Dear Parents,

This past week, our class began a new math block, concentrating on number patterns in multiplication. The students explored the relationships between the two and four tables and the three and six tables. They drew a long number line on the sidewalk outdoors and hopped the tables on the number line. Then they connected the multiples of a number with curved lines, skipping the numbers in between. When they compared the two and four tables, they realized that every second multiple of two is also a multiple of four. They made the same discovery for the three and six tables.

In this block, the students also heard animal fables from the Buddhist Jataka Tales. Whereas the Buddha can be seen as a role model, each animal story from the Jataka tales presents some form of human failing and contains an underlying moral. In Waldorf schools, morals are not explicitly taught. The students reflect on the stories overnight, and the moral implications emerge when they retell and talk about the story the next day.

During morning circle with the third grade, the students are learning to recite the poem The Blind Men and the Elephant by Godfrey Saxe while passing beanbags to each other.

Reminders: