I imagine private Waldorf schools have more freedom in how they do things, so i can only speak to my charter school that gets checked up by the state. The children are in regular grades, K-12, but they are expected to be 6 months older than the state requires. so for example, here you can start school if you are 5 by December 1st i think it is. While you can start Waldorf at that age, you cannot advance to 1st grade until you are 6 by May first. So about half the kids do Kindergarten two years in a row. They are basically insuring all their students are 18 when they graduate. So my oldest daughter who is 6 in January will do one year while my older dd will turn 6 in July will be doing two years. Kindergarten (for us) is the one class that the teacher is different than the rest of the grades. Once you start 1st grade, unless something out of the ordinary happened, you have the same teacher through out the grades. Our school only goes to 8th grade. Then there is a separate Waldorf high school pretty far away we wont be able to go to.
Their way of doing the actual academics is totally different than regular school. They don't learn their letters until 2nd grade and yet the kids are multiplying in first grade. They teach concrete math concepts earlier because children are more able to understand it, then the more abstract, like reading, later on. When they do get into the academics, they teach in blocks. Blocks are a period of time, say 6 weeks, where they will focus on one thing. Say it is Rome. For 6 weeks, all they will talk about is Rome. They play Roman games, the learn Roman letters, they sing Roman songs, they, depending on the age, will write Roman themed stories, and they integrate whatever math and science they are doing into Rome too. They will dress in togas and eat Roman food. They are fully immersed in Rome so that after that 6 weeks, those children KNOW Rome.
They also do not use text books, at least in the elementary grades. They make their own text books. So while in first grade before they know letters, their text book consists of drawings, and as they progress through school, their text books get more complicated, changing to amazing illustrations and written reports that are better than anything I've seen come though the public schools. All of the work they do through out the year is bound into a book at then end of the year, becoming their "text book."
I was at the school the other day when I saw the third grade classes building little huts with branches and twigs. They had gone through the neighbors hood, and park, gathering all the broken branches and turning them into this hut. Its a project they worked on all week. I LOVE how they are always hands on. It is a great type of school for boys who have a hard time sitting still. They also do daily handwork, knitting kinds of things. I was walking through the school, seeing the 6th graders, boys and girls, sitting in the sunshine, some on the grass, some in chairs, chatting and sewing blankets together. When do you see that?? Every Thursday my dd is outside ALL day, taking an extra long walk to the river and having a picnic there.
The difficulty they have is the state mandated testing still applies to them, so they fail miserably in the first few grades in writing and reading because the children haven't learned it yet, which in effect, causes them to have a bad school rating. But by the time they are testing in Middle school, they have caught up and advanced beyond the regular public schools. Of course the reason why they test so low in the younger grades isn't shown in the school reports so people who don't understand the way of waldorf see that and think it is a crummy school.
I have a 45 minute conference on Saturday, about what, i'm not sure since they aren't learning the basic academic concepts. I'm used to my son where they talked about how my son is doing in each area, math, reading, etc as well as his behavior. Now for my dd, they have an even longer conference scheduled and she doesn't even do the typical academics! They are pro-family involvement, always encouraging parents to be fully involved in the life of their children and in the classroom. And they are very strict about media use and the children eating healthy. So far there is nothing i don't like about it.
