Grade 6 Basics A Waldorf Journey

Leo Migdal

-Dec 14, 2025, 9:58 AM

In this packet you’ll find my most essential Waldorf Grade Six documents. It is not a full curriculum guide but it gives a brief picture of the year as a whole and includes some of the most important documents that provided a framework for our work... The Upper Grades Morning Verse — The translation I like best. A Grade Six Sample Block Rotation — When should you teach each main lesson block? Here is my calendar of the year in the form of main lesson content. A Grade Six Sample Weekly Schedule — Including my thoughts on what is the best weekly schedule.

A Grade Six Sample Main Lesson Rhythm — The nuts and bolts of how that two hour main lesson block is spent. 6th Grade A Polar Experience Student Essay 6th Grade Acoustic Demonstration Student Page 6th Grade Active and Passive Voice Lesson 6th Grade All That Glitters Guide: The Splendor of Gems and Minerals 6th Grade Ancient Asia Main Lesson Book Hidden China Essay

I've been sharing my notes since 2005. Click on my picture to help support my work. Thank you! If you can only afford the essentials, these are the two things -- and the only 2 things -- that you need to develop your homeschool curriculum. Both of these resources cover grades 1 through 12. (And, don't worry, you can still do a FANTASTIC job!)

The Educational Tasks & Content of the Steiner Waldorf Curriculum Copyright © 2025 Michael Seifert (About me) As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases Awakening critical thinking through logic and discovery In Waldorf sixth grade, students stand at the threshold of early adolescence. At this age, their thinking becomes more logical and analytical, yet their moral view of the world is still largely shaped by clear definitions of right and wrong.

This developmental stage craves structure, fairness, and clarity—making it an ideal time to introduce subjects that offer both intellectual challenge and ethical reflection. The sixth grade Waldorf curriculum is designed to meet these needs with a strong emphasis on logic, lawfulness, and order. Students engage with business math, geometric drawing, and the introduction of algebraic equations—subjects that satisfy their growing ability to reason and appreciate structure. In the sciences, students explore physics, geology, and botany through hands-on experiments and observation, laying the groundwork for scientific thinking rooted in experience. The humanities curriculum spans a wide arc of history—from ancient Rome to medieval Europe, the Crusades, and the rise of Islam—offering rich cultural context while engaging their strong sense of justice and inquiry into... Writing becomes more advanced with a focus on expository, descriptive, and narrative forms, strengthening students' ability to articulate their ideas with clarity and purpose.

Geography expands to include the continents of North and South America, helping students develop a global perspective and deeper understanding of their place in the world. In sixth grade, the 11/12 year-old is usually beginning to experience the onset of puberty. Growth happens at an increasingly rapid rate and the child often goes through a time of alarm, not recognizing who he or she is anymore. Just as a single example, somewhere during the time of puberty a girl’s larynx grows to three times its original size and a boy’s, seven times its original size. This growth rate will never be repeated in the life span of human development. Along with this physical growth comes a wonderful burst of new capacities of judgement.

Sixth graders can be very fine company, capable of interesting insight and discussion. However, it is important to keep in mind that they are still children. Rome is the literary/cultural focus of the curriculum in grade 6. Lawfulness becomes an important anchor for the sixth grader. Clear structure, consequences for law breaking, and contracts for increasing responsibility are the best for helping a child through the difficult range of feelings that burst forth at this age. Keeping the child energetically concentrated on the work of learning is therapeutic and teaches the child that work helps tangled feelings move forward and lighten.

To listen sympathetically to the upsets inevitable at this time, and then to re-focus on work to be done constitutes good practice for these youngsters. They are relying on adults for this. “Contracts toward increasing responsibility,” is a good “slogan” for sixth graders: once work is completed, negotiations and privileges can begin!Download a PDF of Grade 6 Book Recommendations A Handbook for Waldorf Class Teachers Kevin Avison Awakening Intelligence Magda Lisseau Evaluation, Homework, and Teacher’s Support David Mitchell, ed. Finding Your Self Torin Finser From Images to Thinking David Mitchell, ed.Growing Up Healthy in a World of Digital Media Michaela Glöckler Immersion Learning: A Travelogue Frans Lutters Leaving Room for the Angels Reg... MüllerThe Temperaments and the Arts Magda Lissau Working with Anxious, Nervous, and Depressed Children Henning Koehler and Joseph Baily

Developing the Observing Eye Cynthia Lange Difficult Children: There Is No Such Thing Henning Koehler and Joseph BaileyEducating the Will Michael HowardHelping Children on Their Way Elizabeth AuerLearning about the World through Modeling Arthur... Raphael: The Mysteries of Illness and Healing Michaela Glöckler, M.D. The Four Temperaments Helmut EllerWill-Developed Intelligence Patricia Livingston and David MitchellWorking with Anxious, Nervous, and Depressed Children Henning Koehler and Joseph Baily Adventures in Parenting Rachel Ross Assessment for Learning in Waldorf Classrooms Sara Ciborski & Helen-Ann Ireland Child Development at a Glance Christian Breme Into the World: How Waldorf Graduates Fare after High School, Douglas... Children race to meet their twelfth-year-of-life experiences as they begin the journey through the year of Class 6. New capacities and new ways of experiencing and discovering the world emerge in their lives.

While critical, independent thinking will truly unfold in High School, in Class 6, they enter the realm of a feeling approach to thinking. Child’s life and experiences undergo great changes, physically, emotionally, intellectually, and socially. Centered and grounded support and guidance of loving adults around them, parents, grandparents, teachers, family mentors, is of utmost importance as we go through this year and the years ahead. Academically, the curriculum takes us through the work of laying the foundation for conceptual and critical thinking they are preparing for.Students explore mathematical laws while developing confidence in their capacities to understand them, apply... They write more than they did in the past with very little, if any, copying of teacher’s composition like they did in the past years. Their skills in writing well organized five-paragraph essays expand as well as their skills for business formats of writing.Astronomy, minerology, geography, history, science, and math weave together the school year allowing the children to...

Physics takes us into the excitement of science experiments, observations, and explorations of heat, light, sound, and its lawfulness, like lawfulness in math and beautifully precise geometric constructions leads us into the Middle School... Daniela Language Arts: Biographies, Grammar, Historical fiction Mathematics: Pre-Algebra, Percentage, Interest, Profit/Loss, Geometry Social Studies: Roman History, Troy, World Geography, Life of Christ, Crusades, Mohammed, Islamic people, Medieval Life The focus of Class 6 is fine needle work and an introduction to doll making.

The students will learn traditional doll making techniques to make a handcrafted Waldorf doll, sewn by hand with skin-colored cotton knit fabric and stuffed with wool. The students will first make the doll head, and then draft a pattern for the body as they visualize how the pieces should come together to make a three-dimensional object. Careful stuffing techniques will be introduced as well as new sewing stitches, such as the invisible ladder stitch. Embroidery and basic crochet will be revisited as the face of the doll is embroidered and the cap for the doll hair is crocheted. Students will create a basic wardrobe for their dolls. The time, thought, and effort it takes to make these special dolls will be reflected in the students’ completed projects, all unique with their own character.

The harmonious balanced Greek period is ending a willful, muscular Roman period beginning. At this time, there is a false dawn of intellectual consciousness as the child's feeling perception passes over to the world of ideas. This is not the same as the critical, independent thinking and judging that will come after the age of fourteen: it is instead a feeling approach to thinking. The work with whole numbers and fractions and decimals from the previous year continues, but now it is expanded to include percentage. Business math creates a practical context for these mathematical concepts and provides a transition into an introduction to algebra. The geometrical constructions which were done free-hand last year, are now made with a compass and a ruler.

Students learn the importance of precision and some basic geometrical constructions, like bisecting a line and an angle, as they create beautiful artistic geometrical forms. "A new phase in the structure and methodology of instruction begins with the sixth grade. From now on the child needs to be focused on the outer world in a very different manner. In conversation one can connect interest calculation with the monetary system, today's credit system and questions of the social threefold order. . .

. Against this social background the interest formula ceases to be purely mathematical and becomes a social matter. The essence of an algebraic formula, of "letter calculation," is the articulation of a concept of connections conforming to some law. This lays the foundation for conceptual thinking." Ernst Schuberth, Mathematics Lessons for the Sixth Grade "As the children approach puberty their feeling life expands in all ways.

Mathematics can offer an important support in this stage of life. Their own subjective opinions and ideas are not required! Mathematics attracts their attention not only to the numerical material but especially to their own thinking. If the pupils manage to become confident and secure with mathematical laws, they learn self-confidence. When this is achieved the young people are on the way to the most important aim in mathematics teaching: that of gaining trust in thinking."

Grade 6 Basics A Waldorf Journey

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