Description

In Waldorf pedagogy, there are no formal geometry lessons until fifth grade. Before this, geometry is just incorporated into other lessons including form drawing. In fifth grade, the form drawing transitions into the first introduction to geometry in the Freehand Geometry Block. In addition to a whole array of other activities, children learn to draw beautiful geometric forms by hand.

As you may already know, in a Waldorf geometry lesson, a child experiences geometry as much as learning of the names of shapes. There is much that goes on that does not show up in the pictures. We walked the shapes, played with nesting shapes (Instructions in Quality of Numbers,) rotated cut-out shapes from paper to see the varying perspectives, and played with objects and shadows. The form drawings are practiced (on scrap paper for us) over and over before finally making into our Main Lesson Books.

This guide is a copy of my lesson planning pages and my main lesson pages that I constructed with my daughter during this block. They may not be enough by themselves for you to plan an entire geometry block. They will, I hope, help to guide you with the other resources that I’ll list, as well as my notes on the notebook pages, and a video from my planning process.

Also included are two checklists from my planning. One is our planned activities and forms per day. The other is a checklist of forms to go into our notebook.