What Is Nature Study in Waldorf Grade 2?

In Waldorf grade 2, nature study means living closely with the year. Your child walks the same paths in every season, brings finds home for the nature table and hears nature stories in which the wind, the trees and the animals have a voice. Many teachers also give a short main lesson block on the seasons, the months and the days, with folktales and a first poem. Formal science, with its naming and measuring, usually waits until grade 4.

What does nature study look like in grade 2?

Waldorf teachers often say a child of 7 or 8 still meets the world through pictures, stories and doing. So nature study at this age is mostly time outside with an adult who notices things.

Waldorf schools describe much the same pattern. Seacoast Waldorf School takes its second graders on "walks in the surrounding woods and wetlands," with gardening alongside, to build observation and curiosity. Mountain Laurel Waldorf School walks the rail trail and the river and visits local apple farms, so children can see the seasons change in one real place. Its classrooms each keep a nature table, and "children are encouraged to bring in objects from nature."

Seacoast puts the aim simply: for children "to keenly observe nature and the rhythms of the year." Nothing here needs a textbook. It needs boots, a coat and a regular time to go out.

Why stories come before science

A grade 2 teacher might tell a story about the sun calling the seeds up out of the dark earth, or the old oak holding on to its last leaves in November.

Seacoast writes that "stories that personify nature" are the ones that mean most to second graders. The trick is that the details stay true. A snail in the story still carries her house on her back and still comes out after rain. The Parenting Passageway, a Waldorf homeschool blog, suggests making up stories about the animals around your home and checking a reference book so the details are right.

These stories aren't a detour from science. Mountain Laurel says that "nature stories based on the seasons and elements" prepare children for the observation-based science of the middle grades. A child who has spent years looking closely at snails and oak trees brings that looking with them.

It's a long, slow path. Steiner suggested that natural history as a subject should begin around age 9, when a child can compare one creature with another. In many schools that's the grade 4 human and animal block, followed by botany in grade 5. Grade 2 is where the love of it starts. For more on why Waldorf leans on stories, see Waldorf fairy tales and storytelling.

The seasons, the months and the days

Many grade 2 teachers also give nature study a block of its own, often about time. Seacoast describes children developing "a sense of wonder and joy" through "the study of the seasons and the months of the year."

Starpath's grade 2 Nature Studies block is 10 days long and works this way. Your child names the seasons as they come where you live, draws each one in the main lesson book, and puts the months and days in order. Along the way they hear indigenous folktales about the natural world, including a Navajo story of how the stars came into the sky. They make salt-dough stars, write a first acrostic poem and draw a symmetrical star form. You can read the whole approach, with the first day laid out, in the free Nature Studies guide.

The guide makes a point worth keeping whichever curriculum you use: teach the year your child actually lives. If you're in the tropics, your seasons may be wet and dry. If you're in Australia or New Zealand, your Christmas is in summer. Your child learns more from the light outside their own window than from a chart of someone else's year.

An acrostic poem is a gentle first step into poetry for a 7 or 8-year-old. Your child writes a season's name down the side of the page, AUTUMN, and starts each line with its letter. Nothing needs to rhyme.

Nature walks: the same path in every weather

The walk is the heart of grade 2 nature study, and it works best when it's regular. Choose one path and go there once a week all year. A park loop, a country lane or a stretch of river all work. Over the months, your child sees one tree bud, leaf, fruit and drop its leaves. That's a lesson no book can give.

The Parenting Passageway suggests spending time outside "in every kind of weather" and looking at things "with the naked eye" before any magnifying glass. So leave the equipment at home at first. Let your child crouch by a puddle for as long as the puddle holds them.

A few things that help:

1. Go at the same time each week. Friday morning, or Sunday after lunch. The rhythm matters more than the length.
2. Walk slowly. Twenty minutes to go a few hundred metres is fine.
3. Bring one thing home. A leaf, a stone, a feather. It goes on the nature table.
4. Draw it the next day. A few minutes with block crayons in the main lesson book, from memory first, then looking.
5. Name one new thing. One bird, one tree, one wildflower a week. By the end of the school year that's around forty.

If you have a garden, or even a few pots on a balcony, planting something in spring and watching it through the summer does much of the same work. Beans are a good choice for a 7-year-old. They come up fast, climb where you can see them and give you something to pick.

On rainy weeks, don't skip the walk. Put on boots and go anyway. Rain brings out the snails and worms, fills the puddles and changes the smell of the path. Some of the best nature stories start on a wet Tuesday.

The nature table in grade 2

The nature table often starts in kindergarten, but it doesn't have to stop there. In grade 2, your child can take more of it on. They choose what goes on it after each walk, change the cloth when the season turns, and notice when something needs to go back outside.

It also ties nature study to the festival year. A lantern for Martinmas, a seed tray at Easter, the first apples for Michaelmas. The Waldorf festivals give the year its markers, and the nature table is where your child sees them arrive at home.

How nature study fits the rest of grade 2

Nature study sits alongside the fables, saints' stories, place value and times tables of the grade 2 year. The grade 2 curriculum guide sets out the whole year. The main lesson book work from walks, drawings, a poem and a copied verse also gives your child a gentle reason to write. If you're choosing a program, the best Waldorf homeschool curriculum for grade 2 compares the options.

A way to begin

Pick your path this week. Walk it with your child on the same day each week, and bring one thing home each time. On the first evening, tell a short story about something you both saw: the crow on the fence, the puddle that froze. The next morning, ask your child to tell it back and draw it. That's a whole grade 2 nature study, and it can run all year.