Waldorf Fairy Tales and Storytelling: Which Stories Suit Each Age

Waldorf teachers tell fairy tales because young children understand the world through pictures before they understand it through explanations. A told story lets a child live through fear, courage and kindness from a safe place, and it teaches without a lecture at the end. The stories grow with the child. The littlest ones hear simple nature stories and cumulative tales. Grimm's fairy tales come in kindergarten and grade 1, fables and legends in grade 2, and Old Testament stories in grade 3. They're told from memory, told more than once, and retold by the child the next day.

Why does Waldorf use fairy tales?

Picture a 5-year-old in the minutes after a story. She's quiet, then she's off to the play corner with a cloth and two blocks, and the woodcutter and the wolf are back on stage. She hasn't been told what the story means. She's working it out by playing it.

Rudolf Steiner gave lectures on fairy tales and spoke of them as food for the soul, something a child needs as surely as bread. He suggested that moral teaching should reach young children through pictures rather than rules, and Waldorf teachers still work that way. In a fairy tale, the youngest son is kind to an old woman on the road and she helps him later. Nobody says "be kind". The child sees it happen.

Many Waldorf teachers also point out that fairy tales carry the same shapes as a child's own growing up. The hero leaves home, meets something frightening, is helped, and comes through. For a child who is starting to step out into the world, that's a picture worth having.

Which stories suit which age?

Waldorf teachers choose a story by how heavy its troubles are. Mild problems suit the youngest children. Real sorrow and real wickedness wait until the child is older. One Waldorf school's guide to choosing fairy tales sets out the steps below, and most Waldorf kindergartens follow something close to it.

Ages 3 to 4: nature stories and cumulative tales

The first stories are small. A nature story such as The Apple Star or The Moon Hare. Or a cumulative tale, where each part adds one more thing and the same words come back each time. In The Turnip, grandfather pulls and grandmother pulls grandfather. Then the granddaughter joins, all the way down to the mouse. In Sweet Porridge, the pot won't stop cooking. Goldilocks and the Three Bears belongs here too.

These stories have a pattern your child can hold, and almost no conflict. That's the point.

Ages 4 to 5: gentle folk tales

Around 4, children are ready for a little more trouble, as long as it's cheerful. The Three Little Pigs and The Three Billy Goats Gruff both have a threat, and both have a clear, happy ending. The Star Money, where a girl gives away everything she has and the stars fall as silver coins, is a favourite in Waldorf kindergartens too.

Ages 5 to 7: Grimm's fairy tales

By 5 or 6, many children can meet the longer Grimm's tales: Hansel and Gretel, Snow-White, Rumpelstiltskin. The characters face real trouble, but it doesn't weigh too heavily. The tales where someone suffers deeply, like Cinderella and Rapunzel, are often kept for the last year of kindergarten or for grade 1.

Grade 1 is the great fairy tale year. The Waldorf grade 1 curriculum brings in each letter through a story, and most of those stories come from Grimm. A child who is through the 7-year change can now hold a picture in mind without acting it out, which is exactly what a longer fairy tale asks of them. Many teachers start the year with the simpler tales and save the deeper ones for spring.

Grade 2: fables and legends

In grade 2, many children start to notice that people are mixed. Someone can be generous and greedy in the same afternoon. So the grade 2 curriculum tells two kinds of story side by side. Aesop's fables and trickster tales show our foolish and clever sides through animals: the fox and the grapes, the lion and the mouse, Anansi the spider. Some teachers add the Jataka tales, old animal stories from India. Legends of saints and good people show the other side, what someone can do with an ordinary life. The legend of Saint Martin cutting his cloak in two for a beggar is a good one to start with, and it's told every year before Martinmas.

The fables are told without a moral at the end. You finish the story and let it sit.

Grade 3: Old Testament stories

Around 9, many children begin to feel separate from the world in a new way. Waldorf teachers call this the 9-year change. Grade 3 meets it with the Old Testament stories. They start with the seven days of Creation and Adam and Eve leaving the garden. Then come Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses and the kings. They're told as cultural heritage, and as pictures of people leaving home and learning to work the land. That matches the farming and building your child does that year. Many secular families tell them this way too.

How do you tell a story from memory?

This is the part that worries parents most, and it's easier than it sounds. Nobody expects you to recite.

1. Choose one story for the week. For a kindergarten child, one story can carry a week or two. For some families it carries a month.
2. Read it on three evenings before you tell it. Many Waldorf teachers read the story aloud before bed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then tell it on Monday. Sleeping on it helps it settle.
3. Learn the pictures, not the words. Walk through the scenes in your head: the cottage, the forest path, the three doors. Keep a few lines word for word, like a rhyme or a repeated call ("Little pig, little pig, let me come in"). Tell the rest in your own words.
4. Start the same way each time. Light a candle, or say a short verse. Then tell the story in a calm, even voice. You don't need to do the wolf's voice. Your child's imagination does the rest.
5. Blow the candle out and let it be. No questions straight away, no "what did you learn?".

A story you tell with a few stumbles often reaches a child better than one you read perfectly. The research backs this up in a small way. In a 2004 study of 3 to 5 year olds, the children who heard stories told understood them better when they retold them than children who heard the same stories read. Telling the same story more than once helps too. When 3-year-olds in a 2011 study heard the same few stories again and again, they learned and kept new words. Children who heard many different stories didn't.

Retelling the story the next day

In grades 1 to 3, Waldorf teachers use what they call the three-day rhythm. On the first day you tell the story and leave it. Your child sleeps on it. On the second day, before anything else, you ask them to tell it back to you. Then they draw it, paint it or act it out. In the older grades, a day or two later, they write a few sentences about it in the main lesson book.

The retelling is where you find out what your child took in, and it's often not what you expected. One child remembers the golden key. Another remembers only the soup. Let them tell it their way. If a big piece is missing, you can ask "and then what happened at the well?" rather than filling it in yourself.

Starpath's grade 2 story blocks, like Animal Fables, follow this rhythm. Your child hears the fable with the books put away. The next day they retell it and draft a few sentences. Then they copy the best version into the main lesson book with a picture.

What about the scary parts?

Grimm's tales have wolves, witches and stepmothers, and some of them end harshly. This is where Waldorf parents most often get stuck, and there are two honest answers. Choose one.

Tell the tale as it's written, or not at all. Many Waldorf teachers don't soften the endings. David Darcy, a Waldorf teacher trainer who taught first grade at the Austin Waldorf School, put it simply: if he wasn't comfortable with a whole story, he didn't tell it. His reasoning, shared by many teachers, is that a child's inner picture tends to match what the child can take. Nothing is shown on a screen. The child makes the wolf only as big as they can manage.

Choose a gentler tale for now. If a story frightens you, your child will likely feel it. Children read our voices. Plenty of tales have a clear danger and a clear rescue without much cruelty. Save the rest for later.

Either way, a few things help. Tell the frightening part in the same calm voice as the rest, without drama. Don't stop in the middle. Make sure the story reaches its good ending. For a young child, good winning in the end matters a great deal. If your child is upset for days afterwards, put that story away and come back to it in a year or two.

Where to start this week

Pick one story that fits your child's age from the lists above. Read it to yourself on three evenings. On the fourth day, light a candle and tell it. Tell the same story every day this week, at the same time, and see what turns up in your child's play. For more on building story time into the day, see Waldorf kindergarten at home.