While I'm on a roll...

I thought I'd share some of what I've learned this summer. I just finished writing a paper that explains the approach to literacy in Waldorf schools. I found this topic to be fascinating because it so highlights where a lot of education today steers away from what we know about child development I particularly encourage anyone wanting to learn more to check out what this woman has to say. This article is referenced below and beautifully illustrates how the view of child development we work with in Waldorf Education is supported by research. Anyway, here is my very brief writeup on teaching reading and writing in Waldorf. May it be of use to some of you.

When children enter the first grade in the Waldorf School, they will typically have spent time in preschool, immersed in an environment rich in song, movement, art nd stories. They will understand sophisticated language and have developed their fine and gross motor skills, manual dexterity, and their proprioceptive and vestibular systems.[1] Their physical and problem solving skills and their imagination[2] are well developed, setting the stage for success in reading and writing.

In first grade, writing is introduced artistically. Through movement and form drawing, the children begin to prepare for writing.[3] Next, consonants are introduced through pictures. At this age, children still see abstract forms like letters as pictures.[4] Consequently, if we derive the letter ‘B’ and its sound from the drawing of a bear, we help children relate to letters in a developmentally appropriate way.

First graders learn vowels through their feeling experiences. The letter ‘A’ symbolizes the sound we make when we experience the wonder of a sunrise (‘ah’), giving the children a concrete understanding of the qualitative differences between vowels and consonants and helping them relate to vowel sounds. Children spend the balance of first grade writing in capital letters and reading what they have written and memorized, while being immersed in the rich language of fairy tales, verses and poems.

Reading begins in late first or second grade, after the children have developed bilateral integration,[5] allowing them to relate letters to sounds. They now begin to decode text through sight words and phonics.

While children in the Waldorf School read, write and spell a little later than those in other schools, our approach supports the children developmentally. Furthermore, as Steiner said: “By slowly developing everything intellectual out of the artistic, that is, out of the entire human being, you will also develop the entire human being, people with real initiative, with a real force of life in their bodies.”[6]


[1] Susan R. Johnson: Teaching our Children to Read, Write and Spell

[2] Andrea Naft: The Art of Teaching Reading in Waldorf Schools

[3] Rudolf Steiner: Practical Advice to Teachers, Lecture 4, pp.51-52

[4] Johnson

[5] Johnson

[6] Rudolf Steiner: Teaching Language Arts in the Waldorf School, p.90