Third Grade Stories Course
Course Overview
This course is designed to present stories and to help you become a better storyteller. Yes, it would be possible to simply show these stories to students, because they are presented in full as if being told to an audience. However, we hope that most will attempt to tell the stories because it is such a lively experience to share that process with children young and old.
The telling of and listening to the story is the foundation of almost all of the work done in Waldorf education. So, when we are able to tell stories in a way that supports the imagination process, we give the student the best possible foundation on which to build.
​
This is an important point to fully appreciate. We are attempting to support the child's imaginative process, the inner activity of building the images, the scenes, and events within a story. By contrast, we are NOT attempting to merely entertain the child. When we try to entertain, we make ourselves too much of the focal point. Instead, it is far more beneficial if our storytelling is in service to the student's inner, creative process. The student needs to be involved in two worlds. They have "one foot in this world" listening to the story we tell, and "another foot in their inner world" where they engage in the wonderful activity of imagination. If we take an undue amount of the child's focus, we actually distract their attention from what is far more important.
​
These 180 complete story presentations will demonstrate the skills and techniques gradually so that you can practice and improve with ease and confidence, while also supporting the student's imagination--and your own!
What you will learn:
-
How to read and prepare a story for presentation
-
How to "learn" a story rather than "memorize" it
-
​Simple gestures and how to use them to enliven stories, events, and characters
What you will receive:
-
180 Stories--complete story presentations.
-
​Additional resources, video and PDF articles, to deepen your understanding of the course and of Waldorf education
Who is this course for:
​This course is for homeschool parent-educators as well as teachers in a more traditional setting--or anyone anywhere in between. As it is titled, these are third grade stories.
Courses also purchased:
Course Content
This course includes 180 stories from the Old Testament. These stories span from the creation stories all the way through the story of Nehemiah. These stories are presented in third grade to meet the growing third grader's consciousness, their experience of living on the earth with a sense of having lost the "paradise" that life was in earlier years when they felt everything as a wholeness or a one-ness. As the third grader gradually develops, they sense that life is sometimes difficult, sometimes challenging, and sometimes wonderful, too! The third grader has a sense for what is true and good and beautiful. In other words, they have a sense for living a morally upright life, in alignment with goodness. Similarly, the people in these ancient stories go through many experiences and episodes, sometimes making mistakes, sometimes finding true alignment with "God", the source of life. These stories are presented as main lesson content. Thus, they provide material themes for all of the Third Grade Language Arts lessons and the Third Grade Math lessons.
