Curriculum Overview
	The curriculum developed for Waldorf schools is unique and comprehensive, and designed to meet the specific developmental milestones of children at each age and grade. Teachers at HWS are dedicated to creating an inner enthusiasm for learning within each child, which will help lead the student to find his or her own capacities for lifelong learning. In our Early Childhood, Grades, and High School Departments, we work with the particular needs of each stage of childhood. In the Early Childhood, the emphasis is on imitation, and through active doing, the young child is learning about the great world around him or her. In the Lower School, the emphasis is on learning through the imagination. The High School focuses on the students' developing capacities of discernment, judgment, and recognition of all that is true in the world. The foundations for learning are established in early childhood. Before they enter the grades, children learn primarily through imitation and play, and the Early Childhood program provides a home-like environment where the teachers serve as worthy role models, guiding the children through their daily work (preparing food and cleaning up, sewing, digging in the garden) and play. The foundation of literacy is play and speech, and imaginative play, stories, songs, verses, and games fill the day. Reverence and wonder for the world around them fill the young child, and help create an eagerness for more formal learning, which begins in grade one. The students in the grade school, grades one through eight, are guided by their class teacher who brings a daily two-hour morning lesson of the academic subjects including language arts, math, social studies, history, geography, and the sciences. The students' day is rounded out with subject lessons taught by special subjects teachers. These lessons include Japanese, Spanish, music, games and P.E., hula, gardening, painting, drawing, sculpture, knitting, sewing, wood working. The Honolulu Waldorf School high school is dedicated to helping students develop their full potential as scholars, artists, athletes, and community members. The course of study includes a humanities curriculum that integrates science, history, literature, and knowledge of world cultures.