Welcome to the Essential Guide for teaching the Trickster Tales block.
Whether you are new to Waldorf education or deep into Grade 2, this guide gives you the philosophy, goals, and daily rhythm you need to bring classic trickster folktales from around the world into your homeschool alongside continued grammar, phonics, and writing.
The Philosophy: Why Tricksters?
After a block of inspiring lives and a block of noble heroes, your child meets something different: the trickster. Anansi the spider from West Africa, Turtle from many traditions, Br’er Rabbit, Coyote from the Americas. These are not heroes. They are clever, selfish, funny, and they often get caught in the end.
In the Waldorf approach, the trickster is not a moral cautionary tale. The trickster is a truthful picture of a real part of being human: the part that is clever, the part that sometimes takes more than its share, the part that laughs at its own schemes. An eight year old already feels these impulses. The trickster meets them where they are, honestly, and often very funny.
The stories do not need a clear moral ending. Anansi tricks the jungle animals and gets tricked in return. Turtle gets his dinner eaten and finds a way to eat Anansi’s. The child laughs, thinks, and carries the story with them. Alongside, they continue building the literacy skills begun in earlier blocks: the noun, the verb, proper versus common nouns, topic sentences, and a quirky new phonics rule called Trickster X (because the letter X is itself a trickster, making different sounds depending on where it sits in a word).
The Curriculum: What You Will Teach
This block is designed to take 15 instructional days. Trickster tales from different cultures are spread across the block, each one taking 2 to 3 days to hear, draft, and publish.
Tricksters Your Child Will Meet:
Anansi the Spider and the Moss-Covered Rock (West Africa).
Anansi and the Turtle.
And further trickster tales from folktale traditions around the world.
The Language Progression:
Trickster X: the letter X makes different sounds depending on whether it sits at the start (xylophone), middle (exit), or end (fox) of a word.
Nouns and Verbs: identifying and using them in writing.
Proper and Common Nouns: capitalising names of people and places.
Topic Sentences: continuing to write strong opening lines that draw a reader in.
Drafting and Publishing: continuing the rhythm of writing in the drafting book and publishing into the Main Lesson book.
Your Learning Intentions:
By the end of the 15 days, your child should be able to:
Listen to a trickster tale and retell the main events in their own words.
Identify nouns and verbs in a sentence.
Distinguish proper from common nouns, and apply capitals correctly.
Read words containing X and predict which sound it will make.
Write a half-page summary of a story with a strong topic sentence.
Record their writing and drawings neatly in the Main Lesson book.
Practical Guidance: How to Set Up Your Space
A quiet place to read, a comfortable writing table, and a sense of humour are all you really need.
Materials Needed:
Main Lesson Book: For publishing and drawings.
Lined Drafting Book: For first drafts and skills practice.
Block and Stick Crayons: High-quality beeswax crayons (such as Stockmar).
Graphite Pencil: Chunky or triangular grip.
Three Coloured Pencils or Crayons: For colour-coding the sounds of X on Day 1.
Scrap Paper or a Small Blackboard: For modelling and spelling.
💡 Teacher Tip: Let the Trickster Be Admirable and Flawed
The temptation at the end of a trickster tale is to ask, “So, was Anansi good or bad?” Resist it. Anansi is both, and that is the whole point. Your child already feels the cleverness, the small selfishness, the satisfaction of a scheme well-executed. Tricksters let them meet these feelings inside a story, without being told that any of them are wrong. Laugh with your child when the trick works. Laugh harder when it backfires. The moral settles quietly into them over days, the way it did with Aesop’s fables. A spelled-out lesson would cheapen the story.
The Waldorf Method: How to Structure a Daily Lesson
Each story takes 2 to 3 days, with a consistent three-part rhythm inside each cycle: hear, draft, publish. Phonics and grammar concepts are layered alongside. Here is how it looks on Day 1: Trickster X and Anansi.
Step 1: Introduce the Block
Ask your child what a trickster might be. Do they know any tricksters from stories? Are tricksters good or bad? Do we like them? Let them brainstorm without corrections.
Step 2: New Learning (Trickster X)
Introduce the phonics rule with a short imaginative hook: “X is a bit of a trickster, like a fox, who uses different voices depending on where it sits in a word.”
At the beginning of a word: /z/ (xylophone).
In the middle of a word: /ks/ (exit) or /gz/ (exam).
At the end of a word: /ks/ (fox).
Display a short poem full of X words and play “eagle eye”: find every X and notice the sound it makes.
Step 3: Bookwork
Example Bookwork Instructions:
Open a new Main Lesson book. Leave the first page for a title page (your child can begin drawing a spider and a turtle with the words Trickster Tales below).
On the next page, draw a block-crayon border and write the heading Trickster X.
Copy the rule: Trickster X has different ways of saying it depending on where it is in a word.
Using three different colours, circle each X in the poem according to its position (start, middle, end).
Divide the page into three columns: X at the start, X in the middle, X at the end. Copy each word into the correct column.
Step 4: The Story
Put the books away. Read the story of Anansi and the Moss-Covered Rock aloud. Anansi finds a magic rock that puts anyone who describes it to sleep. He uses it to trick Lion, Elephant, Zebra, and many more, stealing all their food. But Little Bush Deer sees what is happening, and the next day she tricks him back. When Anansi wakes up alone with his stash gone, he learns that even the cleverest trickster can be caught.
End the lesson here. Tomorrow your child will recall the story, learn what a topic sentence is, and begin drafting their own summary of Anansi’s adventure. Over the following days, they will publish that summary and meet the next trickster.
Build It Yourself vs. The Guided Curriculum
You now have the method and the first day of teaching Trickster Tales at home. If you have the time and creative energy, you can plan the 15-day progression, source and retell trickster folktales from a range of cultures, sequence the grammar and phonics alongside, and prepare the drafting and publishing rhythm.
For many homeschooling families, though, three weeks of respectful, age-appropriate trickster retellings and a coherent grammar sequence is more than a busy week allows. If you would rather spend your mornings laughing with your child than researching late at night, the complete Trickster Tales block is ready for you.
What’s Inside the Complete Block?
When you unlock the full block, every day is prepared for you. You instantly receive:
A Full Cycle of Trickster Tales: Word-for-word retellings of Anansi and other tricksters from around the world, paced for 7 to 8 year olds.
A Complete Grammar and Phonics Sequence: Trickster X, nouns, verbs, proper and common nouns, and more, each introduced alongside the story of the day.
Step-by-Step Daily Lesson Plans: Exactly what to say, teach, and draw on each of the 15 days.
Main Lesson Book Artwork: Reference drawings for Anansi, the moss-covered rock, and the other tricksters.
Drafting and Publishing Framework: Topic-sentence prompts and the repeating rhythm that builds writing stamina.
Daily Skills Practice: Handwriting, phonics, time writing, and mental arithmetic alongside the main lesson.
Teacher Tips Throughout: So you know when to laugh, when to pause, and when to let the trickster speak for himself.
Everything is carefully structured to give you the confidence of an experienced Waldorf teacher, right from the first trick.