Welcome to Waldorf Inspirations’ Creative Classroom and Blog
This is the place to visit for our latest news, classroom teaching gems, and inspirations from far and wide. We would also love to share some of your teaching ideas, when sent our way via our website (submit an idea) . We hope you enjoy this new ‘meeting place of ideas.’
The WI team; Anna, Patti, Tim, and Janet
Blog #8: Learning Games and Activities to Do at Home During the Quarantine
As one of the student support teachers at the Waldorf School on the Roaring Fork, I can feel the collective energy that all of us Waldorf teachers are creating right now as we think about how to bring our rich, "real world" curriculum to our students and their parents through virtual means.
If you are like me, figuring out how to channel the creativity we use for our school lessons into this new circumstance, is a bit daunting. My overarching theme to this challenge is to remember how to meet the children where they are developmentally. To do this we need to ask the question, "How do children learn best?" to know how to proceed.
Children learn best when they are given time to play and explore and when they can learn through story. Joanne Oppenheim said it so well in her book Kids and Play,
"Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable.
When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning."
Joanne Oppenheim, Kids and Play (Chapter 1, 1984)
How do we share our imaginative, play-based approach with the parents of our students as we prepare lessons to send home? They need our help to inspire them. We can't just say, "Go online to find a learning game or activity that your child can play." But don't fret – you are in luck!
Janet and I love using learning games and activities! We have collated these games and activities over our teaching years and have uploaded them on waldorfinspirations.com. Below you will find the links to the wealth of grades 1-4learning games and activities on our website to draw from. Please share them!
And in the spirit of collaboration, we would love to hear about those learning games or activities that you have found successful.
1st Grade Math Activities
http://www.waldorfinspirations.com/images/1st-grade/math/grade-1-math-and-basic-facts-memorization-activities_2017_final.pdf
http://www.waldorfinspirations.com/images/1st-grade/math/Bingo.pdf
1st Grade Language Arts Games
2nd Grade Math Activities
http://www.waldorfinspirations.com/index.php/grades/2nd-grade/2nd-grade-math
2nd Grade Language Arts Activities
3rd Grade Math Activities
http://www.waldorfinspirations.com/images/3rd-grade/math/3rd-grade-math-games.pdf
http://www.waldorfinspirations.com/images/3rd-grade/math/3rd_Gd._mental_math_games_final.pdf
3rd Grade Language Arts Activities
http://www.waldorfinspirations.com/images/3rd-grade/lang/games-to-reinforce-spelling.pdf
4th Grade Language Arts Activities
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