Intro to Human & Animal 4th Grade Lesson Block

In the fourth grade of Waldorf education there is a lesson block that looks at the relationship between humans and the rest of animal creation. I had a hard time making sense of it.  Having been taught something very different in my grade school days (ideas that have not served well, by the way) it was a whole new perspective to explore, and the full-on Anthroposophic Steiner model didn't work for me. The more I got into it, tho', I could see the core parts were good, and they integrate well with our Eastern Christian understandings.

For further reading to understand better the Waldorf/Steiner mode of seeing this topic, the book  "The Human Being and the Animal World" by Charles Kovacs is especially good at delving into it. This blog post from Five of Us does a decent job of summarizing.
Of course, this is a natural opportunity to include the idea of humanity as the truest icons of the Divine, and that may lead into a further lesson about what icons are and how we use them. I particularly like this blog post on the topic.

This intro to the difference between human and animals helps support and make some important underlying foundational concepts that are needed in Eastern Christianity:
-- understand the nature of the flow of the spirit through our bodies will be useful later on when breathing & spiritual practice are taught
--  the beauty of the head, trunk, limbs metaphor is not lost later on when we learn about the purpose of humanity in God's creation
-- no judgement is placed on the rest of God's creation as lesser or lacking, just functionally and different in purpose
-- it also does not overemphasize intellect as tho' that is our most important tool; this sets up the importance of thinking and listening from the heart, and not accidentally giving the intellect and "monkey mind" too much significance

 

Here are the beginning pages to our block (the following pages are physical animal studies and observations).