor games/sports.
Lunch -healthy, locally sourced, vegetarian, provided by the school
Playtime
Subject lesson 2
Home time
Language at Madu: our main teaching language at Madu is English. We strive for excellence in English. Indonesian is commonly used both formally and informally, so that our students gain an understanding and appreciation of it. Madu Waldorf also acknowledges the many languages of our families and integrates common greetings as much as possible.
Culture at Madu: we aim to balance Balinese culture with Waldorf philosophy. Almost all our staff are Indonesian with different languages and religions. We also acknowledge the many cultures of our students. We love diversity and aim to build community.
Overview of Child Development and Learning Themes
Please note: we are a new school still in the phase of curriculum development. The following is a guide only. Madu Waldorf aims to build a unique Waldorf curriculum reflective of our unique location and culture.
Class One
At this stage of their development the children in class one make the important transition from the Kindergarten to primary where they begin their formal learning. As the children enter Class 1 they experience an emerging independence in the more formal classroom setting. They begin to experience a sense of wholeness and a need for connectedness within their class community. Through lessons which are brought imaginatively and meaningfully, the children’s feeling life is engaged. They are still in a mood of dreamy wholeness, able to bring a broad awareness rather than focused thinking to their learning. Stories, rhythm, pictures and songs assist them to view the world with wonder and reverence. Their imaginations are rich and they live fully into the stories that are told to them. The children’s holistic experience of the world is nourished by archetypal images brought through fairy tales and nature stories. At this age, learning is best taught through activity and imitation.
During this first year the class acquires the good habits of classroom life and work. There are numerous moral aims for Class 1, some of which are cultivating reverence for nature, care for the environment, respect for others, interest in the world and the creation of a class that is socially cohesive, who care and listen to each other.
The many group activities, including morning verses, morning circle, games, and art, help each child to experience a sense of belonging. There are many rhythms throughout the day that support the children’s’ security and social skills, including verses, songs, routines and moments of reverence. Memory is strengthened through the learning and reciting of verses and songs and this in turn strengthens the Will forces.
Through the telling and retelling of fairy tales and legends as well as the recounting of events we develop speech and lay the foundations for correct writing. Through form drawing the children become familiar with the language of forms.
Main Lesson themes:
Quality of number; Four maths operations; Four elements; Nature Study; Form Drawing; Capital letters; Lowercase Letters; Fairy tales
Class Two
The Class 2 child feels life in every limb, but there is also further growth in the head and nervous system. They are more alert to the world around them and keen for challenge and adventure, though still living strongly in pictorial imagination. These images help them to understand the concepts taught (for example “3 gems for the Gnome King” rather than the abstract idea of “3”). Imagination is changing though, and they no longer faithfully accept the magic of the fairy tale world, but are beginning to recognise causes and conditions. Intellect continues to awaken through artistic activities, colour and music.
Children in Class 2 are at a stage in-between the imaginative realities experienced in Class 1, where Self and the world are one and where there is a feeling for the heavenly that lies behind their world; and the increasing experience of vulnerability and alone-ness as they approach “The Crossing” around Class 3.
New relationships are made with friends as they move away from mother and continue to deepen their sense of independence. There is a maturing of the senses and of coordination as the limbs lengthen and they become more dexterous and physically confident.
In Class 2 the children are able to concentrate for longer and can remember much more in sequential order. Writing, reading and more complex mathematical work can now be extended. Their thinking is based more on outer perceptions of the world.
Play is becoming more reality based as they make tickets and money, play shops and house, or bravely fight battles. Children are increasingly becoming aware of feelings and of their own and others’ abilities. It is therefore important to discourage competition and comparison, and value each child for their uniqueness.
Main Lesson Themes:
Numbers in columns; Shapes and number patterns; Number puzzles; Nature Study; Fables; Stories of Saints
Class Three
At some point during the ninth and tenth year, children experience a profound inner shift in development. New capacities for thinking and judgment emerge, and children begin to see themselves, their own egos, much more deeply than ever before, and in consequence look out into the world with newly observant eyes.
It is such an exciting and transformative time of a child’s life. Suddenly a child can follow a line of thought behind the events going on around him or her more clearly. Many things dawn on a child that they were not aware of before. The “unity of all things” experience of the younger child gives way to an inner/outer dichotomy and the world begins to be viewed with an entirely new set of eyes. Almost overnight a child begins to experience the feelings of “I am here and the world is out there”, signalling a newly heightened self-consciousness and often critical view of one’s self and others. Sometimes a child may show renewed interest in her or his birth and toddler-hood. Strong opinions and stronger likes and dislikes begin to emerge as this new “realistic” view of the world suddenly begins to manifest.
In a way, it is a second birth. Deeper feelings and emotions begin to creep into the child and the child is often not able to understand these feelings at all and is certainly not able to intellectualise as an adult might. Yet the feelings are still there, they are real and the child has no life experiences yet or reference points upon which to get their footing. As always, how a child responds to this depends upon the individual. Just as there are a wide variety of ways a woman responds to the challenge of giving birth, some stoic and calm, others emotional and animated, so there is a corresponding variety of ways individual children birth their new selves. In some children this new awakening can lead to a quiet wonder, in others, it can show as new emotionality about things that were previously no trouble, huge swings of emotion and feelings of uncertainty and fear about the world.
Parents and teachers are challenged to continue to meet the children with sensitivity and understanding during the topsy-turvy period. A bridge must be built between the outer and newly felt inner world. Moodiness and the expression of strong feelings are usually best met with a patient, listening ear- without attempts to analyse or moralise. The child needs to feel the steadiness of a trusted authority; one who won’t “hook in” to his or her own turbulent feelings.
The hands-on experience of the Waldorf Third Grade curriculum includes such practical activities as building and preparing the soil, planting, tending and harvesting. Each has a purpose of connecting the child in a very concrete way to the material world. In a sense, the world is “demystified” with a growing knowledge of the “how- to’s” of life, Children learn the basics of taking care of themselves and how the everyday things around them are built as they care for the garden, participate in a building project of some kind, visit a real working farm.
Main Lesson Themes:
Measurement; Farming; Time- clocks and calendars; Building; Clothing; Spelling; Grammar; Old Testament /Islam Stories
Class Four
Safe across the Rubicon the intrepid crew breathe a heavy sigh of relief and peer around at their new surroundings. It is a new land of unknown potential. The first impulse is to stake a claim, explore and exploit. We come, we see, and we conquer. Some claims are modest, some ambitious and some in between. Exploration takes us into the wild unknown, perhaps bringing back souvenirs from established civilisations. We mine for riches that may or may not be of value. Mostly we return to our home base before it gets too dark! ·
All the above is fun, boisterous, bewildering, dangerous, naughty and a little bit frightening. We might impress our friends with a mask we borrowed from a nearby village, we may want to attack our neighbours for their store of wealth, or we could realise that as well as having fun, we might have to help each other to keep house and home together. It would help if there was an older and wiser that might be discretely consulted regarding the right way to go about things, because everybody else is always causing annoyance. Or one who might be able to teach us a thing or two about how to make our best way in the world.
In class four the world is our oyster, a big oyster. With lots of other people fighting over the pearl! Our bravado is bought of confidence in the strong support, and of the success we have had negotiating the world thus far. Ragnarök ends like Pandora’s Box with the promise of hope. A new world of our own with all the responsibility and mystery to come!
Themes for the Year:
The aim of Class 4 is first and foremost to channel the powerful energy which ten-year-olds bring to the classroom. Pupils need to be challenged and stretched in every possible aspect of their work. ‘Work, work and lots of it” is the motto for Class 4.
Main Lesson Themes:
Number place value review; Fractions; Man and Animal; Local History and Geography; Norse Myths
Class Five
Having lived in the world of the fairy-tale, legend and myth in the first four school years, the children now are ready for the borderland between mythology and history proper. Through vast pictures of human evolution, we move from the dawn of prehistory in the ancient cultures of India and Persia. Stories from these ancient civilizations give an historical picture of the human being in his development into the material world, which parallel the child’s own descent into the world of matter;
We are giving the children a picture of their own evolution (Jacobson A, 2009).
Through the stories of Indian gods, the children glimpse a civilization that resisted an involvement with the world of the senses; a dream world which had a timeless quality. The children experience a major change with the stories of ancient Persia and Babylonia. Zarathrustra brings agriculture to the world as a tool, a time where the earth is consciously worked upon. Later in ancient Egypt the children experience an age that has left us monuments, works of art and written records. The Egyptians felt the lawfulness and beauty of the world and became recorders of cosmic measures and relationships. With the transition to Greece, the children experience the physical permeated by the ideal; the human being is a joyful citizen of the world not yet lost in materialism.
The study of ancient cultures affords an opportunity to integrate learning through the experience of music, dances, foods, crafts, and mythologies which all bring a greater depth of learning than conceptual analysis at this age.
For the student in Class 5 there is a strengthening of the individual’s relationship to the world. The experience and sense of self grows, and the individual will come from this developing centre. There is a growing awareness of the interrelatedness of the whole. As the children now move to meet the world with confidence out of their individuality, they can choose to connect to the other through empathy. They begin to develop a sense of morality and personal responsibility.
This connectedness and evolving world view is developed further in space with geographical and mapping skills applied to the local region and state, and out to the maps and worlds of ancient civilisations. There is a conscious engagement with the history of the ancient world, and also that of Indonesia, both local and colonial history. Grammar too becomes more conscious as the children examine and utilise the various rules and structures that make up our language.
The students have a desire to be challenged mathematically and to improve their skills. They consolidate earlier learning and are conscious of wanting to reach a level of proficiency. Decimals set the stage for work with percentages in Class Six. The students become increasingly competent in mathematical skills and independent of pictorial representation. They solve problems, choose strategies and work with decimals.
Later in the year the beauty of geometry speaks to the children. The more accurate their constructions, the greater their aesthetic quality. They are interested in discovering the properties of numbers which can still fill them with wonder. In geometry they are able to complete complex constructions and begin to work with instruments.
The basic rules, processes and structures of literacy and numeracy are generally in place, built on a firm foundation of rhythmic and pictorial and concrete work as well as frequent skills practice, so that now emergent intellectual faculties can, by the end of the year, be drawn upon more consciously.
Main Lesson Themes:
Fractions; Geometry; Decimals; Long Division; Botany; Geography; Composition; Ancient Mythology: India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece
Class Six
The pre-pubescent phase of a 12-year-old signals the beginning of the development of the child’s individuality – “a total separation of the child’s personality from the outside world” (Lievegoed, 1997).
an inner need to conquer and dominate all around them. They want to experience their strength and impose their Will. At this stage of development, the children’s intellectual forces enable them to understand the causality of the world. The child as yet lacks the capacity for independent judgment, as there is still a strong personal and subjective element in their thinking.
During class 6 it is important that the child be brought into elements of deductive thinking, logical thought processes and into their analytical and critical faculties (Rawson, 1996). The children’s questioning, searching attitude should be directed to the world of lifeless nature (mineral kingdom) and the laws that can be deduced to explain phenomenon. They want to know laws exist independently from humanity.
Themes of the year:
In class 6 the Roman epoch becomes the focus for the year. The Roman epoch enables the children to experience the changes in the Roman civilisation from the establishment of the republic, and the human qualities of honour and integrity needed to keep the republic functioning, to the decadence and corruption which led to its downfall (Staley, 1988). This helps the children develop moral discrimination at a time when they themselves are struggling with their own feelings for justice. The children can be given opportunities to take more responsibility for their own class community, which may stimulate a new way of relating to each other.
Main Lesson Themes:
Geometry; Business Math; Botany; Geology; Astronomy; Physics; Roman History
