Specialty Classes: Beyond the Main Lesson
Not extras. Essentials. Every WSA student, in every grade, receives these subjects from dedicated specialty teachers, because a rich education is built from many kinds of mastery.
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Eurythmy
Movement set to music and the spoken word, unique to Waldorf schools, which develops concentration, spatial awareness, grace, and a feeling for others. Lessons echo what each grade is studying, so the body rehearses what the mind is learning.
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Gardening
Children grow food, care for the land and chickens, and bring the classroom's lessons to life, in a garden that is itself growing. From garden to outdoor kitchen, they follow their harvest all the way to the table, cooking and eating together what they've grown by hand.
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Handwork
Handwork starts with knitting and grows into sewing, felting, and embroidery, and every project carries hidden lessons: counting builds math sense, a dropped stitch teaches a child to try again, and a months-long project builds patience. By the end, a child has made something with their own two hands, and learned to finish what they start.
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Movement and Games
Coordination, confidence, and teamwork, built through games in the early grades, leading to the Grade 5 Olympiad and competitive sports in the middle grades.
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Music
Woven through every day, from pentatonic songs and the recorder in the early grades to strings and ensembles in middle school. Every child learns to play an instrument.
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Spanish
Taught from first grade through the culture itself: songs, games, stories, food, and dance.
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Strings & Orchestra
Beginning in the early grades, children learn violin, viola, and cello, and by Middle School, they are playing together in a full orchestra, note by note becoming a group that listens as closely as it plays.
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Woodworking
Woodworking begins with simple carving and grows into real joinery and furniture-making, and each project carries hidden lessons: measuring builds math sense, a split piece of wood teaches a child to try again, and a weeks-long project builds patience. By the end, a child has shaped something with their own two hands, built to last.
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Fire Arts
In 8th grade, students work at the forge and the furnace, learning blacksmithing and glass blowing, shaping raw metal and molten glass with heat, patience, and steady hands.
“Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write, and count. Childhood is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace which is right for each individual child.”
-Magda Gerber
Contact our Enrollment Director, Stacey Alston at enrollment@waldorfatlanta.org for more information about the Specialty Classes at The Waldorf School of Atlanta.