Follow this link to Why Waldorf Works, a comprehensive site about Waldorf education, sponsored by the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America.

Whether you are new to Waldorf education or a longtime enthusiast, Why Waldorf Works offers something for everyone, from our Waldorf Education primer to our extensive library of articles and scholarly research; from News & Events to directories of Waldorf schools and teacher-training programs throughout North America.

And please continue to view these pages for information about The Waldorf School of Louisville.

Waldorf...

Education for the Future

The Waldorf approach recognizes the simple but profound insight that children learn in distinctly different ways at different stages of their development. Waldorf schools introduce and teach in ways that correspond to the developmental needs of the growing child. It encourages the development of each child's sense of truth, beauty, and goodness, and provides an antidote to violence, alienation, and cynicism. The aim of the education is to inspire in each student a lifelong love of learning, and to enable them to fully develop their unique capacities.

Our strong academic curriculum is based on building and fostering the child's natural capacities at each developmental stage.  In classrooms full of light and life, Waldorf students receive a classical academic core of subjects through distinctive and time-tested teaching methods that serve their intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual development.

Literature, grammar, foreign language, history, geography, mathematics, science, applied arts, music, and physical education are the subjects today's child needs as a foundation for tomorrow's complex and challenging civilization. The curriculum promotes creativity, critical thinking, and a lifelong love for learning. Engaging the hands and the heart as well as the mind cultivates a real inner enthusiasm for learning, the hallmark of a Waldorf education

Pre-K and Kindergarten

In Pre-K and Kindergarten, the teacher strives to recognize the spirit in each child, and to affirm his or her natural senses of gratitude, wonder, and reverence.

There are currently two Kindergarten classes, each composed of children from ages 3 years and nine months to 6 years old and one Pre-K class, with children from 2 years and nine months to 4 years old. We offer a five-day program from 8:30am-12:00pm, with afternoon care available until 6:00pm for those children who are at least 3 and 1/2 years old by June 1.

During the application process, the teachers will meet with both parent and child to evaluate each child's readiness to begin Pre-K or Kindergarten.

Parent-Child

Families who are expecting children and those with children birth through 3 years old are warmly welcomed to our Parent-Child program.  Children come with their parents or an adult caregiver, and enjoy a morning of seasonal songs, stories, and activities and indoor and outdoor work and play.  The class is led by a teacher and includes many opportunities for parent education and building friendships with other young families.

First Grade Readiness

Children who will be 6 years old by June 1st are evaluated for readiness to enter first grade. The teachers consider not only academic readiness, but also physical, emotional, and social development.

Elementary School

We currently offer Grades One through Five. The school day begins at 8:30, with a handshake and a warm “Good morning” from the class teacher. Class is dismissed at 3:00 pm. Afternoon care is available until 6:00pm.

In Waldorf schools, the class teacher stays with his or her children as they move up through the grades. An ever-deepening knowledge of the child, her/his gifts, challenges, and interests allows the Waldorf Teacher to truly and deeply educate the whole child.

First Grade

The first grade curriculum focuses on fairy tales from around the world that address the students' inner growth and development. Using this literature as a foundation, the teacher plans exercises in reading, writing, and speech. First graders also draw, paint, model beeswax, and participate in simple dramatic productions based on the stories they hear. They learn the letters of the alphabet as forms and sounds and they learn to do simple arithmetic through movement exercises that involve stomping, clapping, and tossing of bean bags. By the end of first grade, they have been taught to manipulate numbers up to 24 with the four processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. First graders take regular nature walks and observe the daily and seasonal changes in the natural environment.

Second Grade
The second grader awakens to a greater awareness of the foibles of others. Fables and legends of great persons are told, showing the ability of the human being to overcome adversity. Reading in groups begins. The children's understanding of number quality is broadened through the study of place value (1-1000), and the children learn to add and subtract large numbers by carrying and borrowing. They continue to work with all four arithmetical processes and the multiplication tables. Regular nature walks in the woods and fields behind the school serve as a simple introduction to environmental science.

Third Grade

To strengthen the third grader's growing consciousness of self, creation stories from different cultures and stories from the Old Testament are told by the teacher. The study of farming, housing, building, and measurement provide a practical foundation for scientific exploration and draw the chidren closer to the earth. Grammar is introduced. The children continue to practice the four arithmetical processes and work with the multiplication tables. A week-long trip to a farm and a large class carpentry project round out a year of active learning.

Specialty subjects

In addition to the traditional academic core curriculum, all grades students also study music (choral singing, pentatonic flute, diatonic recorder and beginning in fourth grade, violin, viola, or cello), painting, clay and beeswax modeling, handwork (knitting, crochet, embroidery, sewing), form drawing, drama, woodworking, foreign language for all grades, and third-grade Hebrew. Eurythmy, a movement art form, is also part of Waldorf education.

The Ascending Spiral of Knowledge

(The following is an excerpt from an article by Henry Barnes, former Chairman of the Board, Association of Waldorf Schools of North America, which originally appeared in the October, 1991 issue of Educational Leadership Magazine.)

The curriculum at a Waldorf school can be seen as an ascending spiral: the long lessons that begin each day, the concentrated blocks of study that focus on one subject for several weeks. Physics, for example, is introduced in the sixth grade and continued each year as a main lesson block until graduation.

As the students mature, they engage themselves at new levels of experience with each subject. It is as though each year they come to a window on the ascending spiral that looks out into the world through the lens of a particular subject. Through the main-lesson spiral curriculum, teachers lay the ground for a gradual vertical integration that deepens and widens each subject experience and, at the same time, keeps it moving with the other aspects of knowledge.

All students participate in all basic subjects regardless of their special aptitudes. The purpose of studying a subject is not to make a student into a professional mathematician, historian, or biologist, but to awaken and educate capacities that every human being needs. Naturally, one student is more gifted in math and another in science or history, but the mathematician needs the humanities, and the historian needs math and science.

The choice of a vocation is left to the free decision of the adult, but one's early education should give one a palette of experience from which to choose the particular colors that one's interests, capacities, and life circumstances allow. In a Waldorf high school, older students pursue special projects and elective subjects and activities, but, nevertheless, the goal remains: each subject studied should contribute to the development of a well-balanced individual.

If the ascending spiral of the curriculum offers a "vertical integration" from year to year, an equally important "horizontal integration" enables students to engage the full range of their faculties at every stage of development. The arts and practical skills play an essential part in the educational process throughout the grades. They are not considered luxuries, but fundamental to human growth and development.

Contact the admissions department to schedule a class observation.