First Grade Syllabus Speed

[Jessica]

I don't know if this is the correct place to post this. I have posted other questions regarding some struggles I'm having relating to my daughter's strong desire for more intellectually than I am giving her moving at the pace of the syllabus. My specific question for this forum is regarding our current Language Arts block. I spoke with you Donna Nov. 2nd (to refresh your memory).

I feel like the speed of the Syllabus is a little slow for my daughter, we make it through the main lesson in a max time of 30 mins. At the end she kind of seems like "that's it?".

I'm wondering how appropriate it is to speed things up a bit. Like combine two of the lessons into one, which would add a couple more letters to each lesson and lengthen the story a bit.

I understand that when writing a curriculum it is impossible to cater to the specific needs of each family and so I'm trying to customize it to fit what I am intuiting to be my daughters needs, but since I am so new to Waldorf, am feeling insecure about which direction to go with this and why.

Any advice about this would be appreciated.

Thanks!
Jessica

[Donna]

Hi Jessica,

Nice to "see" you here!

As you say, you must customize and find the right way to work with the curriculum. I would only caution that you not go too fast and allow your daughter to get too much into her head. This is a fine line to walk - on the one hand, you need to meet her interest and keep her challenged - on the other hand, you don't want to feed a situation of 'more, more more'!

In general, I would urge you to find ways to go deeper with the material, and not add more to it. If you find the right way to do this, it could satisfy her need to learn more but not by adding more information. By going deeper, you can help her stretch inward instead of looking outward for more.

So.... can you add more details to the stories? Can you work more with each individual letter - cutting them out of paper, modeling them out of wax or dough, playing "find the letter" (looking for things around the house which begin with that sound) etc etc? Can you slow things down (and deepen them) by acting out the stories and doing puppet plays? One could spend a few days making costumes and/or puppets.

Let me know what you think of this and what you find works for your daughter - do bring it here as many people would probably find this discussion useful!

[Jessica]

I can do that stuff and I would be willing to try it. I'm not opposed to sticking my ground with her and moving slowly. However, I feel like it might be a viable option to combine some of the lessons and move quickly through the next few blocks until we get to some stuff that Shea doesn't already know. Then I could slow down the pace again to the normal one.

I just don't feel qualified to evaluate her for this from a Waldorf perspective and so I'm doubting my intuition.

I posted a more detailed response to this in the First Grade Forum.

Thanks Donna,
Jessica