Hours: 8:15am - 3:15pm

2008-2009 Annual Tuition: $14,965

At seven years old, a child is like a butterfly who has just emerged from the hard imprisoning chrysalis and sits upon the leaf waiting expectantly for those glorious new wings to dry and strengthen. The child is truly poised for flight.

Rudolf Steiner has described the seven-year life cycles, and the importance of the moment when the forces working within the child cast off the baby teeth and construct a smile that gleams with permanence and strength. Second graders have this process well underway. They are on the threshold of newly awakening faculties. Energies freed from the process of forming the body now awaken the subjective world of feeling - wonder, pity, joy, tenderness and sorrow. These are the currents of air upon which these new little butterflies will rise and find their relationship to the world.

The first grade was a time of creating wholeness and a sense of rhythm in this new world, of the classroom becoming one class, learning and growing together. The land of the fairy tale was peopled by a prince, a king, a princess, three brothers, and a stepmother - all the aspects of the human community without individual distinction. The children delighted in identifying with each and every one of them.

Second graders retain this love of the archetypal imagery, but as their feelings awaken they are also ready to see the dual aspect of human nature. Their own feelings of sympathy or antipathy may be unsettling for the adults in their lives, and require us to seek creative responses.

We do not wish to burden the seven-year-old with responsibility for their strong judgment, so we must seek other ways to show them the foibles of their own animal natures. Literature from every culture provides fables that show people's animal characteristics pitted one against another. The pictures speak to the children's imaginations, allowing them to form their own inner pictures, so the morals need not be given to them. A second grader has a ready appreciation for a fox who invites a stork to dine on a low plate from which the stork cannot manage to feed itself, simply so that the fox may enjoy the other's shortcomings. But to see the stork "pay the fox in its own coin", and invite it to a sumptuous meal served in an impossibly tall vase, is to show the child the scale of justice that Mother Nature uses in balancing her affairs.

On the other hand, the second grader still delights in the mystery of the spiritual world where they still dwell at heart. They sit, listening in rapt attention to legends of those spiritual beings who have the forces of nature in their service. When a snow-white doe comes daily to sustain the Holy St. Giles with her milk, no one questions how she came to do this. And when the huntsman gives chase and shoots her, she places her head in St. Giles lap. Not a muscle moves nor an eye remains dry, as the Saint removes the arrow from the shoulder of the mystical doe. Thus the second grader, still sustained by the unity they retain with their environment, is an eager participant in all that comes to their attention. They love to have a choice - to choose a partner, to choose a part, but as in the
story of St. Jerome who is approached by a roaring lion, it is difficult for them to decide whether they want to play the Holy Jerome or the lion they heal.

In Waldorf Education, the teacher progresses with his or her pupils from first to second grade. The class teachers, who can look back on all their pupils' previous learning experiences and build step-by-step on their own foundation, can endow their teaching with real unity. Also, children who are very sensitive to readjustments and changes are given the security of knowing one personality and method intimately and thoroughly.

In the second grade, English becomes a special subject assigned its share of main lesson periods. Based on the spoken languages, fables and legends are now the focus of writing material. The children learn cursive writing by joining up the printed letters of last year. Far more clearly than printing, the flowing script pictures the movement of the breath as it streams through sound after sound, linking them together in smooth continuity. Grammar is introduced with liveliness and humor by acting out stories in which the children can experience the contrast between doing words, naming words and describing words.

In arithmetic, the children carry out more complicated operations with the four processes. Imaginative stories still form the basis of these problems. Through rhythmic counting accompanied by accented clapping and movement of the whole body, they learn to count by two's, three's, four's and five's, and can begin learning the multiplication tables.

Nature study continues in connection with poetry, legends and imaginative descriptions of natural processes.

Painting and modeling are used continuously in integrating subjects in the main lessons. Crocheting is introduced, and small projects of the children's own creation always exemplify an important principle: that handwork products should be useful and functional as well as beautiful.

Foreign language (Spanish and German), and singing and flute lessons, continue to be taught in the second grade, with eurythmy leading the children into a more conscious forming of vowels and consonants.

Curriculum: Saints, legends, and animal fables; reading, writing, arithmetic, elements of grammar; nature stories.