by Meeta Panicker and Liam Metzger | WSP Movement Teachers, Grades 1 – 8
Movement and games are integral to Waldorf education, harmonizing body, soul, and spirit by fostering physical coordination, spatial awareness, and self-expression. The curriculum supports physical health, sensory development, and a sense of wonder while developing fine and gross motor skills, teamwork, and fair play. Through age-appropriate activities, students enhance their creativity, coordination, communication, cooperation, confidence, and competitive spirit, supporting their physical and emotional development at each stage:
Early Childhood (0-7 years): Emphasis on imitation and movement to develop foundational motor skills and spatial awareness.
Middle Childhood (7-14 years): Focus on imagination, play, and structured games to enhance creativity, social skills, and cognitive development.
Adolescence (14-21 years): Incorporation of more structured physical education, sports, and eurythmy to support self-discipline, teamwork, and personal growth.
In first grade, we are focusing on the class as a whole. The games are circle-based with a focus on where we are in space. We incorporate hand clapping games, and running games such as tag, ball games, and bean bag games. The children learn how to jump rope and navigate simple obstacle courses. We work with fairy tales, imagination, rhythm, and repetition. With their imaginative abilities, the grade 1 children thrive on these games.
In second grade, the games of call and response like Walk the Plank and Join the Crew, Fire in the Forest, and The Sea Is Stormy are introduced. The students learn to concentrate on a given task for longer periods. They are more independent and better oriented. We work on their motor skills and spatial awareness. Free imaginative play also continues.
In third grade, the children are curious and ready to play all the games we can bring to them. This is the year they are more coordinated in their bodies. We continue to run, hop, skip, jump; and work on static and dynamic balance. Catching, throwing, kicking a ball, working in teams, and presenting their fair teams are the themes in grade 3. Games like kickball, dodgeball, capture the flag, and relays are introduced this year as well.
In fourth grade, the children are learning about their boundaries and seeing how they can challenge themselves. This is the year we introduce the circus arts: unicycle, stilts, juggling, gymnastics, and hula hoops. The students continue to play team games such as dodgeball, kickball, capture the flag, and Chicken in the Coop.They present their fair teams to the class. They are introduced to sports lead-up games and games of “vigorous deeds,” and continue to develop team-building.
In fifth grade, we are working on grace and beauty. We focus more on the form and techniques. The Pentathlon is a big part of grade five. The fifth grade child is in perfect harmony and balance, poised between early childhood and oncoming adolescence. The students learn and display their abilities in the javelin, discus, chariot running, wrestling, and long jump. Apart from this, we continue on sports lead-up games like basketball, pillow polo, dodgeball, kickball, and capture the flag. They also continue to hone their skills in circus arts.
The middle school curriculum is pretty consistent throughout all three of the grades, with the biggest difference being the competitions each grade has at the end of the year. The year begins with Pillow Polo, which is an easy game both to learn and to play and doesn’t require much strategy. The blocks become more complex as the year progresses, with the next two blocks being Volleyball and Football. Both of these sports require strategy and teamwork along with good communication. These help the students learn how to work together to achieve a common goal and how to strategize their approach. Team captains are introduced with the objective of giving each student a leadership role which helps to aid their development in Middle School. After the New Year, the sixth grade will have a wrestling block which helps them get a feel for their individual strength as they enter puberty. Different from this, the seventh and eighth grade students will have a running block, with the goal of them learning how to push and motivate themselves to achieve the objectives they set.
Soccer is the next block and requires students to use the teamwork and strategizing skills they learned earlier in the year. This is a sport in which individual brilliance and excellent teamwork shine all in one place, allowing for each student to decide what role they want to play. Badminton follows Soccer and requires both teamwork and precision, yet on a much smaller scale. In Badminton the students are paired up into groups of two or four and have to learn how to communicate effectively and be precise with their hits. This allows for students who don’t normally work together to learn how to work in close proximity with each other. Ultimate Frisbee follows Soccer which helps the students to learn how to respect the personal space of others. When a player has the frisbee, their opponent must stand back an arm’s length. Ultimate Frisbee also requires clear and concise communication amongst teammates which helps the students learn how to speak up and work together. The year finishes off with Street Hockey, and in this block students learn the importance of safe play. Since wooden sticks are being used, the risk for injury is higher than it is for other blocks, and the students learn how to mitigate this risk to play safely. Teamwork is crucial in Street Hockey and the students learn how to work together and support one another along with playing safely and responsibly.
At WSP, we are fortunate to have two alums of our school serving as physical education teachers. Liam and Marina bring with them rich backgrounds in physical fitness and athletics, coupled with a deep passion for cultivating our students’ growth in these areas. Liam teaches our ninth and tenth grade PE classes, while Marina leads our eleventh and twelfth grade classes. They recently provided insights into WSP’s Physical Education that I am excited to share with our community.
WSP’s PE curriculum is designed to enhance students’ understanding of movement and spatial awareness through age-appropriate activities, empowering them to apply these skills throughout their lives. Emphasizing a social component in these activities fosters self-awareness in movement, space, and group dynamics.
In ninth grade, the curriculum places a strong emphasis on activities that cultivate courage and inner focus by challenging students to overcome obstacles. With students coming from a variety of backgrounds and movement experiences, the class begins with simple activities to quickly engage everyone and transition into gameplay. A popular introductory game is “pillow polo,” resembling field hockey, which helps students enhance their hand-eye coordination. Throughout the year, students develop their concentration skills, enabling them to progress to more complex sports like volleyball, basketball, football, soccer, baseball, ultimate frisbee, and street hockey. An important element of this year is the principle of respecting each individual’s starting point, fostering an environment in which students unite to explore new experiences together.
Once students move into tenth grade, the classes revisit the sports introduced in the previous year, benefiting from an additional year of practice that enhances their hand-eye coordination and deepens their ability to focus and engage in each sport. With familiarity comes faster recall of the rules, enabling the group to dive into activities more swiftly and confidently.
In these first two years of the high school PE program, the goal is group work – to learn how to be teammates while getting more comfortable with movement and coordination.
Transitioning into eleventh grade, the physical education program undergoes a shift towards a deeper understanding of body mechanics. Students explore how muscles function and provide support, refine their breath control during exercise, and enhance overall body awareness. Alongside traditional sports, they delve into personalized activities such as yoga and weight training, aiming to strengthen the mind-body connection essential for lifelong functional movement. This foundation not only promotes current fitness but also helps them learn to prevent future injuries.
In the twelfth grade the students participate in much of the same activities as the prior year, but with more confidence and experience. Now they will start to make more independent choices and create their own weight lifting routines. They also learn more deeply what movements affect their specific bodies and in what ways.
In these last two years of high school, the students move from competing against one another to being their own competition. In most of our lives, people sit so much. We want our students to get outside, get their heart rates up and get moving. We hope that through these experiences they will learn what they enjoy, and take it forward into the next phase of their lives – both in being physically active, but also growing their social awareness.
Like all of our programs, WSP’s high school physical education classes seek to meet the students where they are developmentally and support them in their growth. Over the four years, we hope our students will develop and strengthen their cardiovascular abilities, strength, mobility awareness, and individually improve in ways such that they find movement joyful and fun.
Congratulations to our Co-Ed Middle School Cross Country team who ended their season earlier this week. They had a tremendous season and the girls earned a third place trophy in the league finals this week.
Our Middle School Girls’ Volleyball team also finished up their season with a great win vs Synapse and their last game against Hausner. I’m so proud of everyone and happy to witness their growth. I hope this season helped our players develop a strong passion for volleyball.
The Middle School Golf Team has a league tournament next week and its great to see them continue to improve weekly!
Our HS Girls’ Volleyball team had a fantastic 3 – 0 win over Liberty Baptist earlier this week, and closed out their season last night against Kahn Labs last night with another 3 – 0 win! Congratulations to our team and our two senior players, Maya & Frejya! Great season everyone!
Leona joined WSP this fall as our Middle and High School Athletics Director. She has a Bachelor of Science in Exercise Science from Pacific Union College and is currently completing graduate studies in Sports Management at the University of San Francisco. Before coaching basketball throughout the Bay Area, Leona has played basketball overseas and in college.
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Leona recently to learn more about her:
Q: When did you first become interested in organized sports or athletics?
A: I have been told I always had a ball in my hands. At age eleven I joined my first basketball team and at age thirteen was playing at higher levels.
Q: What brought you to the Bay Area?
A: I transferred to a local college during the pandemic to complete my degree in Exercise Science.
Q: How did you decide to pursue that program for your degree?
A: As a lifelong athlete I have always been interested in the biomechanics of the body, athletics, injury prevention, fitness, and health.
Q: What brought you to WSP’s Athletics Program?
A: I have an interest in impacting the athletic field by focusing on being an Athletic Director for students and am excited to work with both our coaches and our athletes.
Q: How can WSP parents help support Athletics?
A: Parents at WSP can have a positive impact in athletics. Students need external motivation and families are the best ones to provide that for their child. Parents can support the athletic department by attending all games, modeling good behavior, and being encouraging. It makes sports more fun and meaningful when you have a positive support system. WSP Athletics appreciates all your help and dedication!
Q: What else would you like our community to know about you?
A: I am looking to grow our program! I’ve begun with adding a basketball tournament for our high school athletes for the first time. We are also adding activities for each of our athletic teams so they and their families can get to know each other and the coaches better. We have brought back the use of the TeamSnap app for our athletes’ families to stay connected and experience better communication sharing with the teams. We are planning improvements to the Athletics Program portion of the school website, and refreshing some of our uniforms. (author’s note: and this is just her first month!)
Coach Sarah Triolo comes to WSP with a background in kinesiology, fitness, sports nutrition, and enjoys working with people who are struggling with health issues. We are so excited that Coach Sarah has expanded her pre-pandemic WSP role from middle school volleyball coach to Athletic Director and PE teacher for grades 6 – 9.
During the pandemic, Sarah overheard her son’s high school Zoom PE class plod through Standards Tests and rote repetition. She was inspired to create a way to not only make movement and activity more fun, but to help students learn how to integrate overall wellness and health into other activities. She wants our students to learn that improvement, not an arbitrary number, is the goal.
In Sarah’s first year her primary goal has been to make movement and activity fun for students in hopes that as they grow they will gravitate towards recreational movement as an opportunity for relaxation and enjoyment. She wants them to build positive associations with physical activity now that will keep them active for years to come.
In middle school, the students have been doing relay races, but not as you might imagine. In addition to typical running, they also run backwards and skip. When they finished for the first time she told the students they had run ¼ of a mile and they were so surprised! The students had fun working up to one mile without even realizing it. One student even said, “Who knew running could be so fun?” Some of her classes have also played variations of Ultimate, where they have made up their own rules. The group went from many students learning how to throw a disc short distances, to the group using up nearly the entire length of the field at the park for their games.
Another way that Sarah is working towards this goal is to show the students various ways that are readily accessible to them, with little to no equipment or financial investments required. For example, she took a class to the skate park at Rengstorff Park to do parkour. Some students immediately said “I can’t do it,” but she said, “You can!” And they did! They challenged themselves and succeeded, improving a bit class by class. Parkour is an example of an activity which is really good for developing core strength without the typical repetitive drills or standard push ups, pull ups, squats. And all you have to do is just try.
She has also incorporated physiology into their lessons and focused on helping the students learn to listen to their bodies. They have found and measured their heart rates learned to calculate their maximum heart rate and learned the meaning of both. The classes spent several weeks doing yoga and working on breathing techniques and ways to lower their heart rates and relax. They discussed other times in which that could be useful, such as if they are stressed or nervous about something. Some noted they could use it before presentations in class, or during high-pressure moments in team sports, like a free throw. Sarah is also planning to work on practical daily movements such as the proper ways to lift objects and how to carry this knowledge into other areas of their life to avoid injuries down the line.
Looking ahead this year Sarah has planned for classes including rock climbing, which will encourage students to reach and stretch, a unit on wheels and balance where they will work with scooters, bicycles, roller skates and skateboards, and nutrition where they will learn about nutritional labels, and what “eating from the rainbow means and how each color provides different nutrients. In future years Sarah is even hoping to add some new league sports such as swimming and golf.
We are so lucky to have Coach Sarah creating such fun and meaningful athletics experiences that will serve our students for years to come.
In first grade, we are focusing on the class as a whole. The games are circle-based with a focus on where we are in space. We incorporate hand clapping games, and running games such as tag, ball games, and bean bag games. The children learn how to jump rope and navigate simple obstacle courses. We work with fairy tales, imagination, rhythm, and repetition. With their imaginative abilities, the grade 1 children thrive on these games.
and precision, yet on a much smaller scale. In Badminton the students are paired up into groups of two or four and have to learn how to communicate effectively and be precise with their hits. This allows for students who don’t normally work together to learn how to work in close proximity with each other. Ultimate Frisbee follows Soccer which helps the students to learn how to respect the personal space of others. When a player has the frisbee, their opponent must stand back an arm’s length. Ultimate Frisbee also requires clear and concise communication amongst teammates which helps the students learn how to speak up and work together. The year finishes off with Street Hockey, and in this block students learn the importance of safe play. Since wooden sticks are being used, the risk for injury is higher than it is for other blocks, and the students learn how to mitigate this risk to play safely. Teamwork is crucial in Street Hockey and the students learn how to work together and support one another along with playing safely and responsibly.
