Special Subject Areas
Waldorf Education weaves the arts, music and movement into the fabric of every student’s daily life. An interdisciplinary approach to main lessons and special subject areas keeps our curriculum fresh and engaging. Creativity and imagination are continually sparked in each classroom and within each student. At a young age, students begin lessons with their subject teachers who will also accompany them through the grades: Music, Chorus, Spanish, Handwork, and Games and Movement.
Please scroll to view our special subject areas below.
“If you've had the experience of binding a book, knitting a sock, playing a recorder, then you feel that you can build a rocket ship...it’s just a quiet confidence. There is nothing you can't do.”
– Peter Nitze, Waldorf and Harvard Graduate –
Foreign Language
Spanish (Grades 1-5)
Learning foreign languages broadens students‘ perspectives and deepens their understanding of other cultures. But learning foreign languages also offers several cognitive benefits, including improving overall memory, multi-tasking, communication skill and problem solving by learning to recognize and negotiate meaning more adroitly.
Handwork
Knitting, Felting, Sewing, Crochet, Cross Stitch, Basic Weaving, Woodworking (Grades 1-5)
Handwork improves fine motor skills which has direct correlations to improved cognitive functioning. Knitting, for example, reinforces left-right brain connection and helps to build math skills. Handwork projects are also integrated into the curriculum by subject.
Music
Flute (Grades 1 & 2), Recorder (Grades 3-5),
Stringed Instruments (Grades 3-5), Cross Curricular Music Integration (all classes)
Music plays a role at every stage of Waldorf education. Rhythms and transitions throughout the course of the day are established with music for the younger students, and there is lots of singing, poetry, rhyming and rhythm-building exercises. We also appreciate cultures around the world through the singing of songs and playing of hand clapping games. Older students learn to play a stringed instrument and learn to appreciate music through the lenses of math, history, and more. In Grade 3, each student selects an orchestral string instrument and participates in a string ensemble.
Art
Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Painting, Form drawing, Beeswax and Clay Modeling, Perspective Drawing (Grades 1-5)
Our students enjoy the complete integration of the visual arts into their main lessons and core subject areas. Painting, drawing and modeling, whether illustrating a myth or reinforcing a scientific principle, allows students to link deeper meaning to lesson content, builds focus and encourages creativity. Time spent on visual arts also improves fine motor skills and fuels young imaginations.
Science in Nature
At Waldorf Moraine we believe that science is about the process of turning discoveries into coherent and comprehensive understandings of the natural world. Through the Science in Nature program we use the rich natural setting of Moraine Farm to give our students the opportunity to think like scientists–make observations, ask questions, brainstorm, create hypotheses, make predictions, experiment and reflect on what is learned. We give them the space to be curious about the world, building the skills to support their future academic pursuits in areas such as physics, biology, ecology, astronomy, chemistry, meteorology and beyond.
Movement
Bothmer Gymnastics, Group Games (Grades 1-5); Olympic Pentathlon (5), Sports, Soccer and Basketball
Movement, particularly choreographed movement, coordinated group activities and Bothmer Gymnastics, help to build physical agility and a sense of internal rhythm while developing spatial awareness and left-brain/right-brain coordination. The cognitive impacts of these activities have a lasting and positive effect on overall health and well being, as well as supporting the ability to organize and process intellectual concepts.
Drama
All students have parts in an annual class play based on a main lesson block subject area (Grades 1-5)
For each grade, the class play is an important part of the Waldorf curriculum, with roles chosen to develop each student’s innate gifts and to support curricular themes for that year. You will witness the high level of speech work that is cultivated and watch skills develop over the years. With each production, the class learns to work together as the final piece grows from a short 10-minute skit in the first grade, to something as complex as a 60-minute play in fifth grade.