Waldorf First Grade Springtime and Circle Thoughts

It’s mid-April and we’re in the home stretch of the school year.

With our play behind us, I’m glad to be entering this time with nothing but some solid weeks of plain old school!

We started our third and final math block on Monday. This one will be a lot of review and practice of the skills we’ve learned thus far. Each week is based around a different theme. This first week is “Insect Math” and we’re reviewing addition and subtraction. If you’re looking for a good math teaching resource, check out Van de Walle’s book on Developmental Mathematics — it’s my go-to resource.

We’ve also started new circle material and I really feel like I’ve hit my stride with finding good circle content.

When I was preparing to teach first grade last summer, I remember thinking that circle felt like a complete mystery to me. It’s so different than the little bits of artistic work that you do in the mornings in the upper grades. A well-composed circle is like a work of art and I was worried that with so little experience in the lower grades, I wouldn’t really understand how all of the components can weave together.

I’m happy to say that I’ve figured the circle thing out a bit and circle is one of my favorite parts of our day.

As always, I’m all about finding rhythms and structures that make the planning process easier, so I’ve put together a little list for myself to guide the circle composition process. Most of my circles have these components:

• Opening verse with strong right-left component
• Spiral and/or expansion-contraction verse
• 3-fold walking verse
• A verse with core strengthening movement
• A clapping game
• A folk dance

These are the activities that come just about every day. Then, once a week or so, I bring one of the following activities:

• A wrestling/sensory game
• Beanbag work
• A circle game (like Duck, Duck, Goose)
• Jumprope

My school has a strong tradition of classes jumping rope in the mornings in the courtyard. Our first grade classroom is nice and big and we have the movable classroom, so I have not ventured out into the courtyard to jump rope until recently. As much as I love the community feeling that happens in the courtyard (parents hang around and watch their children jumprope — it makes for a very festive morning), I wanted to make sure the first graders were able to do their strong work and listen to their teacher while waiting in the jumprope line. Standing in a line isn’t easy, especially when there are so many distractions in the busy courtyard and the whole school community is around.

With a few days of jumping rope under our belts, I’m happy to say that the first graders are doing quite well with it. Even when I’ve needed to correct them and give reminders, they listen and respond. It’s months of hard work that have made that possible and I couldn’t be happier with how well the first graders listen to their teacher.

The part of the circle that I’m loving the most, though is the folk dance. A colleague loaned me Anna Rainville’s book Singing Games for Families, Schools and Communities and it is an absolute treasure! I’ve got to get my own copy (which won’t be easy — it must be out of print because it is $60+ on Amazon) because I am determined to work through the whole thing by the time we get to 8th grade. We’re currently working with a simple little dance called “Brother Come and Dance With Me” (we’ve changed the 2nd verse to be “sister”) and we’re having such fun with it!

Spring in Oregon is pretty wet, so my raincoat is getting a lot of use during recess these days. But the dreary weather doesn’t get us down too much. And we’ve got this sweet heart-shaped puddle on the playground to lift our spirits.