Having trouble choosing a curriculum? I used to think Oak Meadow was a Waldorf inspired curriculum, but looking at the 5th grade curriculum, I think it's far more traditional than Waldorfian. If you want a Waldorf curriculum, I think the Live-Education curriculum is spot on. I'll compare both curricula for 5th grade so you can get a better idea how both curricula are laid out.
The Waldorf curriculum we use doesn't have a teaching manual and textbooks. There are no workbooks. We might not even see regular subjects as you'd expect in other traditional methods and the scope and sequence may be new to you. So what do you get when you order a Waldorf curriculum and what will your children do?
I don't think you've seen a curriculum like this before. The Live-Education 5th grade curriculum has an emphasis on ancient history, botany and geometry. But just because a formal language arts program may be absent from the curriculum, it doesn't mean it's absent all together. In fact, you'll be surprised at how much writing, dictation and copywork occur with the history and science main lesson blocks. And I bet you've never seen an introduction to geometry quite like this before.
There are additional materials you'll need for the school year. In addition to a source book for each subject area (you could do without one, but with some subjects, it's highly recommended), you'll need main lesson books, color pencils and the Key to Curriculum workbooks for fractions and decimals.
While there is a single teacher for grades 1st-8th in a Waldorf school, there are also other teachers that a student will interact with on a daily and weekly basis. There are additional lessons that are taught by specialized teachers. For instance, there are foreign language teachers who teach twice a week in the afternoons after the main lesson has been completed by the classroom teacher, there are handiwork teachers, eurythmy teachers, and music teachers who also teacher regularly throughout the year. This provides a nice balance of role models throughout a child's experience at school.
The same can be achieved at home. You may choose to have additional classes for your child and thereby your child will be exposed to other teachers other than yourself.
You can see the complete lessons for Botany by clicking here:
• WALDORF MAIN LESSON BO...
You can also see the complete lessons for Geometry by clicking here:
• How To Do A MATH Unit ...
Though we didn't do a main lesson for Ancient Egypt recently, we did do an Ancient Egypt Unit Study:
• How To Do A Unit Study...
We love the Key To Curriculum Series, and the Live-Education curriculum suggests supplementing the 5th grade curriculum with Key to Fractions and Decimals (and I add percents as well). See my review here:
• MATH CURRICULUM WORKBO...
You can find Year 5 Live-Education curriculum here:
www.live-education.com/fifth-...
Recently, Oak Meadow sent me the 5th grade curriculum to add to our charter school's resource center for families to use. Before making it there, I was given the opportunity to share the curriculum with you.
In addition to the curriculum itself, there were several historical fiction, history picture books and other historical books to supplement the curriculum. The math portion of the curriculum has been revised and the whole look and style of the curriculum has been updated.
You can find more of my curriculum videos here:
• Huge Curriculum Haul |...
You can find the Oak Meadow curriculum at
www.oakmeadow.com
Number Chains is a great little book that can be used for mental math. Questions are multiple step (about 6-7 steps each) and can be done orally (delivered by the teacher) or independently by the student.
www.amazon.com/Little-Book-Nu...
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