The Dark and Light of Third Grade, by Laura Young, Class of 2006, third grade teacher Santa Cruz Waldorf School


In third grade we spend a lot of time in the garden. We plant and harvest and build. This fall we built a sukkah using lots of bamboo, palm fronds and ginger as well as stalks of corn! It was really a bit of a beach hut - quite appropriate for where we live. We also used heavy stones and mortar to construct two raised beds in the garden. Now, as the rains begin, we can watch onions and lettuce grow instead of the large mud puddle that used to appear there each winter.

Perhaps it is because I am a new teacher, but I am observing that the third grade is a time of great polarities. We have darkness and we have light that weave and dance throughout our days and weeks. We measured Noah's Ark and were amazed at how large it really was - almost longer than our own campus! And we pondered how Noah's household huddled in the darkness together waiting for the rains to stop and the new world to be revealed. What would we take on the Ark? We all wanted our families to be with us on the Ark and then realized that our families must have been on the Ark otherwise we would not be here today!

We have heard about houses all over the world, and have found that houses can be built of many things but the things that are inside the houses are what make them homes. We have built caves out of clay - some are deep and dark and others have a skylight or window. Some are furnished with tables and chairs while others have dragons lurking outside. We have also started designing house projects at home that we will bring to school to share. It is very difficult to decide what sort of house to build and we often change our plans.

Third grade is a time of great forgetting and great doing. Some of us want to figure everything out about the adult world, while others still wait expectantly for the fairy folk to visit the houses that we create for them beneath the pine trees. It is a time of great growth both inwardly and on the outside - and I am learning more every day.