It’s truly beautiful how the handwork in Waldorf education is specifically chosen to help the child on his emotional, educational and spiritual development. The third grade student is going through the nine year change and to help give the child a sense of purpose and comfort during this transition, the curriculum aims to teach the practical arts and skills to the child in the form of shelter building, farming and clothing. The handwork for the third grade student will reflect the curriculum with projects ranging from knitted scarves and hats to stitched bags and tunics. Additionally, candle making, weaving and working with clay or beeswax is introduced. While some things will have already been familiar to the child like working with beeswax and making candles, the projects this year take on a practical purpose.
Here are some of the tutorials I mentioned in the video:
Pine Needle Basket Weaving Tutorial, Circle Weaving, Weaving for Beginners, Dipping Candles, Wet Felting, The candle wax I’m loving right now is called Topanga Beeswax.
Main lesson books are some of the most beautiful and memorable projects from our homeschooling. We’ve accumulated a lot of them over the years. While we didn’t always teach the lessons according to the grades, we do seem to have main lesson books for most main lesson blocks over the years. Today I’ll share some from the 3rd grade Waldorf curriculum by Live-Education!
There are a number of additional resources I use when homeschooling, even when using a curriculum that doesn’t require any. It’s not always a good thing. Sometimes it give you more work and stretches lessons unnecessarily. Sometimes the extra books are golden! Today I share a wide assortment of additional books we used when putting together our main lesson blocks for 3rd grade. While some of these books were used extensively, others are ones I think will work with the Live Education! Waldorf homeschool curriculum.
When I first saw the third grade Waldorf curriculum, I wasn’t interested in using it because there was so much content I didn’t intend to use. A few years later, I realized the wisdom behind why these particular main lesson blocks are chosen for the 9-year-old student. I’ll share those reflections in the video as well as give you an in-depth review of the Live Education! third grade curriculum with tips of how to use it.
We’ve gone through this curriculum before so you can to see my children’s main lesson books. As we used our own resources for many of the main lesson blocks, you’ll see how we tailored this year’s curriculum to suit our religious needs and cultural background.
You’ll need a number of supplies for the third year including the basics of main lesson books, additional resource books, crayons and color pencils, watercolors and watercolor paper as well as the materials for handwork projects. You can see the complete list of supplies for the third grade.
While you don’t need any additional resource books for this year save a few for the lesson on Hebrew Myths and Culture, I do have a number of additional books that round out the 3rd grade curriculum. The bulk of them were used for the main lessons on Hebrew Myths and Culture. We used culturally relevant texts and religious books for those main lesson blocks. I share more resources that will come in handy for the parent/teacher, but they are by no means necessary to use the curriculum successfully.
You can check out my other Live-Education curriculum reviews:
Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2, Grade 3, Grade 4 (coming soon), Grade 5, Grade 6, Grade 7, and Grade 8 (coming soon).
You can see more videos in for Third Grade. More tutorials will be added to the playlist as they are made. Have a request? Share it with me!