At Marin Waldorf School, we nourish the relationship between children and the natural world. Starting in early childhood, our students spend ample time outdoors, playing, hiking, and lunching beneath the oak trees. As grades students, they hike in the open space that surrounds our school, care for and study our campus flora, and work in our school’s abundant garden.
Read MoreMr. DeRienzo, our school’s aftercare lead teacher, is a storyteller extraordinaire. This summer, he’s sharing a series of original audio stories featuring an imaginative cast of recurring characters, appropriate for preschool-and-kindergarten-age children (appropriate and enjoyable for older children too)!
In our first tale, Gold Monkey and Jeremy the Giant accompany Mr. DeRienzo’s sidekick Ozzi to help the fairies in the forest. It’s fun work … but silly antics always ensue when our friend Gold Monkey is involved!
Read MoreThis week, our First Grade teacher, Ms. Weger, shared this lesson from the last block of the year.
The First Grade students have been reviewing the four math processes of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in their last three-week block of the year. Typically, a nature story of some kind is told, and the children follow along, inwardly calculating as they go.
During this block, the main lesson concluded with the students writing their math sentences from the nature story in their books with a drawing of their choosing. Here is the math story:
Read MoreThis week, 2nd Graders demonstrated their creativity, as well as their understanding of parts of the English language, by composing and illustrating haiku poems that describe the world around them. Below, our 2nd Grade teacher Ms. Martin shares her lesson, as well as some samples of student work.
Read MoreThe interdisciplinary and experiential nature of Waldorf education encourages students to explore topics with their hands, with their hearts, through art, and through doing. A few days ago, we highlighted the way our gardening teacher, Ms. Betsyann, tied the 7th Grade curriculum to work in the garden with a video about spirals in the natural world.
Read MoreFifth Grade’s botany block begins with the study of mushrooms, working its way to trees and flowering plants. Our 5th Grade teacher, Mr. Stopeck, shared these wonderful main lesson pages created by his students.
Read MoreThroughout the grades, the Waldorf curriculum is interdisciplinary and experiential, helping students make connections between different subject matter and to understand their place in the natural world. This week, our gardening teacher, Ms. Betsyann, shared this example of how two subjects can be beautifully integrated in the 7th Grade curriculum.
Read MoreThe class: Outdoor Education. The challenge: to create an outdoor hand-washing station using everyday things you can find in your home.
In this video, our outdoor ed teacher Mr. Neale shows middle school students how he created a simple apparatus you can use to wash your hands when camping, on a kayaking trip, or at the beach.
Read MoreOur annual May Faire is a celebration of spring and of community. While our campus is closed, we have a plan to celebrate the hope and beauty of springtime together, in addition to spreading that joy to our neighbors, friends, and grandparents, who were supposed to be the guests of honor at this year’s May Faire (stay tuned for more information on that!).
Read MoreThis month, our 3rd, 4th, and 5th Grade students are participating in an elective story time on Zoom with our lead aftercare instructor Mr. DeRienzo. Using his imagination and a natural flair for storytelling, Mr. DeRienzo has created a series of wonderful adventures for Philip and Suzette, two child thieves who in previous stories were adopted by King Navarre of Córdoba. In the story we’ve shared below, Philip and Suzette must overcome dragons and wizards to deliver a special wedding gift to the king’s cousin Lord Geoffrey.
Read MoreThe capstone of our annual admissions Open House in January, the alumni panel is always a highlight of the day.
Listening to the experiences and reflections of a diverse group of graduates reminds us why Waldorf education is unique, and how it builds a foundation of creativity, independent thinking, and confidence that lasts a lifetime.
Here is the unabridged video of our 2020 alumni panel.
Read MoreYesterday, we shared a beautiful lesson on the Middle Ages created for our distance learning program from 6th Grade teacher Ms. Terziev. Part of the learning process throughout the Waldorf curriculum is the creation of a main lesson book: with the teacher’s guidance, students create their own illustrations and summaries of the material presented in class.
Read MoreIn a recent distance-learning lesson created by our 6th Grade teacher Ms. Terziev, students received a step-by-step guide to creating a medieval-style title page (see above) for their main lesson books.
If we’d been a classroom setting rather than at home, Ms. Terziev would have presented the material during the morning main lesson, which starts every morning at a Waldorf school, and lasts about two hours. Main lesson subjects are taught in blocks of two to four weeks, enabling the students to focus intensively on one subject at a time — in this case, the 6th Grade is studying the Middle Ages.
Read MoreThe alumni panel is always a highlight of our admissions Open House, concluding the day… and often running way over time as the audience jumps to ask questions! This year, we hosted our alumni panel on Zoom, featuring four amazing Waldorf alumni.
Listening to the experiences and reflections of a diverse group of graduates reminds us why Waldorf education is unique, and how it builds a foundation of creativity, independent thinking, and confidence that lasts a lifetime.
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