Seedling to Grade 3
A main lesson block takes one theme for three or four weeks. Each morning follows the same shape, and each new picture is given time to settle overnight before it is drawn, written or practised.
The early years at home, from about three to six. A gentle daily rhythm of circle time, free play, practical work, painting, baking, stories and time outside, with a theme for each week of the term.
The first year of main lessons. Letters arrive from stories and pictures, numbers are met as qualities before quantities, and form drawing trains the hand and eye for writing.
The year of fables and clever animals, reading what the children have written themselves, and the four operations practised with rhythm and movement.
The year of practical life and building. Measuring with the body and with rulers, shelter and farming, and writing that carries real information.
The library is growing. Today it holds the blocks below, all in draft while authors and reviewers sign them off. Seedling and Grade 1 are planned to cover the full year at launch, with sample blocks for Grades 2 and 3 and their full years after.
Seedling, 10 weeks, 5 days a week
Ten weeks of the Seedling rhythm from early October into December: the first rains on the Highveld, seeds and weaver birds, bees in the fynbos, the baker and the potter, frogs in the summer pools, the long evening light, the shepherd, and gathering in before the summer holiday.
Grade 1, 3 weeks, 4 days a week
Three weeks of form drawing for Grade 1: the straight and the curve, standing, lying and leaning lines, waves and zigzags, circles and spirals, the lemniscate and simple mirror forms. Each form is walked, drawn in the air and on a back before it goes on paper, and each grows from a story.
Grade 1, 4 weeks, 4 days a week
Ten capital letters, M, A, W, S, O, F, T, I, B and L, each grown out of a story set in a South African landscape, drawn as a picture and then found inside it. The block ends with the first small letters and a first sentence.
Grade 1, 4 weeks, 4 days a week
A four week Grade 1 mathematics block. In the first two weeks the numbers one to twelve are met as qualities in stories, in the world and in the body, with Roman and Arabic numerals. In the last two weeks four friends at a Lowveld street market bring adding, taking away, multiplying and sharing to life, working from the whole to the parts with beans, stones and rhythm.
Grade 2, 3 weeks, 4 days a week
Three weeks of trickster tales and clever-animal fables for Grade 2. Hare, Tortoise, Jackal and other small ones outwit the strong in retellings of Southern African tales and in new fables. Each main fable is heard, retold and written, then acted and drawn, and the fourth day of each week is for word families, spelling in rhythm and the children's own fables.
Grade 3, 3 weeks, 4 days a week
Three weeks of practical mathematics. Your child measures with hand spans, feet and strides, discovers why people agreed on shared measures, works with metres, litres, kilograms, money and time in real tasks, and ends by planning, building and reporting on a shelter or model house, after meeting homes from across South Africa.
Choose your blocks for the year, and Selemo lays them out around your family's rhythm and the southern seasons.
No card needed for the trial. Seedling Free stays free.