What Are Waldorf Nature Stories in Grade 1?

Waldorf nature stories are short tales where something from the natural world speaks and acts like a person. A seed waits in the cold ground for spring, the wind has somewhere to go, a squirrel worries about winter. They stay true to what happens outside, and they carry most of the science in Waldorf grade 1. Around them sit daily walks, the seasons and, often, a home surroundings block about the place your child lives.

This article is about that side of grade 1: what a nature story is, how the nature and home surroundings blocks work, and what to do outside. For the rest of the year, see What's in Waldorf grade 1?.

What is a Waldorf nature story?

A nature story takes something your child can see outside and lets it think and speak. The oak tree remembers last winter. The snowflake is proud of its six points. Frost comes in the night and paints the windows.

The story is imaginative, but it isn't made up about nature. The squirrel in the story buries acorns in autumn because real squirrels do. The seed waits until the ground warms because real seeds do. Dorothy Harrer, who taught the lower grades at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York, wrote a well-known collection of them, Nature Ways in Story and Verse. Its publisher describes the aim as nature shown in human terms while staying true to nature.

That balance matters. The human side gives your child a way in: a squirrel who's worried about winter is someone a six-year-old can understand. The true side is what will become botany and zoology in later grades.

A nature story is short, usually 5 to 10 minutes told aloud. Many are closer to fairy tales than to lessons, and you tell them the same way. If you'd like help with telling rather than reading, see Waldorf fairy tales and storytelling.

Why Waldorf teaches nature through stories in grade 1

Steiner spoke about this to teachers in 1923. He suggested that young children don't yet feel a clear line between themselves and the world. For a young child, he said, plants, trees and clouds speak. He placed the change at about 9 or 10, when a child begins to see themselves as separate from the world around them. After that, a more scientific study of plants and animals makes sense.

So Waldorf teachers usually hold off on labelled diagrams and life cycles in grade 1. The Parenting Passageway, a long-running Waldorf homeschool blog, describes grades 1 and 2 science as experiences in nature and naked-eye observation. That means gardening, cooking, caring for pets, outdoor play, and watching the sky and weather. The nature story gives those experiences a picture to hold them.

This isn't about keeping facts from your child. If they ask what a bee does with pollen, tell them plainly. What you leave for later is the textbook: the diagram, the vocabulary list, the test.

Nature study and home surroundings in grade 1

Waldorf grade 1 often includes one or two blocks about the world outside. They go by different names, but two are common.

A nature block. A few weeks focused on the seasons, the weather or the elements. One example block on The Parenting Passageway runs for three weeks in January. It has a week for each pair of seasons, stories like Harrer's The Four Seasons and The Snowflake, wet-on-wet painting, beeswax modeling and a morning walk to see what's changed.

A home surroundings block. The study of your own place: the garden, the street, the park, the hedge where the birds live. Children walk slowly and notice things. They learn where the sun comes up and goes down, and make their first maps of a room or a garden. It's the start of geography, and it begins with the ground under your child's feet.

Some Waldorf schools don't hold nature as a block at all. The Waldorf School of San Diego says its grade 1 nature stories are spread through the year. They follow the seasons and the things children meet on campus and nearby, like the mountains and the coast. At home, you can do either, or both.

How to teach a nature story at home

The rhythm is the same as for a fairy tale in grade 1: tell one day, work with it the next.

Day one: the walk and the story. Go outside first. Take your time and let your child notice something: the wind moving the grass, a line of ants, the first yellow leaves. Back inside, tell a short story about it. The wind is looking for something. The ants are carrying food home before the rain.

Day two: recall and the main lesson book. Your child tells the story back. Then they draw a picture from it in the main lesson book with block crayons. Later in the year, when they're writing, you can add a sentence they've said about it, such as "The wind blew the leaves off the tree."

Afterwards: the nature table. Bring something home from the walk: a feather, a pine cone, a stone. Put it on the nature table with a figure from the story.

Keep the stories local. A child in Queensland and a child in Vermont see different birds and different winters. The San Diego school's point about local mountains and coast is a good one. Tell stories about what your child can go out and find.

Walks, and the same tree all year

The daily walk is the backbone of all this. You don't need a forest. A street with a few trees, a park or a patch of garden will do.

A few ideas:

• Walk the same route. Choose one tree on it and visit it every week. Your child sees it in leaf, turning, bare and in blossom.
• Stop and listen. Stand still for one minute and ask what your child can hear.
• Watch the sky. Where is the sun at lunchtime? Is the moon out in the day?
• Go out in weather. Rain, wind and frost are part of it. Good boots help more than any book.
• Bring back one thing. Only one, for the nature table.

The seasons will do a lot of the teaching. The Waldorf festivals follow the same turning of the year, so your walks and your festival days tend to meet.

Writing your own nature stories

You don't need to be a writer. A nature story needs one real thing from your walk, one small problem and one true ending.

Try it with something you saw this week:

1. The real thing. A spider's web on the gate.
2. The problem. The spider needs somewhere to catch her breakfast, and the wind keeps blowing.
3. The true ending. She builds between the gate and the post, where it's sheltered, and in the morning the dew shows every thread.

That's enough for a grade 1 story. Tell it in 5 minutes, and let your child find the web the next morning.

Starpath's grade 1 has two blocks for this side of the year, each with a free guide. Nature Studies is built around the four elements and daily walks. Home Surroundings ends with your child's first maps. For other curricula, see the best Waldorf homeschool curriculum for grade 1.

What to do this week

1. Pick your route, 15 minutes from your door, and choose one tree on it.
2. Walk it every day, in any weather.
3. Tell one nature story about something you found, in 5 to 10 minutes.
4. Draw it the next day in the main lesson book.
5. Bring one thing home for the nature table.