SECOND GRADE DEVELOPMENT
The Waldorf approach to teaching reaches the student through story content appropriate to each stage of the child’s development.  By second grade, the students have a budding sense of moral feeling.  Stories of Saints and Fables of the animals’ world are steeped with true meaning for the second grade child. Contrasts of greatness and foolishness spark interest and joy, from this spark further development of language arts is made through the child’s re-telling and writing of stories.  The work on numeracy deepens and the focus on multiplication facts is strengthened in second grade by way of movement and game as well as in written form. The dramatic arts are introduced, and each year the class performs a play all together, no try-outs! 

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SECOND GRADE CURRICULUM

LANGUAGE ARTS
Writing and Reading

• Narrative songs, verses, and stories
  
• Rhythmical practice of numbers up to 20
  
• Colors
  
• Games and activities including simple dialog and directions
  
• Foods, clothing, and other vocabulary from daily life and main lesson content
  

Grammar

• The parts of speech: doing words, naming words, describing words and how words
  
• Punctuation: period, comma, question mark, exclamation point
  
• Contractions
  
• Grammar in speaking
  

Speaking

• Proper grammar
  
• Clear articulation
  
• Retelling of stories
  
• Class play
  
• Poetry: alliterations, tongue-twisters, various rhythms, with and without movement and gesture, choral and individual recitations
  

MATHEMATICS

• Review all previous work
  
• Continue with mental math
  
• The world of numbers
  
• Gain fluency of counting up to 100
  
• Gain fluency with the number world up to 1000
  
• Continue estimation practice
  
• Odd and even numbers
  
• Discover number patterns
  
• Place value
  
• Addition and subtraction facts
  
• Achieve mastery of simple addition and subtraction facts up to 100, where a single-digit number is added to or subtracted from a double-digit number
  
• Multiplication and division tables
  
• Understand these two processes as inverse operations
  
• Work on memorization of multiplication and division facts
  
• Gain an understanding of the concepts of multiplication and divisions, such as:3 x 2 = 6 means “three groups of two make six”12 -- 3 = 4 means “how many groups of three fit in twelve?”
  
•  Achieve fluency in all four processes
  
• Keep written work in a horizontal form
  
• Time orientation
  
• Achieve mastery of the days of the week and the months of the year
  

SCIENCE

• Nature study
  
• Animal fables
  
• The characterization of animals
  
• Observation and description of the local environment and changing seasons
  

ART
Painting

• Wet on wet watercolor painting
  
• Nature moods are explored through the meeting of the colors
  

Drawing

• Form drawing is taught as an aid for learning to write, as well as to develop an inner understanding of symmetry and other spatial relationships
  
• Beeswax crayons are used to make main lesson book entries and for the illustration of seasonal themes
  

Modeling

• Children model with beeswax or plasticine in relation to main lesson topics
  

Music

• The singing of pentatonic songs continues
  
• The playing of pentatonic flutes
  

FOREIGN LANGUAGE 
FRENCH AND GERMAN

• Continued expansion of contents listed for grade 1
  
• Stories become longer and more detailed
  
• Individual speaking begins
  
• Fables and stories of saints
  
• Sequences:  months, alphabet, days of the week, and seasons
  

HANDWORK

• Casting on and off, purling, increasing and decreasing
  
• Projects may include animals or pixies
  
• End of year may introduce basic crochet
  

GYM

• Developing a wide range of motor skills
  
• Rope jumping 
  
• Throwing and catching skills
  
• Games emphasizing cooperation
  
• Development of listening skills
  
• Developing spatial awareness