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The third grade is often called the turning point of childhood. Every age has its drama, but the nine-year-old is going through a change that is particularly profound; you might hear Waldorf teachers referring to it as "The Crossing Point", "The Watershed" or "The Rubicon". What is prescribed for this age is farming and gardening, the Old Testament, building, and grammar. Why these?

Do you remember the time before your ninth year? Can you recapture even a hint of the qualitative richness of a home landscape, a certain house, and particular relationships? And later, can you remember how things and people began to look 'ordinary'? As a nine-year-old, the child feels himself growing apart from the world. He becomes separated, independent, and begins to question all that was previously taken for granted. "Are my parents really my parents?" "Why is it called 'oak'?" A serious stream of interest in everything practical accompanies this questioning. "How is a house built?" "Where does my food come from?"

Rudolf Steiner describes how the nine-year-old experiences, at a spiritual level, what the three-year-old experienced when first using the word "I". Before the age of nine, the major part of the child's being is not yet incarnated, and instead, it lives within everything and everyone they perceive. They feel inwardly related to everything, and can identify fully with almost anything. Now, however, an experience arises of self as something independent of everything else. This brings the first suffering of loneliness, but also the first conscious joy in solitude. It brings the first capacity to understand death as a reality.

Now the child may suddenly feel very insecure; their relationship with nature, with eternity, with others, and with themselves, has to be reestablished. Nine-year-olds usually love to go out into nature in a more methodical and challenging manner than before. They become capable of more sustained physical effort; it is an ideal time to start regular family hikes. They become capable of more sustained interest in an animal or plant. And this should be encouraged as much as possible as it lays the foundations for active caring about our planet. The Waldorf curriculum gives them practical farming and gardening experience.

If their imaginative powers have not been paralyzed by technological entertainments, nine-year-olds like to say 'what if...?' and plunge into spontaneously created fantasies. The Old Testament stories give substantial material on which their imaginations can feed, leading to a wrestling with fundamental moral ideas.

Nine-year-olds form clubs, and delight in battles between clear-cut opposites: us and them, heroes and enemy, good and bad. Building teaches them about the far-reaching cooperation that is necessary for the achievement of civilization.

The question, "who am I", may arise, and this is possibly the most difficult of all. Many side step this new awareness through increased external activity or by clinging to established patterns. Particularly, those who have not had warm personal relationships begin at this time to pursue external success with sometimes fanatical determination. These children may become ruthless and inconsiderate in their working and private lives. It is important, therefore, that nine-year-olds achieve a new inner security, new clarity of thought, and new techniques for coming to terms with their emotions.

Waldorf curriculum provides drama, music, and grammar. Through round-singing, the nine-year-old learns that holding one's own voice against others is a necessary part of harmony; that a rhythm must be consistent if it is to be a reliable vehicle for melody and harmony. The recorder is introduced.

Plays allow the children to experience the great relationships of the Old Testament, and there is always a lively relationship with their teachers. Machine-learning at this stage deadens the courage for lively relationship.

Grammar awakens living rational thought, the awareness of a qualitative difference between words that are 'naming', those that are 'doing', and those that are 'describing'. In the previous years, the teacher may have prepared the ground by writing whatever was to be copied from the board with nouns always in blue, verbs in red, and adjectives perhaps in yellow or green.

So we see why our nine-year-olds require more understanding, guidance and companionship from their responsible parents and teachers. In a Waldorf school, they are helped to form new relationships with nature through farming and gardening experience, with eternity through Old Testament experience, with others through building experience, and with themselves through grammar, music, and drama.

Curriculum: Old Testament stories introduce history; study of practical life: farming, housing, clothing; reading, spelling, writing, original compositions, grammar (punctuation and parts of speech), cursive writing; higher multiplication tables, weight, measurement and money.