The Curriculum of the Steiner School - Class 5

Notes and Lesson Plans

Friendly Letters
updated November 7, 2024


Recorded here is my own personal collection of articles, resources, favorite links, teaching ideas, and lesson plans. It encompasses many years, from the very beginning of my experience studying and learning about Waldorf to the present time. People from all around the world visit my site and recommend it to others. Welcome!

This site records my journey. I hope my honesty is encouraging and helps break down some barriers that may prevent people from trying Waldorf methods. Because this is an ongoing site documenting my curriculum planning and ideas, some materials are more Waldorf-y than others. Please feel free to take what you like and leave the rest.

This page has helpful links and LOADS of free resources to help you plan your fifth grade year. Enjoy!



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Friendly Letters
for Class 5



Rationale
As with every other topic, Waldorf takes its time with composition skills.

Although you are constantly doing the writing process every single day as you work on the main lesson books (double-spaced rough draft on loose paper, editing meeting with an adult, final version in MLB), there are other kinds of writing besides just explanatory!

Personal Narratives are commonly done in 4th Grade. Steiner never mentioned Friendly Letters but I like to put them in 5th Grade. Having pen pals is handy when you are doing U.S. Geography. Steiner was VERY big on writing Business Letters in 6th Grade. In 7th Grade, children get into Creative Writing (this is the block called Wish, Wonder, and Surprise) and in 8th Grade they tackle Persuasive Writing, Essay Writing, and Speeches.

Obviously, it is not hard to explain the idea of letter writing to your child, so no textbook is needed!

Writing a Friendly Letter (PDF)
print pages 6 & 7


This is a good chance to make sure your child has memorized your complete mailing address, as well as the two letter postal abbreviations of all 50 U.S. States (or your home country).

Postal Abbreviations - U.S. States & Territories (PDF)


Instead of as a main lesson, if you're setting your child up with a pen pal, it makes sense to do this throughout the course of 5th grade. However, it would be nice to make a MLB or even a scrapbook where you collect all of the letters you receive from different parts of the country!

Or, review 4th grade Personal Narratives with a spin by writing a picture book that is epistolary.... where the story completely consists of letters written back and forth... as in the case of these books below.

You can also do an entire block on the history of the stamp, the postal system, and post offices around the world. Homing pigeons? Telegrams? The Pony Express? The Railway Mail Service?

Start a stamp collection!

If you do choose to develop this topic into a main lesson, perhaps combine it with the Decimal Fractions block! You can look at old stamps which weren't "Forever" and calculate how many stamps would be needed to mail a first class letter today. I have stamps with amounts on them (27, 33, 37, and 44 cents) as well as a book of Tiffany stained glass 1 cent stamps. You can explain how small denomination stamps were added to large ones to make up the new cost of mailing a letter, and that large parcels used to come slathered with stamps instead of a barcode label.

If you find a vintage U.S. post card from long enough ago, it will say on the back "place one cent stamp here."

Postage isn't included in the Third Grade Maths of Practical Life, so it would be fun to do it now! And because it has to do with money, it's perfect as part of the Decimal Fractions block or for practice any time throughout this school year.


Other ideas:


Booklist

For fun, here is a list of stories that I know of which are written completely as a series of letters. Let me know if you find others!



Stringbean's Trip to the Shining Sea

by Vera B. Williams and Jennifer Williams
little boy writes a series of postcards home on a road trip from Kansas to see the Pacific Ocean



Thank You, Santa

by Margaret Wild
little girl from Australia becomes pen pals with Santa and knits things for the littlest reindeer



The Gardener

by Sarah Stewart
little girl goes to the city to stay with an unknown relative during the Depression, writes upbeat letters home about her attempts to garden in the grimy city and to make her grumpy uncle smile



The Journey

by Sarah Stewart
an Amish girl writes in her diary each day about her experiences visiting the city for the first time



The Quiet Place

by Sarah Stewart
little girl moves from Mexico to the U.S. and slowly adjusts to her home, nice for teaching about the Closing as you must watch carefully to see when this changes, will inspire you to build a box fort!



A Small Dog's Big Life: Around the World with Owney

by Irene Kelly
fictional mail but a true event, the extensive travels of Owney, "Mascot of the Railway Mail Service"



The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman

by Darcy Pattison
life-size wooden man hitchhikes from SC to CA as a gift from a loving uncle to his favorite niece (with specific city names like Rough and Ready, CA it is nice for inspiring a look at road maps)



Love, Mouserella

by David Ezra Stein
one very long very sweet letter (and a ketchup packet) from a little girl mouse to her grandma



Shooting at the Stars: The Christmas Truce of 1914

by John Hendrix
this touching true story is excellent but would be better in Sixth Grade Philosophy ("Compassion")



The Mysterious Collection of Dr. David Harleyson

by Jean Cassels
not limited to letters, this puzzle-to-be-solved also includes restaurant receipts, train tickets, newspaper articles, play programmes, journal entries, business cards, telegrams, and more!


There's a great list of even more epistolary-themed picture books about pen pals and postmen in this Epistolary Picture Books That Will Make Your Child Want to Be a Pen Pal post by Gretchen Louise.


Of course, in the chapter book category we have


For adults only:


    Ella Minnow Pea: A Progressively Lipogrammatic Epistolary Fable

    by Mark Dunn

    A hilarious epistolary book about the residents of a fictional island, Nollop, where one letter at a time is banned from the alphabet due to weakening glue on the town's sign... and as each letter falls off the sign and is subsequently removed from all use, Mark Dunn himself no longer uses it (thus the "progressively lipogrammatic" part of the title).


~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Notes on doing Friendly Letters as a weekly special subject in 2024-2025:

Thu Sep 12 - explain epistolary picture books; read The Gardener by Sarah Stewart; look at the parts of a friendly letter; draft body of first letter (to parents, explaining the weekly letter-writing project and requesting addresses and names of people that their child may write to); print letter and have children add date, greeting, signature; explain how to address an envelope; have children write their home address to the best of their ability (I added the parts they didn't yet know); put the letters in the mailbox

it was fun to see how excited they were to put up the flag, and then they sat on the sofa with their noses pressed to the glass, watching eagerly for the mail carrier! some of them ran out to say hi to her


Thu Sep 19 - read A Small Dog's Big Life: Around the World with Owney by Irene Kelly; explain that he was taxidermied and placed in the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington D.C.; wonder, are letters still carried by train today? write letters to friends & family


Thu Sep 26 - read The Journey by Sarah Stewart (display Amish Home by Raymond Bial for children who want to read more); discuss how the cost of mailing a letter has changed over time (show vintage postcard that states a 1 cent stamp is needed); explain that stamps used to come preprinted with values and as the cost of mailing a letter changed people used small denomination stamps to make up the difference; explain Forever stamps, and why some people stocked up on them when the price was low; look at a package covered with stamps of different denominations; open a package of donated stamps (wonderful assortment... there was even a stamp there that used glue and was not a sticker!)

have children write letters to friends & family and mail them using a combination of stamps (no Forever stamps allowed! they had to find a combination of stamps that equaled or just barely exceeded $0.73)


Thu Oct 3 - read Thank You, Santa by Margaret Wild (which takes place in Australia), talk about mailing letters internationally, look at my collection of vintage envelopes with foreign stamps from all around the world (donated by the international admissions office at SIU), write letters to friends & family

use Raven Story stamps as part of our main lesson block


Thu Oct 10 - read Love, Mouserella by David Ezra Stein, write letters to friends & family


Thu Oct 17 - watch How It's Made - Postage Stamps, write letters to friends & family

use Marc Chagall notecards as part of our artist study


Thu Oct 24 - explain voting by mail (read FAQs), write letters to friends & family

earlier this week the children got to design their own cards using blank watercolor cards, old books & magazines for collage, watercolor pencils & paints, and Gelatos (Original Gift Set and Dolce II Gift Set)


Thu Oct 31 - read The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman by Darcy Pattison, look at US map and list of postal abbreviations for each state (we also played the Election Night! board game later in the day)

write letters to friends & family that include a joke (here's my favorite list) with the answer written in invisible ink! (use Pilot FriXion erasable pens, erase the thermo-sensitive ink with the included eraser, and tell the recipient to place the letter in the freezer for 20 minutes to reveal the answer to the joke)


Thu Nov 7 - read University of Washington Magazine article about Richard Kehl ("The Innocent Eye") and look at mail art examples in How to Make a Zero Backwards: An Activity Book for the Imagination. Is this allowed today? We are excited to schedule a trip to the Post Office and see the machinery!

write letters to friends and family



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