From age nine and a half to eleven and a half, the children are more awake to the
world, and they are especially waking up to an increasingly complex feeling life.
Therefore, in addition to an emphasis on movement, as was the case in teaching
students grades one through three, Rose Rock educators begin to emphasize the
feeling life and the interrelationship between people, things, and phenomena.
Grade 4
In fourth grade, students can be observed revealing characteristics that will not again
appear until adolescence. Distinct personality traits appear, and the children are often
rowdy. This new psychology, which is the logical next step following the “arriving upon
the Earth” in third grade, is met with a robust curriculum. The new characteristics of
personality are met through entering into the unruly world of the Norse gods, or
pantheons of gods from other traditions. Destructive tendencies are even met in the mathematics curriculum, during which numbers are broken into fractions, and re-
assembled again.
Major curriculum topics: Norse myths, fractions, animal studies, local geography,
language arts
Grade 5
Fifth graders are at the heart of childhood. There is a harmony in the proportions of the
child’s body and movements. This is a central moment of early childhood that occurs
just before turbulent changes appear at age twelve. Ancient Greece is the perfect topic
of emphasis at this age, with its idealization of harmony and beauty found throughout
that culture.
Major curriculum topics: ancient cultures, North American geography, plant studies,
decimal fractions, language arts, freehand geometry