Spiritual Syllabus

Okay, prowling through books again. I'm not changing my plan, just doing more research. For those of you who aren't familiar with Alan Whitehead's Spiritual Syllabus series, it is a massive and very hard to follow set of curriculum guides for all aspects of Steiner education. Worth the money if you like his style; a complete waste of money if you don't. He's not one to hold your hand and walk you through it. His books are a set of articles and assorted musings on each topic. I have nearly all of them, and writing down his notes for all the extra subjects (like P.E. and Drama) will be another post -- but here are his Head and Heart lesson topics for First Grade. He loves to set up his school years as groups of 3 week units; I prefer to dedicate the month, as that seems easier to me. Anyway, that's why there is so much content:

Language Arts - Genii of Language
The Capital Alphabet
Writing of Nature
Letter Combinations
Foreign Language
Story Speech & News
Letter Structure & Spacing

Mathematics - Journey to Numeria
Counting
4 Operations
The Equation
Paper Folding & Cutting
Radial Form/Dynamic Drawing
Games with Counters

Social Studies - The People Pool
Local Geography
Four Temperaments
"Flood" Stories
Aboriginal Stories

Science - World Within, Child Without
Physics Games/Stories
Four Elementals
Four Elements
Rock Cycle Stories
Plant Stories

That's 21.

Note: He does begin the teaching of capital letters with the straight line and curve, but seems to have placed the rest of FD under mathmatics.

Supplementary volumes include:
sex education
nutrition/health education
tone & music
children's reader/story book
games & sport, dance
watercolour painting
discipline
3 on educational philosophy (primary, high school, homeschool)
language resource
handwork
architecture
drama
flora
fauna
mineral world

and more...

Some time when Leah is not asleep I will go downstairs and get the books for P.E., art, drama, music, and handwork to see what blocks he recommends. It is perhaps useful to know the titles of his blocks, even if you don't purchase the book to find out content, so I hope this is helpful.

We are, obviously, currently working on The Capital Alphabet.

La Pleroma, one of the ones I don't have (it's Science for class 7 & 8) supposedly contains "Complete Class 1 to 7 Primary Curriculum!" 250 units worth. I would like to see that. It makes me nuts to have to gather all these books in one place.

Anyway, Leah hasn't fallen asleep yet so I went downstairs and got The Golden Path, Choirs of Colours, Horns of Hermes, Touch the Earth Gently, and Dramatis Divine. Here is what I can find out about first grade.

Handwork - The Golden Path
Naturecraft
Knitting
Candlemaking
Cubby Building
Hand-Printing
Earthworks
Seeds & Seedlings
Biscuit Baking
Learn to Swim

Art - Choirs of Colours
Wet-on-Wet Primary Colours
Beeswax Modeling
Block Crayon Drawing

Music - Horns of Hermes
Recorders

Physical Education - Touch the Earth, Gently
Learn to Swim
Circular Ball Games
Hiding
Chasing Games
Floor Games
Sliding and Swinging
Creative Games
Circle Dances

Drama - Dramatis Divine
The Class 1 Play (this may not apply to homeschoolers)


So there you have it! Add in another 21 blocks. Making a full set of 42, more than enough to carry us through the year and beyond. I can see his logic in the three week unit, since I can't see an entire month of candlemaking... I wish wish wish I had the entire grid all out in front of me to see. Can't justify buying another book, though, when I have all the bits and pieces here. And a lot of the handwork and P.E. and so on I won't be doing with Natalie right now since she is in school fulltime. My focus will be on reinforcing what she's doing in class and then next year we can get into the Waldorf thing full-on and complete the remainder of the first grade curriculum.