As a New Hampshire Public Chartered School, Northeast Woodland’s curriculum is required to meet all New Hampshire Common Core Standards. We believe that our rich and comprehensive curriculum goes well beyond these standards. Our school is influenced by the core principles of Public Waldorf Education, providing an integrated and rigorous arts and outdoor-infused curriculum designed to meet each child exactly where they are developmentally. This curriculum is delivered with the intention of awakening within each child an interest in, and a love for, the world around them.
Classroom lessons are enhanced through outdoor education including principles of ecology and natural sciences along with gardening and outdoor activities. To support our core belief in development and support of a strong community, Northeast Woodland incorporates multiple seasonal festivals throughout the course of each year to bring families, children and the greater community together in celebration of the rhythms of nature. These festivals serve to connect our children and families to each other’s cultures and to an awareness of the natural world around us. In third through eighth grades, students are able to deepen their natural experience through exciting excursions into wilderness areas and hands-on farm stays. It is important to us that children are able to experience firsthand the real world application of their academic studies; it is on these trips where the abstract concepts of subjects like botany, geology, and astronomy become relevant in daily life, and where students practice the vital community-building skills of cooperation, personal responsibility, and environmental stewardship.
Northeast Woodland fosters a community within each classroom built on respect, cooperation, and other social values that develop the confidence of each student to achieve academic growth. Our curriculum differs slightly from traditional public schools in that the timing of when and how certain academic concepts are introduce is based on the developmental stage of the child - an approach with more than 100 years of success in Waldorf schools across the globe. Despite these differences in the delivery of our curriculum, you can rest assured that our approach complies with NH State Academic Standards and testing requirements, and with health and safety regulation and educational laws applicable to NH Public Chartered Schools.
Early Childhood (Pre-K)
Our Pre-K curriculum is informed by the practices of Waldorf Early Childhood Education. It is focused on developing the physical body, children’s social skills, self-regulation, and their capacity for focusing their attention. Children benefit from the predictable daily rhythm, healthy snack foods, ample time for play, and plenty of time outdoors discovering their world, accompanied by skilled and loving educators. Teachers bring nature stories, as well as simple fairy and folk tales. Songs are woven into activity throughout the day.
Kindergarten
Waldorf-Inspired Public School Kindergarten offers a joyful, nurturing setting that inspires the imagination through creative play, storytelling, puppetry, music, movement, and art.
First Grade
First Grade is a bridge between kindergarten and the grades. The child is now ready to begin to work imaginatively in new, more focused and explicit ways with the mind.
Second Grade
In second grade children, an awareness of opposites begins to unfold. If a circle of children with everyone facing the center is the metaphorical picture of togetherness in a healthy first grade, the image of the second grade is the circle with children becoming increasingly aware of what goes on around them.
Third Grade
As the children in the third grade enter their ninth year, they start to see the world differently. No longer are they content to be a part of life without doubts and questions.
Fourth Grade
The fourth grade curriculum addresses a child in possession of greater certainty and confidence. At this grade level, the child is more assured of his/her own place in the world and is able to assert more individual needs and wants. The curriculum correspondingly evolves away from the unified approach of early childhood into the teaching of more specific subjects
Fifth Grade
The fifth grader has grown more accustomed to being an individual; yet, like the third grader, s/he is about to leave another phase of childhood behind and cross the threshold into adolescence. The curriculum not only continues to build on and integrate established foundations, but introduces new elements to prepare the child for the next step forward.
Sixth Grade
The children entering the twelfth year in the sixth grade begin to experience an important change in their physical bodies. On the inner level the child is entering strongly into a conscious awareness of the skeletal system. The child is more aware of gravity and weight; growth in the skeletal and muscular systems challenge the student’s capacities for balance and coordination. They are seeking a conscious recovery of order and control over themselves.
Seventh Grade
The seventh grade can be a tremendously challenging and rewarding year for the children. The children are enthusiastic to express themselves and to assert their independence more strongly. Self-awareness and social relationships become a primary focus.
Eighth Grade
Like Janus, the Roman god of doorways, the eighth grader is looking in two directions simultaneously. On the one hand, the eighth grade is the culmination of the student’s experience. It is a time of reflection, of summing up, and all the bittersweet feelings associated with an ending. At the same time, the eighth grader’s gaze is turned towards the future and a new beginning. The eighth grade curriculum must address both of these impulses. The focus of the former is concentrated in the daily practice classes, where review and consolidation of practical skills and capacities are emphasized. In addition, the children’s capacity for logical thinking and independent judgment fully awakens at this time. The authority of the class teacher gives way to the individual student's search for truth.
*Much of the grade specific curriculum text is adapted from the websites of member schools of the Alliance for Public Waldorf education.