Primary School

From Grade 1 through Grade 6, your child enjoys an educational journey filled with art, imagination and a sense of awe for the world. Their sheltered experience of kindergarten transitions into a more self-aware classroom experience. We equip them with fundamental skills that prepare them for a lifetime of growth, purpose and learning.

Primary School students are between the ages of 6 and 12 years. At every stage of development, they meet an age-appropriate curriculum designed to encourage creativity and free thinking. They build the foundations of language that help them express themselves authentically from a very young age. With every game, lesson, event and exploration, we offer them an avenue to interact meaningfully with the world.

Primary School at Tridha is a gateway into a world where your child can do whatever they set their minds to.

Art. Activity. Imagination

Our Primary School offers an environment where students can be active learners. Students inculcate the capacity to think, the sensitivity to feel and the courage to do through the artistic presentation of lessons. The storytelling and puppetry of the Pre-primary Years make way for mythology, folktales, fables and legends. Activities like knitting, crocheting and playing the recorder develop students’ motor skills. Eurythmy helps them orient themselves in space while interacting with others and expressing themselves. Students also learn language, math, science, music, visual arts and physical education.

In our Primary School, children aged six to twelve are inspired by the imaginative and artistic presentation of lessons which fires their enthusiasm. Thinking, feeling and activity are involved in the learning process, and the children develop a love of learning and a joy in giving their best.

Grade 1

Developmental Stage

Grade 1 marks a clear and important transition from the nurturing, communal experience of kindergarten into an awakening, increasingly self-aware, classroom experience. Students are six-seven years of age.

Curriculum

Writing of letters and reading are introduced as an evolutionary process. Letters and the sounds they make are a gift of nature and this is discovered through stories and drawings of the images from the story. Through imaginative and tactile means, students are introduced to the four processes in math. Fairy tales and nature stories awaken the child's interest in the world. Choral recitation and flute-playing are essential to the first-grade experience; students begin handwork and Indian languages – Hindi & Marathi. Grade one, as part of their development, visit the National Park to experience the rhythm of the seasons observed through the senses.

Grade 2

Developmental Stage

The grade 2 child has a sense that there is more to life than early childhood’s innocent understanding that “the world and I are one,” and students possess a dawning awareness of both human greatness and fallibility. Children are turning seven-eight years of age.

Curriculum

They meet a language curriculum rich in contrast between the lives of the saints and fables. Basic arithmetic operations are expanded and multiplication facts are learned through rhythm and movement. The children's artistic work includes painting, drawing, and modelling.

The teacher stays with the class from the first to the third grade, and continues with them to the sixth grade whenever possible. This continuity of class and teacher allows for a learning community with a strong foundation.

Grade 3

Developmental Stage

Physical growth accelerates during this period as also the child is growing into a new awareness of self. The child's relation to the world changes; study now has a more realistic, practical character. Significant psychological, cognitive and physiological changes touch the increasingly self-aware, grade 3 child. The student’s newfound disconnection from his or her surroundings can be at once disconcerting and excitingly self- empowering. Students are eight-nine years of age.

Curriculum

Lessons include learning how different walks of life mutually support one another, as on a farm where students concretely experience working with animals and growing crops and vegetables. As part of their Farming block, they make 3 trips to Terra, Tridha's off-site campus, where from sowing to reaping and later consuming the food they have grown, is all done by the students. Third-graders study shelter and house-building. All teaching is done through the teacher's spoken word and the child's direct experience. Math becomes practical: measuring, cooking, telling time, and using money. Stories that may parallel the children's own inner journeys, are heard, written, and illustrated. Students continue to play the diatonic flute or recorder.

Grade 4

Developmental Stage

Each student begins to explore emerging personal interests, gifts, talents and challenges. The Grade 4 student’s individuality is celebrated along with the rich diversity of the class community. Students are nine-ten years of age.

Curriculum

Constantly in motion and seeking boundaries, the fourth-grader is met with a rich curriculum including a study of one's physical place on the earth, through local history and geography; the human relationship to the animal world, through zoology; and the work of good and evil, through Norse mythology and stories from Mahabharat. They take a critical step forward in math-the breaking of the whole, fractions, laying a foundation for higher math and abstract thinking skills. In music, the child's strengthening individuality allows each to hold his or her own in part-singing canons and rounds. Brain hemisphere integration is enhanced and listening skills honed when the entire class comes together in singing and playing the recorder in rounds. The students visit all the important sites in Mumbai as part of their Home Surrounding block.

Grade 5

Developmental stage

Cognitively, grade 5 students approach both their studies and indeed life itself, in an increasingly realistic and reasoning manner. Physically, they attain a degree of balance, ease and grace supported by a rich, sports curriculum. Students are ten-eleven years of age.

Curriculum

To meet students’ emerging consciousness, the curriculum begins to transition from a focus on mythology to one of recorded history, biography and geography. Tales from Ancient India, Persia and Greece enliven the content. Inquiry into the geography of India and botany brings the child into recognition of change and metamorphosis. The beauty of Geometry is explored within the Mathematics curriculum through free-hand rhythmic drawings. Decimal and fractions continue their exploration of part and whole. Students begin woodwork which grows from their study of trees in botany. Students participate in the Ancient Greek Olympics, alongside students from other Steiner schools in India.

Grade 6

Developmental Stage

Sixth graders enter a time when the inner light of reason and the outer world of sense perceptions become central to their experience. Grade 6 marks the dawn of adolescence, a time when intellectual consciousness takes root and the student’s feeling perception advances into the world of ideas. Students are now encouraged to think independently as their capacities for critical thinking and objective judgement are cultivated. Students are turning eleven-twelve years of age.

Curriculum

This is mirrored in the study of history from the Vedic period to ancient Rome through the Middle Ages; deepened and developed through business math and geometry; and integrated into their being through studies in physics and mineralogy. Their skills in reading, writing, spelling, composition, and grammar are woven holistically throughout the curriculum. Our grade 6 students also learn mineralogy and visit mines and Mineral museums to learn about the different stones. They themselves mine and bring back many precious pieces of stones.

Main Lesson

We begin each day in Primary School and High School with a dynamic two-hour session, called the Main Lesson. For three to four weeks, students focus on a single subject, exploring it through the lenses of the arts, sciences and humanities.

For instance, in the farming block, students learn experientially by planting rice and vegetables, harvesting their crops, processing them at local mills, and then cooking and consuming the fruits of their labour. In the spirit of active learning, students create their own artistic records of their learnings.

The class teacher

Your child’s teachers at Tridha embody kindness, trust and reverence. We emphasise strong bonds between teacher and students, who thrive given a compassionate authority figure and a sense of continuity and trust. This is why teachers remain with the same class for at least three years. When possible, we try to extend that period to six years. This meaningful relationship, sustained over many years, gives students the sense of security they need to explore new ideas and activities.