Personally, not a big fan of them.
Your son is a few years ahead academically but they haven't moved him ahead and you are looking for less homework? I'm sure I'm going to get flamed but life is a competition and, IMHO, the sooner they learn that the better. It is okay to lose. It is part of life and a very important life skill. You will probably get more community there but I think a lot of that has to do with the size of the school more than anything. Good luck with your decision.
And that would be the exact opposite of how a Waldorf person is going to view the world.
OP, we use Oak Meadow homeschool curriculum, which is based on Waldorf. AWESOME. I'm loving it more and more and DS is learning a lot.
He's doing 2nd grade work, and we did OM for 1st as well.
Yes they are slower to get into things. Although actually, they are BEYOND what my classroom was doing in 1st and 2nd grade. We were NOT having multiplication and division introduced to us then. X was in 3rd and / was in 4th for me (graduated in '87). Now, however, they seem to expect *mastery* of those things very very early. Oak Meadow (and I assume Waldorf) is in between. They introduce it, but they don't force it.
The last couple days I've been making up simple problems for the 4 processes (add subtract multiply divide), putting them into his book, and then he does them. It's hardly non-academic. But of course they are an offshoot, not THE Waldorf.
You gave a thumbs up to homeschool...I do recommend you check out Oak Meadow if that's what you're interested in.
DS likes math a whole lot, so we give him extra, no biggie. They just don't want things to get *forced* on kids in those primary grades, because that can suck the joy of learning from them. Loving to learn should last a lifetime...unfortunately, institutions are good at taking away joy.
I do have to say, though...that Waldorf doesn't mean no rude kids. When I was in practice one of my patients sent her really smart, really talkative, kinda "geeky" son to one, and some of the kids teased him, just like he had been teased at public school. So his mom still had to do work to help him through that emotionally, just like she had been doing before.
I actually do think she ended up homeschooling him. It's been a long time. Memory is imperfect.