In Class III, in their ninth year, the children step outside the familiar world of heredity and imitation that they have lived in since babyhood. They start to see themselves as independent beings and begin to question everything.

The child's intellectual demands are met by a more demanding curriculum that helps to establish the child in this new world by its very practical content and to reassure the child in the knowledge that there are certain natural laws by which all human beings must live. This is the year of farming and building, of weighing and measuring, of practical activity and the Old Testament.

ln Class IV, having acquired the most essential equipment or tools, the children can set out on their journey of exploration, beginning close to home with the study of local geography, man and animal and Norse mythology.