Grandparent's Day at Waldorf

So, Tim asks, “What did the Grandparents and Special Friends do while they were visiting today?”
“They just clapped whenever we did something,” says Sarah Rosenberger!
And we did,--we clapped and clapped! We clapped when they spelled! We clapped when they danced! And we even clapped when they did math!
The "Grandparents and Special Friends" were as spellbound as the students when their teacher, Karol White, told a story about the Dragon capturing Misty Minus. After the story, they took their bags of gemstones and grouped the stones according to the events of the story! The stones were grouped by tens in fancy bags so the students could show how many ‘gems’ the characters added or lost as the dragon carried them away. (Now, both of Sarah’s grandmas are teachers, so although we knew that the story was the ‘anticipatory set’ for the base ten math lesson, never had we seen students having so much fun learning subtraction!) We could not imagine a more dramatic math lesson! Even learning to count by 6’s (multiplication tables to the rest of the world) was done with circles and stars.

My favorite part of the entire morning, however, was when the class recited and signed the Rune of St. Patrick:
“At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place,By God’s almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.”

All the Grandparents and Special Friends enjoyed the enthusiasm and energy displayed by the students throughout the morning of this special day and were even more pleased to know that even though it was a special event for us, it was a typical school day for the students of Whidbey Island's Waldorf School.
So, yes, Sarah, we clapped, but know that even though we were applauding the students’ skills, knowledge and interactions, it is the entire team of teachers that we applaud!http://www.wiws.org/