Grade 3 Science and Some Waldorf Thoughts

Example of Sprouting Indian Corn from Pinterest

In Grade 3 of the Waldorf Education model, part of the science portion of the curriculum involves a deep study of farming. This includes studies on climate, farming zones, the plant/seed cycle, the benefits of using organic and/or biodynamic farming techniques, harvesting different kinds of crops, food storage and preservation types, basic animal husbandry and care intro, types of fibres and how we get them (cotton, silk, wool, hemp, etc), and a few other miscellaneous farming tidbits.

Sprouting Indian Corn is a really fun experiment to do with your children that can actually then be used to grow more corn.  If you can find organic yellow corn, you may also be able to sprout that as well so long as it has been well dried out (hybrid and GMO corn will either not sprout, or the resulting plant will not resemble the one you began with). As an aside, I would like to state that it is a great idea to try to grow (and then preserve some seed/dried kernels from) organic heirloom corn.  With such a huge percentage of our corn being GMO these days, much of which can be very toxic to the body (as well as to the land and to pollinators), seed integrity and availability is going to continue to be an issue for your average home farmer. YOU can help by planting and collecting seed for heirloom organic corn.

The following are some samples from DS8's main lesson book (science section):

Plants We Eat

How Silk Is Made (sorry for the blurriness)

Photosynthesis

Moon Phases --> Farming By The Moon Phases

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I've had some friends and family (who are unfamiliar with the Waldorf approach) ask me about such things as main lesson books (and want more general explanations of the approach as a whole).

The idea of the main lesson book (in the Waldorf approach) is to have the students actually create their own "textbook", which also doubles as a beautifully written and illustrated accounting of what they have learned that year.  There are no textbooks that the student is learning from. They observe what the teacher has drawn out (on paper or on a chalkboard), or listen to a story the teacher is telling (usually in a greatly animated voice and body movements, sometimes using puppets and/or props), or they return from a field trip or other activity out of the classroom and document what they learned.

The Waldorf approach is one that utilizes the arts and all five of the senses in learning (some would argue for a 6th as well, since the spirit/soul/etheric self is considered to be engaged in the process as well).  This is accomplished through movement, touch, and body use, including clapping, stomping, dancing, and other ways of using the body such as through drawing, writing, painting, sculpting, hands-on activities like gardening, actually touching items and being physically stimulated by textures, etc....voice, including singing, stating and reciting (which engages hearing, along with listening to others)....music and hearing including singing, playing instruments, putting recitations to music, listening to their teacher's melodic voice, listening to sounds in nature and in the world, listening to music, etc....taste, which includes eating foods related to the subject and other tasting exercises....sight, including reading, watching demonstrations, careful observations (and the idea being that the child should be visually stimulated by beautiful things)....smell, including natural smells all around them (inside and outside the classroom/school such as in nature), smells of foods, smells of natural materials in the classroom (beeswax crayons, for example, and no strong/chemical perfumes allowed), smells of foods, smells of artifacts, etc...

The Main Lesson Book (MLB) therefore is a way to learn through the use of art. Each page is done with care to include the students best handwriting (at the time) and color, shape and form into the accompanying drawings and borders.  Through the drawings, the students attempt to encapsulate what they have learned into a picture that seems to translate their impressions onto the paper. The drawing should give the main idea of the learning, or at least should be relevant enough to the learning that it will jog the students' memory later on when they look back at that specific picture. Without even reading the brief summary that is written below the picture, hopefully the picture will also tell its own story. 

Naturally, in the very early grades the students' drawing skills may be rather rough, as you can see in the examples I have included above from my own son's MLB.  Some people like to only post pictures that are done very skillfully, but I wanted other parents to see what pages look like from a less-than-skillful 8-year-old artist so they don't get some distorted view of what MLB's "should" look like, which could set them up for a feeling of failure when their own child does not produce such talented-looking pieces of art in their MLB's.

This concept of including art and using the five (or six!) senses is one piece that I feel very strongly about, and so it is included in our hodge-podge curriculum.