In Waldorf Education, we strive to bring our lessons out of stories and other imaginative sources. In these thirty-six lessons we will derive math activities and written work from the stories that are presented in the Second Grade Storytelling Course. Unlike the Language Arts Course, the Math Course does not utilize the artwork as much. Instead this course will demonstrate over and over the ways that we can bring mathematical activities for the students to practice working with math patterns in ways that are connected to the stories they have heard and imagined. That connection of the activities and the written work to something they have lived into gives the lessons more meaning and more enjoyability. 

The ability to count forward and backward by 6's, 7's, 8's, 9's, and 12's is important to master by the end of second grade. Likewise, it is important that the year-end second grader has memorized the 1's, 2's, 3's, 4's, 5's, 10's, and 11's multiplication tables up to the first twelve multiples and that they can provide those multiples in random order when asked. Moreover, it is important to practice these as division tables as well. For example the year-end second grader should be equally comfortable saying from memory that 45 divided by 5 is 9 as they are saying from memory that 5 times 9 is 45.  

With these in place, as well as the additional memorization of the 6's, 7's, 8's, 9's, and 12's multiplication tables by the end of third grade, the student will be in the optimal position to understand the fractional math of fourth grade and beyond, including decimals, percentages, and ratios that will come in fifth and sixth grades.  

Fractions are expressed and calculated so differently from the previous math work that, without these tables being memorized, the difficulty of learning the new fraction processes and expressions is compounded by the lack of having the factors and multiples available as needed for smooth and fluent calculations.  

So, along with these lessons, you will receive math tips and tricks specific to second grade so that you will have things to help with the practice of skills outside of main lessons.