Our first week of first grade with Elsa went very well. We are using the first grade curriculum from A Little Garden Flower and supplementing it with some activities and stories from Oak Meadow kindergarten and some of our own story books. We are following a traditional Waldorf format - doing blocks of lessons, introducing the letters using stories and many hands-on crafts and movement activities. Elsa has already begun to read, and we are very gently supporting her without rushing her out of this sweet time of magic and imagination. For each letter, we tell a story that has an important element which starts with that letter ("mountain" for "M", etc...)We color a picture where we try to find the form of the letter in the picture. We practice writing upper and lower case. We write the word for that letter from the story. We also do silly sentences, like "Misty mountains marching merrily". We bake bread in fun shapes, or play with playdough, or use yarn and make the letters. We color them on the driveway with sidewalk chalk. We look for them all around us. First week lesson plans: Begin container story from "A Journey Through Waldorf Homeschooling: Grade One" Introduce the letter "M" - tell Grimm's "Mt. Simli" Introduce the letter "V" - tell Grimm's "The Vagabonds"
