Have I mentioned before that I think Waldorf is brilliant? Well, I do. And one of the things that showcases this philosophy's brilliance almost better than any other is the way children are taught to read. I've just started our first grade year (technically the second half of first grade, since we did the first half last winter), and just finished our final block of teaching the consonants, and it has reaffirmed to me that this is the best, most creative, most beautiful way to learn the alphabet sounds. (My past week of teaching the vowels has only continued to reaffirm this, but that will be a post for a few weeks down the road.)
Do you see the letter H hidden in the shape of this House, or Hut, or whatever you want to call it? The story I illustrated above is The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids, by the Brothers Grimm. (Well, I know it isn't technically "by" them, just collected by them... but for my purposes here we'll just credit it to them.)
In the story of King Thrushbeard, another Grimms' tale, we find the letter K in the shape of the King.
Here is Sariah's version.
We made moving pictures for the story of Jorinda and Jorindel. The owl and the bird fly across the paper through means of a slit cut across the middle and tabs glued onto their backs.
Jorindel provides the inspiration for our letter J.
The chalkboard drawing appears just after I tell the story. On the day we discover the letter, usually the next day, I trace the letter over the picture and write an alliterative verse on the board showcasing that letter.
My drawing
And Sariah's work. The letters "walk" on the golden path, which is drawn lightly with a yellow crayon. Later, we will not draw the golden path, but she will be able to write neatly and straight across the page without it.
Little Briar Rose, AKA "Sleeping Beauty". The Prince is trying to get through the hedge. Sariah came up with this sentence. And when I commented that not very many words started with "puh", she pointed out matter-of-factly that the last two words ended with "puh".
The second day, we usually recall the story by retelling it or acting it out in a puppet play. This is Briar Rose. When we retold Little Red Riding Hood, we had the whole family take part in the acting rather than using puppets.
For the letter C, I told a story from the book "Understanding Waldorf Education: Teaching From the Inside Out" by Jack Petrash. In the story, the king needs a helper to help run his kingdom. After consulting with a wise woman, he returns home to discover that his helper is the trusty palace cat. Just like the cat helps the king, the letter C helps the letter K and sometimes makes its sound.
For the story of The Singing, Soaring Lark, we modelled princesses from beeswax. Sariah's is on the left, mine is on the right.
X, Y, and Z were taught all together through the fairy tale "The Spindle, the Shuttle, and the Needle". I had to get creative with this picture--Y was easy with the "Yarn" splitting as it goes out the window. X became the crossing decorations on the boX, and Z was the Zigzags woven into the rug.
Every few days we added to our beeswax wall of letters.
We did many activities with these letters. Sariah's favorite was that one of us would think of a word. Then she would have to change the beginning sound of that word using all the letters on the wall. So, "bat" would be bat, yat, mat, kat, quat, pat, gat, jat, etc. Silly words included. We also did it with changing the ending sounds, which was a bit harder for her.
Sometimes we jumped to the various letters, and each letter she landed on, she had to think of a word that started with it.
Sariah also loves making little books and fold-outs like this where we feature one or two letters, and she has to think of--and illustrate--words starting with those letters. She wrote the first letter of the word, I wrote the rest of the letters.
We did some painting... though we often didn't quite get to it during the week. I believe this painting was a color story about the warm sun of summer, and then the golden-ness of harvest/autumn coming in and surrounding it.
Now we have begun to learn the vowels. They are also taught in an incredibly beautiful and effective way. They are called Angel Letters, and this week we learned Angel A. Stay tuned for the details! Needless to say, my little girl is so excited. And this week, now that she finally knew a vowel sound, she was able to read her first official word, "AND". (Of course, she's been reading a few words here and there--her name, Mom, Dad, etc. , simply because she's seen them so much.) But this was the first word she sounded out and read. So much excitement over here! It's just as exciting when they are seven as it would be if they were three or four!
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