Waldorf Enrichment Classes
Mon-Thurs
9:45am-4pm
Muya homeschool enrichment classes are offered in outdoor settings where children observe the changing of the seasons and connect with All Our Relations. Our classes are organized according to principles of forest school education and the traditional Waldorf school curriculum presented by Rudolf Steiner and developed in the United States. Every day, our children have opportunity to run, climb, explore, and play within the natural world, building vital connections to the land, plants, animals, and human communities that surround them.
Children typically attend classes on Monday-Tuesday or Wednesday-Thursday to take advantage of the Waldorf 2-day rhythm, in which children are presented with a story, sleep on it, and explore the concept further the following day. However, families can choose to come whichever days that suit their schedule.
Typically Main Lesson blocks (units) alternate between a focus on either ELA or mathematics skills.Our prospective grades schedule for 2022-2023 is offered below:
Arts Intensives and Artisan Days
Mon-Thurs
10am-4pm
A daily arts class is offered 3-4pm through our community partners at Modern Folk Art Studios, Be Me Theatrics, and others in the subjects of drawing, writing, nature journaling, theater, and dance.
Depending upon the block, we expect to cycle through classes in Japanese, music theory, herbalism, and clay sculpture as arts intensives.
Once a month we host a project-based Artisan Day 10am-4pm that is open to visitors who wish to come create something special with us and meet members of our community. You can select and RSVP for upcoming Artisan Days on our Special Events page. Participation is $55 per child.
Naturalist Fridays
Friday
10am-2pm
A free community hike day is organized for members of Muya community enrolled in our 2-day program, usually three Fridays a month, 10am-2pm. We explore area parks' flora, fauna, and geology with our field guides in hand.
Children enrolled in our 1-day program and those interested in visiting can attend Naturalist Fridays, too! Participation is $55 per child. You can sign up to join us by contacting us by email.
2022-2023 Main Lesson Block Plan
At Muya we study a single subject each month, living in that world together. While we cannot cover all the humanities blocks traditionally offered in Waldorf schools each year, we do cover a different range of grades' blocks annually so that everyone will access formative mythologies and histories of the world over the course of 3-4 years.
Here are the lands we are visiting this year:
Stories of the Saints
September
Grades 1-2: Phonics, spelling patterns
Grades 3-5: Parts of speech, punctuation, summarization
Grades 6-7: Expository writing, paragraph form, sentence structure
América: Aztec, Inca, and Quechua Mythologies
October
Grades 1-2: The 4 operations
Grades 3-5: The 4 operations with fractions (common denominators)
Grades 6-7: Mixed fractions, unit conversions, negative square roots
Norse Mythology
Nov-Dec
Grades 1-2: Vowel families, consonant blends, cursive letters from running forms
Grades 3-5: Verb tense, story re-telling, differentiating between one's own and another's opinion
Grades 6-7: Transitive, intransitive, and infinitive verb forms; modal verbs; reading archaic language in verse
Rome
January
Grades 1-2: Roman numerals, place value, number line
Grades 3-5: Place value to one million, number line, telling time, history of the calendar
Grades 6-7: Decimals, percentage, comparative calendars (Chinese, Hindu, Julian), time lines
Geology
February
Grades 1-2: Local geological formations and their minerals, math gnomes revisited
Grades 3-5: Local formations, rock cycles, California mining history, mapping
Grades 6-7: Local formations, mineral composition, crystal formation, geometry
Botany and Anatomy
March
Grades 1-2: Local plant identification, herbalism, experiencing leaf adaptations
Grades 3-5: Nature journaling, modes of plant reproduction, herbalism, man and animal
Grades 6-7: Nature journaling, modes of plant and animal reproduction, herbalism, mammalian body systems, theories of disease
Medieval History
(Class Play)
April
Grades 1-2: Spelling patterns, verse recitation, summarization
Grades 3-5: Recitation, synonyms, antonyms, comparatives, sentence structure
Grades 6-7: Recitation, the writing process, comparative essay-writing
California History
May
Grades 1-2: Local geography, place value, 4 operations to 2-digit numbers
Grades 3-5: Mapping, measurement, Fraction equivalency (factoring, simplifying, mixed numbers), working with mixed denominators
Grades 6-7: Colonialism in mapping, presenting data in tables and charts, sea navigation and nautical terms, conversions between metric and imperial systems
Medieval Games and Review
June
Review of the year's work from May to September! Recollections, insights, conclusions.
"It is written in all your souls that we must create something new out of the conditions that we experience [...] that what we need above all to achieve other conditions is a different way of preparing human beings for a place in the world, through upbringing and education."
-Rudolf Steiner, "A Lecture for Prospective Parents of the Waldorf School"
