Course: Early Childhood Education"Waldorf Education is not a pedagogical system but an art - the art of awakening what is actually there within the human being." ~ Rudolf Steiner
The Waldorf early childhood educator works with the young child by creating a warm, beautiful and loving home-like environment, which is protective and secure, and where things happen in a predictable, rhythmic manner. Here she responds to the developing child in two basic ways: First, she engages in domestic, practical, and artistic activities the children can readily imitate (for example, baking, painting, gardening, and handicrafts), adapting the work to the changing seasons and festivals of the year. Secondly, the Waldorf kindergarten teacher nurtures the children’s power of imagination by telling carefully selected stories and by encouraging free play. This free or fantasy play, in which children act out scenarios of their own creation, helps them to experience many aspects of life more deeply. When toys are used, they are made of natural materials. Wood, cotton, wool, silk, shells, stones, pine cones and objects from nature that the children themselves have collected are used in play and to beautify the room. Sensory integration, eye-hand coordination, appreciating the beauty of language, sequencing, and other basic skills necessary for the foundation of academic learning are fostered in the kindergarten. In this truly loving, natural and creative environment, children are provided with a range of activities to prepare them for later learning and for life itself. |
Course Outline
Early Childhood Education 1
Lesson 1: You Are Your Child's First Teacher Lesson 2: Home Life as the Basis for All Learning Lesson 3: Birth to Three: Growing Down and Waking Up Lesson 4: Helping Your Baby's Development Lesson 5: Helping Your Toddler's Development Lesson 6: Rhythm in Home Life Lesson 7: Discipline and Other Parenting Issues Lesson 8: Reflection and Final Paper/Early Childhood Education 1 Early Childhood Education 2
Lesson 1: Nourishing Your Child's Imagination and Creative Play Lesson 2: Developing Your Child's Artistic Ability Lesson 3: Encouraging your Child's Musical Ability Lesson 4: Cognitive Development and Early Childhood Education Lesson 5: Common Parenting Question: From Television to Immunizations Lesson 6: Help for the Journey Lesson 7: Reflection and Final Paper/Early Childhood Education 2 
|
What Makes Waldorf Early Childhood Education “Waldorf”?
Is there a Waldorf early childhood curriculum? Are there specific activities—puppet plays, circle games, watercolor painting, for example—that are essential to a Waldorf program? Are there certain materials and furnishings—lazured, soft-colored walls, handmade dolls, beeswax crayons, silk and other natural materials—that are necessary ingredients in a Waldorf setting? What makes Waldorf early childhood education “Waldorf”?
Rudolf Steiner spoke on a number of occasions about the experiences that are essential for the healthy development of the young child. These include:
• love and warmth
• an environment that nourishes the senses
• creative and artistic experiences
• meaningful adult activity to be imitated
• free, imaginative play
• protection of the forces of childhood
• gratitude, reverence, and wonder
• joy, humor, and happiness
• adult caregivers pursuing a path of inner development
Love and Warmth
Children who live in an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who have around them truly good examples to imitate, are living in their proper element. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Love and emotional warmth, rather than any particular early childhood program, create the basis for the child’s healthy development. These qualities should live between the adult caregiver and the child, in the children’s behavior toward one another, and among the adults in the early childhood center. When Rudolf Steiner visited the classes of the first Waldorf school, he often asked the children, “Do you love your teacher?” Children are also served if this love and warmth exist in the relationships between the teachers and the parents, between the early childhood teachers and the rest of the school, and in the surrounding community.
An Environment that Nourishes the Senses
The essential task of the kindergarten teacher is to create the proper physical environment around the children. “Physical environment” must be understood in the widest sense imaginable. It includes not just what happens around the children in the material sense, but everything that occurs in their environment, everything that can be perceived by their senses, that can work on the inner powers of the children from the surrounding physical space. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Early learning is profoundly connected to the child’s own physical body and sensory experience. Everything the young child sees, hears, and touches has an effect. Thus a clean, orderly, beautiful, quiet setting is essential. The physical environment, both indoors and outdoors, should provide varied and nourishing opportunities for self-education—experiences in touch, balance, lively and joyful movement, and also inward listening. The children should experience large-group, small-group, and solitary activities. The teacher, in integrating diverse elements into a harmonious and meaningful environment, provides surroundings that are accessible to the child’s understanding, feeling, and active will. The care, love, and intention expressed through the outer materials and furnishings of the classes are experienced unconsciously by the child. The child experiences the immediate environment as ensouled and nurturing. The adult shapes the temporal environment as well as the spatial. Through a rhythmic schedule, in which the same thing happens at the same time on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the child gains a sense of security and confidence in the world. Also, the different activities of the day should take place in a comfortable flow with smooth transitions.
Creative, Artistic Experience
In order to become true educators, we must be able to see the truly aesthetic element in the work, to bring an artistic quality into our tasks. . . . [I]f we bring this aesthetic element, then we begin to come closer to what the child wills out of its own nature. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
In the early childhood class, the art of education is the art of living. The teacher is an artist in how she perceives and relates to the children and to the activities of daily life. She orchestrates and choreographs the rhythms of each day, each week, and each season in such a way that the children can breathe freely in a living structure. In addition, the teacher offers the children opportunities for artistic experiences in singing and music, in movement and gesture—through eurythmy and rhythmic games—and in creative speech and language—through verses, poetry, and stories. The children model with beeswax, draw, and do watercolor painting. Puppet and marionette shows put on by the teacher are an important element in the life of the kindergarten.
Meaningful Adult Activity as Examples for the Child’s Imitation
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adapt the practical activities of daily life so that they are suitable for the child’s imitation through play. . . . The activities of children in kindergarten must be derived directly from life itself rather than being “thought out” by the intellectualized culture of adults. In the kindergarten, the most important thing is to give children the opportunity to directly imitate life itself. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Children do not learn through instruction or admonition but though imitation. Good sight will develop if the environment has the proper conditions of light and color, while in the brain and blood circulation, the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy sense of morality if children witness moral actions in their surroundings. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Real, meaningful work with a purpose, adjusted to the needs of the child, is in accordance with the child’s natural and inborn need for movement, and is an enormously significant educational activity. The teacher focuses on the meaningful activities that nurture life in the in the classroom “home,” such as cooking and baking, gardening, doing laundry and cleaning, creating and caring for the materials in the immediate environment, and taking care of the bodily needs of the children. This directed attention of the teacher creates an atmosphere of freedom in which the individuality of each child can be active. It is not intended just that the children copy the outer movements and actions of the adult, but that they experience also the inner attitude—the devotion, care, sense of purpose, focus, and creative spirit of the adult.
Free, Imaginative Play
In the child’s play activity, we can only provide the conditions for education. What is gained through play, through everything that cannot be determined by fixed rules, stems fundamentally from the self-activity of the child, The real educational value of play lives in the fact that we ignore our rules and regulations, our educational theory, and allow the child free rein. —Rudolf Steiner, Self Education in the Light of Anthroposophy
In a seemingly contradictory indication, Rudolf Steiner also said: Giving direction and guidance to play is one of the essential tasks of sensible education, which is to say an art of education that is right for humanity. . . . The early childhood educator must school her observation in order to develop an artistic eye, to detect the individual quality of each child’s play. —Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of February 24, 1921 in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Little children learn through play. They approach play in an entirely individual way, out of their entirely individual ways, out of their unique configuration of soul and spirit, and out of their unique experiences of the world in which they live. The manner in which a child plays may offer a picture of how he will take up his destiny as an adult. The task of the teacher is to create an environment that supports the possibility of healthy play. This environment includes the physical surroundings, furnishings, and play materials; the social environment of activities and social interactions; and the inner/spiritual environment of thoughts, intentions, and imaginations held by the adults.
Protection for the Forces of Childhood
Although it is highly necessary that each person should be fully awake in later life, the child must be allowed to remain as long as possible in the peaceful, dreamlike condition of pictorial imagination in which his early years of life are passed. For if we allow his organism to grow strong in this nonintellectual way, he will rightly develop in later life the intellectuality needed in the world today. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
The lively, waking dream of the little child’s consciousness must be allowed to thrive in the early childhood group. This means that the teacher refrains as much as possible from verbal instruction. Instead, her gestures and actions provide a model for the child’s imitation. Familiar daily rhythms and activities provide a context where the need for verbal instruction is reduced. Simple, archetypal imagery in stories, songs, and games provides experiences that the children can internalize but that do not require intellectual or critical reflection or explanation.
An Atmosphere of Gratitude, Reverence, and Wonder
An atmosphere of gratitude should grow naturally in children through merely witnessing the gratitude the adults feel as they receive what is freely given by others, and in how they express this gratitude. If a child says “thank you” very naturally—not in response to the urging of others, but simply through imitating— something has been done that will greatly benefit the child’s whole life. Out of this an all-embracing gratitude will develop toward the whole world. This cultivation of gratitude is of paramount importance. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Out of these early, all-pervading experiences of gratitude, the first tender capacity for love, which is deeply embedded in each and every child, begins to sprout in earthly life.
If, during the first period of life, we create an atmosphere of gratitude around the children, then out of this gratitude toward the world, toward the entire universe, and also out of thankfulness for being able to be in this world, a profound and warm sense of devotion will arise . . . upright, honest, and true. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
This is the basis for what will become a capacity for deep, intimate love and commitment in later life, for dedication and loyalty, for true admiration of others, for fervent spiritual or religious devotion, and for placing oneself wholeheartedly in the service of the world.
Joy, Humor, and Happiness
The joy of children in and with their environment must therefore be counted among the forces that build and shape the physical organs. They need teachers who look and act with happiness and, most of all, with honest, unaffected love. Such a love that streams, as it were, with warmth through the physical environment of the children may be said to literally “hatch out” the forms of the physical organs. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
If you make a surly face so that a child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms the child for the rest of his life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of person you are. —Rudolf Steiner The Kingdom of Childhood
The teacher’s earnestness about her work and her serious striving must be balanced with humor and a demeanor that bespeaks happiness. There must be moments of humor and delight in the classroom every day.
Adult Caregivers on a Path of Inner Development
For the small child before the change of teeth, the most important thing in education is the teacher’s own being. —Rudolf Steiner, Essentials of Education
Just think what feelings arise in the soul of the early childhood educator who realizes: What I accomplish with this child, I accomplish for the grown-up person in his twenties. What matters is not so much a knowledge of abstract educational principles or pedagogical rules. . . . [W]hat does matter is that a deep sense of responsibility develops in [the teacher’s heart and mind] and that this affects her or his worldview and the way she or he stands in life. —Rudolf Steiner, Education in the Face of the Present-Day World Situation, Lecture of June 10, 1920
Here we come to the spiritual environment of the early childhood setting: the thoughts, attitudes, and imaginations living in the adult who cares for the children. This invisible realm that lies behind the outer actions of the teacher has a profound influence on the child’s development. The spiritual environment includes recognition of the child as a threefold being—of body, soul, and spirit—on a path of evolutionary development through repeated Earth lives. This recognition provides a foundation for the daily activities in the kindergarten, and for the relationship between adult and child. Such an understanding of the nature and destiny of the human comes out of the inner life of the adult, the life of the individual Ego. This is a realm that is largely hidden, and hence is difficult to observe directly and to evaluate objectively. Yet ultimately this realm may affect the development of the children most profoundly. It is not merely our outer activity that influence the growing child. What lies behind and is expressed through this outer activity also is crucial. Ultimately, the most profound influence on the child is who we are as human beings—and who we are becoming and how.
Conclusion
The “essentials” described here are qualitative in nature. For the most part, they are not part of a body of concrete “best practices.” Instead, they concern inner qualities and attributes of the teacher that foster healthy development in young children. These qualities can come to expression in a wide variety of ways, according to
• the age range of the children in the group and their individual characteristics;
• the nature of the particular program—a kindergarten, playgroup, or extended care program; and
• the environment and surroundings—urban or rural, home or school or child care center.
Many practices that have come to be associated with Waldorf/Steiner early childhood education—certain daily rhythms and rituals, play materials, songs, stories, even the colors of the walls, the dress of the adults, and the menu for snack—may be mistakenly taken as essentials. The results of such assumptions can be surprising, even disturbing—a “King Winter” nature table appearing in a tropical climate in “wintertime,” or dolls with pink skin and yellow hair in a kindergarten where all the children are brown-skinned and black-haired. Such practices may express a tendency toward a doctrinal or dogmatic approach that is out of touch with the realities of the immediate situation and instead imposes something from “outside.” There is a parallel concern at the other end of the spectrum from the doctrinal or dogmatic. The freedom that Waldorf Education offers each individual teacher to determine the practices of her early childhood program can be misinterpreted to mean that “anything goes,” according to personal preference and style. Here too, there is the danger that the developmental realities and needs of the children are not sufficiently taken into consideration. Each of these one-sided approaches may be injurious to the development of the children. As Waldorf early childhood educators, we are constantly seeking a middle, universally human path between polarities. Rudolf Steiner’s advice to the first Waldorf kindergarten teacher, Elizabeth Grunelius, in the early 1920s, can be paraphrased as follows: "Observe the children. Actively meditate. Follow your intuitions. Work so that all your actions are worthy of imitation." Today, those of us who work with young children in a Waldorf environment are challenged to engage in a constant process of renewal. We must actively observe the children in our care, carry them in our meditations, and seek to work consciously and artistically to create the experiences that will serve their development. Our devotion to this task awakens us to the importance of self-education and transformation in the context of community. Our ongoing study of child and human development, our own artistic and meditative practices, and our work with Anthroposophy, independently and together with others, become essential elements for the practice of Waldorf early childhood education. Here we can come to experience that we are not alone on this journey. We are supported through our encounters with one another other and with our sharing of insights, experience, and knowledge. We are helped also by those beings spiritual beings who are committed to our continued development and to the renewal of culture that Waldorf Education seeks to serve.
Rudolf Steiner spoke on a number of occasions about the experiences that are essential for the healthy development of the young child. These include:
• love and warmth
• an environment that nourishes the senses
• creative and artistic experiences
• meaningful adult activity to be imitated
• free, imaginative play
• protection of the forces of childhood
• gratitude, reverence, and wonder
• joy, humor, and happiness
• adult caregivers pursuing a path of inner development
Love and Warmth
Children who live in an atmosphere of love and warmth, and who have around them truly good examples to imitate, are living in their proper element. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Love and emotional warmth, rather than any particular early childhood program, create the basis for the child’s healthy development. These qualities should live between the adult caregiver and the child, in the children’s behavior toward one another, and among the adults in the early childhood center. When Rudolf Steiner visited the classes of the first Waldorf school, he often asked the children, “Do you love your teacher?” Children are also served if this love and warmth exist in the relationships between the teachers and the parents, between the early childhood teachers and the rest of the school, and in the surrounding community.
An Environment that Nourishes the Senses
The essential task of the kindergarten teacher is to create the proper physical environment around the children. “Physical environment” must be understood in the widest sense imaginable. It includes not just what happens around the children in the material sense, but everything that occurs in their environment, everything that can be perceived by their senses, that can work on the inner powers of the children from the surrounding physical space. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Early learning is profoundly connected to the child’s own physical body and sensory experience. Everything the young child sees, hears, and touches has an effect. Thus a clean, orderly, beautiful, quiet setting is essential. The physical environment, both indoors and outdoors, should provide varied and nourishing opportunities for self-education—experiences in touch, balance, lively and joyful movement, and also inward listening. The children should experience large-group, small-group, and solitary activities. The teacher, in integrating diverse elements into a harmonious and meaningful environment, provides surroundings that are accessible to the child’s understanding, feeling, and active will. The care, love, and intention expressed through the outer materials and furnishings of the classes are experienced unconsciously by the child. The child experiences the immediate environment as ensouled and nurturing. The adult shapes the temporal environment as well as the spatial. Through a rhythmic schedule, in which the same thing happens at the same time on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, the child gains a sense of security and confidence in the world. Also, the different activities of the day should take place in a comfortable flow with smooth transitions.
Creative, Artistic Experience
In order to become true educators, we must be able to see the truly aesthetic element in the work, to bring an artistic quality into our tasks. . . . [I]f we bring this aesthetic element, then we begin to come closer to what the child wills out of its own nature. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
In the early childhood class, the art of education is the art of living. The teacher is an artist in how she perceives and relates to the children and to the activities of daily life. She orchestrates and choreographs the rhythms of each day, each week, and each season in such a way that the children can breathe freely in a living structure. In addition, the teacher offers the children opportunities for artistic experiences in singing and music, in movement and gesture—through eurythmy and rhythmic games—and in creative speech and language—through verses, poetry, and stories. The children model with beeswax, draw, and do watercolor painting. Puppet and marionette shows put on by the teacher are an important element in the life of the kindergarten.
Meaningful Adult Activity as Examples for the Child’s Imitation
The task of the kindergarten teacher is to adapt the practical activities of daily life so that they are suitable for the child’s imitation through play. . . . The activities of children in kindergarten must be derived directly from life itself rather than being “thought out” by the intellectualized culture of adults. In the kindergarten, the most important thing is to give children the opportunity to directly imitate life itself. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Children do not learn through instruction or admonition but though imitation. Good sight will develop if the environment has the proper conditions of light and color, while in the brain and blood circulation, the physical foundations will be laid for a healthy sense of morality if children witness moral actions in their surroundings. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
Real, meaningful work with a purpose, adjusted to the needs of the child, is in accordance with the child’s natural and inborn need for movement, and is an enormously significant educational activity. The teacher focuses on the meaningful activities that nurture life in the in the classroom “home,” such as cooking and baking, gardening, doing laundry and cleaning, creating and caring for the materials in the immediate environment, and taking care of the bodily needs of the children. This directed attention of the teacher creates an atmosphere of freedom in which the individuality of each child can be active. It is not intended just that the children copy the outer movements and actions of the adult, but that they experience also the inner attitude—the devotion, care, sense of purpose, focus, and creative spirit of the adult.
Free, Imaginative Play
In the child’s play activity, we can only provide the conditions for education. What is gained through play, through everything that cannot be determined by fixed rules, stems fundamentally from the self-activity of the child, The real educational value of play lives in the fact that we ignore our rules and regulations, our educational theory, and allow the child free rein. —Rudolf Steiner, Self Education in the Light of Anthroposophy
In a seemingly contradictory indication, Rudolf Steiner also said: Giving direction and guidance to play is one of the essential tasks of sensible education, which is to say an art of education that is right for humanity. . . . The early childhood educator must school her observation in order to develop an artistic eye, to detect the individual quality of each child’s play. —Rudolf Steiner, Lecture of February 24, 1921 in Utrecht, The Netherlands
Little children learn through play. They approach play in an entirely individual way, out of their entirely individual ways, out of their unique configuration of soul and spirit, and out of their unique experiences of the world in which they live. The manner in which a child plays may offer a picture of how he will take up his destiny as an adult. The task of the teacher is to create an environment that supports the possibility of healthy play. This environment includes the physical surroundings, furnishings, and play materials; the social environment of activities and social interactions; and the inner/spiritual environment of thoughts, intentions, and imaginations held by the adults.
Protection for the Forces of Childhood
Although it is highly necessary that each person should be fully awake in later life, the child must be allowed to remain as long as possible in the peaceful, dreamlike condition of pictorial imagination in which his early years of life are passed. For if we allow his organism to grow strong in this nonintellectual way, he will rightly develop in later life the intellectuality needed in the world today. —Rudolf Steiner, A Modern Art of Education
The lively, waking dream of the little child’s consciousness must be allowed to thrive in the early childhood group. This means that the teacher refrains as much as possible from verbal instruction. Instead, her gestures and actions provide a model for the child’s imitation. Familiar daily rhythms and activities provide a context where the need for verbal instruction is reduced. Simple, archetypal imagery in stories, songs, and games provides experiences that the children can internalize but that do not require intellectual or critical reflection or explanation.
An Atmosphere of Gratitude, Reverence, and Wonder
An atmosphere of gratitude should grow naturally in children through merely witnessing the gratitude the adults feel as they receive what is freely given by others, and in how they express this gratitude. If a child says “thank you” very naturally—not in response to the urging of others, but simply through imitating— something has been done that will greatly benefit the child’s whole life. Out of this an all-embracing gratitude will develop toward the whole world. This cultivation of gratitude is of paramount importance. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
Out of these early, all-pervading experiences of gratitude, the first tender capacity for love, which is deeply embedded in each and every child, begins to sprout in earthly life.
If, during the first period of life, we create an atmosphere of gratitude around the children, then out of this gratitude toward the world, toward the entire universe, and also out of thankfulness for being able to be in this world, a profound and warm sense of devotion will arise . . . upright, honest, and true. —Rudolf Steiner, The Child’s Changing Consciousness
This is the basis for what will become a capacity for deep, intimate love and commitment in later life, for dedication and loyalty, for true admiration of others, for fervent spiritual or religious devotion, and for placing oneself wholeheartedly in the service of the world.
Joy, Humor, and Happiness
The joy of children in and with their environment must therefore be counted among the forces that build and shape the physical organs. They need teachers who look and act with happiness and, most of all, with honest, unaffected love. Such a love that streams, as it were, with warmth through the physical environment of the children may be said to literally “hatch out” the forms of the physical organs. —Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child
If you make a surly face so that a child gets the impression you are a grumpy person, this harms the child for the rest of his life. What kind of school plan you make is neither here nor there; what matters is what sort of person you are. —Rudolf Steiner The Kingdom of Childhood
The teacher’s earnestness about her work and her serious striving must be balanced with humor and a demeanor that bespeaks happiness. There must be moments of humor and delight in the classroom every day.
Adult Caregivers on a Path of Inner Development
For the small child before the change of teeth, the most important thing in education is the teacher’s own being. —Rudolf Steiner, Essentials of Education
Just think what feelings arise in the soul of the early childhood educator who realizes: What I accomplish with this child, I accomplish for the grown-up person in his twenties. What matters is not so much a knowledge of abstract educational principles or pedagogical rules. . . . [W]hat does matter is that a deep sense of responsibility develops in [the teacher’s heart and mind] and that this affects her or his worldview and the way she or he stands in life. —Rudolf Steiner, Education in the Face of the Present-Day World Situation, Lecture of June 10, 1920
Here we come to the spiritual environment of the early childhood setting: the thoughts, attitudes, and imaginations living in the adult who cares for the children. This invisible realm that lies behind the outer actions of the teacher has a profound influence on the child’s development. The spiritual environment includes recognition of the child as a threefold being—of body, soul, and spirit—on a path of evolutionary development through repeated Earth lives. This recognition provides a foundation for the daily activities in the kindergarten, and for the relationship between adult and child. Such an understanding of the nature and destiny of the human comes out of the inner life of the adult, the life of the individual Ego. This is a realm that is largely hidden, and hence is difficult to observe directly and to evaluate objectively. Yet ultimately this realm may affect the development of the children most profoundly. It is not merely our outer activity that influence the growing child. What lies behind and is expressed through this outer activity also is crucial. Ultimately, the most profound influence on the child is who we are as human beings—and who we are becoming and how.
Conclusion
The “essentials” described here are qualitative in nature. For the most part, they are not part of a body of concrete “best practices.” Instead, they concern inner qualities and attributes of the teacher that foster healthy development in young children. These qualities can come to expression in a wide variety of ways, according to
• the age range of the children in the group and their individual characteristics;
• the nature of the particular program—a kindergarten, playgroup, or extended care program; and
• the environment and surroundings—urban or rural, home or school or child care center.
Many practices that have come to be associated with Waldorf/Steiner early childhood education—certain daily rhythms and rituals, play materials, songs, stories, even the colors of the walls, the dress of the adults, and the menu for snack—may be mistakenly taken as essentials. The results of such assumptions can be surprising, even disturbing—a “King Winter” nature table appearing in a tropical climate in “wintertime,” or dolls with pink skin and yellow hair in a kindergarten where all the children are brown-skinned and black-haired. Such practices may express a tendency toward a doctrinal or dogmatic approach that is out of touch with the realities of the immediate situation and instead imposes something from “outside.” There is a parallel concern at the other end of the spectrum from the doctrinal or dogmatic. The freedom that Waldorf Education offers each individual teacher to determine the practices of her early childhood program can be misinterpreted to mean that “anything goes,” according to personal preference and style. Here too, there is the danger that the developmental realities and needs of the children are not sufficiently taken into consideration. Each of these one-sided approaches may be injurious to the development of the children. As Waldorf early childhood educators, we are constantly seeking a middle, universally human path between polarities. Rudolf Steiner’s advice to the first Waldorf kindergarten teacher, Elizabeth Grunelius, in the early 1920s, can be paraphrased as follows: "Observe the children. Actively meditate. Follow your intuitions. Work so that all your actions are worthy of imitation." Today, those of us who work with young children in a Waldorf environment are challenged to engage in a constant process of renewal. We must actively observe the children in our care, carry them in our meditations, and seek to work consciously and artistically to create the experiences that will serve their development. Our devotion to this task awakens us to the importance of self-education and transformation in the context of community. Our ongoing study of child and human development, our own artistic and meditative practices, and our work with Anthroposophy, independently and together with others, become essential elements for the practice of Waldorf early childhood education. Here we can come to experience that we are not alone on this journey. We are supported through our encounters with one another other and with our sharing of insights, experience, and knowledge. We are helped also by those beings spiritual beings who are committed to our continued development and to the renewal of culture that Waldorf Education seeks to serve.
Early Childhood Education 2 - Lesson 2
Tasks and Assignments for Early Childhood Education 2 - Lesson 2
|
Please study the study material/chapters indicated below. Feel free to use additional resources as wanted and needed. Once you feel you are sufficiently acquainted with the subject please complete the following:
1. Create a short essay that explores one example of understanding children's drawings and development. 2. Give examples and describe in detail how to set up and conduct an art activity in the preschool/kindergarten setting. Submit the completed assignment via the submission form or via email. 
|
|
Study Material for Early Childhood Education 2 - Lesson 2
You Are Your Child's First TeacherCΗΑΡΤΕR 9 - Developing Your Child's Artistic Ability
|
|
UNDERSTANDING CHILDREN'S DRAWINGS AND DEVELOPMENT
How and why do children's drawings change over time, and what clues can your child's drawings give you about his or her development? A child often starts drawing before the age of two, either enthusiastically or tentatively grasping the pencil or crayon for the first time. But once he joyously discovers the potential of drawing, he will be delighted to color frequently and on any surface that presents itself! It has been shown that at whatever age within the first seven years that the child starts drawing, he will begin at the two-year-old scribbling stage. If the child is already past that age, he will go through all the early stages in rapid succession and stop at the motif corresponding to his own development. What are the stages and motifs you can watch for in your child's drawings? It will strengthen your appreciation for the being of your child when you observe his development as reflected in his drawings.
The following information is taken from the excellent book Understanding Children's Drawings, by Michaela Strauss, which is based on a lifetime of observations by her father, Hans Strauss, who left behind a collection of more than six thousand young children's drawings that he had assembled and annotated. (1)
Children's drawings can be roughly divided into three stages that are similar to the stages represented in their play. In the first phase, before the age of three, the child creates purely out of the movement that carries him. The process of creation arises in a dreamy way, out of the rhythms and movements coming from within his own body, so if you ask a very young child about his drawing, he will usually be unable to explain the content to you. In the second phase, between ages three and five, the child allows the arising picture to take hold of his imagination. While he draws he will tell you about the picture as it unfolds in front of him. After the fifth year, the child often approaches drawing with a definite idea or picture in mind: "I am going to draw my dog, Mitzy, chasing a rabbit."
Within each phase, certain motifs predominate, and the new ones don't appear until the child has reached the next developmental stage. For example, two types of movement dominate the drawings of children under three. These are a spiral movement and a perpendicular or vertical movement. At first the movements are very large, even larger than the paper, which barely seems to contain them. Strauss observed that until the age of three, spirals are always drawn from the outside in, only gradually forming a center that reflects the child's growing realization of self between the ages of two and three. The flash of ego consciousness is documented by the ability to draw the form of the circle, which, even if the child says "I" earlier on, rarely appears in drawings before the third year. It is also interesting to note that monkeys are quite good at drawing like young children—certainly their jumping and swinging give them an inward propensity toward movement and they have the interest and dexterity to use a crayon or brush—but they are unable to make a connected circle out of the spiral movements that they have in common with the child under three. (2)
Strauss suggests that the spiral movements of scribbling are echoes of the movements of the cosmos and of the flowing rhythms of the fluids within the young child's own body. Similarly, she suggests that the vertical element that appears along with the spiral one is an expression of the child's own recent experience of standing upright.
At the same time a child is able to form a circle, he will probably make crossed horizontal and vertical lines for the first time. Soon the cross will be drawn inside the circle, and circles will also be drawn with a dot inside them. Both examples reflect the child's first experiences of inner and outer in his increasing consciousness during the third year.
After the third year, the circle and crossed lines are fused into a unity, and they continue to appear in more diverse variations until the fifth year and beyond. However, changes continue to occur during this time. The point and the cross, having crystallized as "I" symbols, begin to transform and to radiate from the center outward. At first the radiating lines will stop at the edge of the circle, and then they reach out like feelers beyond the edge of the circle.
As the child continues to develop, trees and people are frequently drawn. Strauss shows how the forms of a tree and a human being are the same for a young child and represent his own changing awareness of his body. First the focus is on the head, with a trunk extending down from it (a floating tree or "pillar person"). It is not until the child is older that the legs become divided and firmly planted on the ground. Around the age of four the child's focal point shifts from the head to the trunk, and a ladder pattern emerges in children's drawings, like the branches of a tree or the branching of the spinal column and the ribs. For the first time drawings now have left-right orientation around an axis of symmetry, like the body around the backbone.
Children at this age also draw people with arms coming off of the head or with huge fingers, reflecting their increasing connection with the world: now they are reaching out and getting into everything. The feet, which take the longest time to be developed in drawings, are thick and heavy, rooted to the ground. The child draws the human being not as we see it, but as he experiences his own self and body. The inner life processes, not the external form, are the determining factors. (3)
The house is another theme through which the child represents his changing relationship between self and world. Drawings of a very young child often show a circle or "head person" inside a larger circle, like the child in the cosmos or the baby in the womb. As the close unity between the self and the world gives way to separate individuality, the spherical "cosmic" house becomes more square in form and anchored near the bottom of the paper. In the third year, the form of the square or box appears for the first time surrounding the person. The narrowing of the perception of cosmic realms through the acquiring of selfhood—the process of becoming an "I"—resembles an encapsulating of the soul. A child may draw a person looking out of the house, and the connections between inner world and outer world can be seen in the doors, windows, and chimneys that now begin to appear.
Using color as a new means of expression is added to the drawing of lines in the middle phase, at ages three to five. Before the third year the child tends to use color mostly to emphasize the line, but toward the fourth year children will draw color for its own sake. Strauss writes, "Touched by the nature of colour, the soul of the child becomes creative. When the world of feeling comes into drawing, the world of colour comes into it too." (4) Before the child uses color for drawing objects, he uses it in drawings to cover a surface, exploring the qualities of colors by filling in areas in a dramatic and somewhat symmetrical "checkerboard" fashion. It is just at this age that block crayons (described in the following section) enable the child to cover large surfaces and increase his color experience.
Around the age of five children will start making illustrative drawings and want to represent objects and scenes from life or stories. These narrative-illustrative drawings will start to wrestle with the elements of space and changing perspective. The profile of the face and the triangle both appear for the first time, and the triangle can become the focus of multicolored geometrical designs that kindergarten children love to make.
When elementary-school-aged children draw a tree and house, the forms look more as we have come to expect them to look, but close observation of such drawings can also reveal interesting things about the inner life of the older child. One very dreamy boy I knew never drew his people touching the ground, even as late as the second grade. And a kindergarten boy in my class drew a sad figure between two houses. He said that one was a house and one was a fire station, but from conversations with his mother I knew that his parents were divorcing and he was spending time with both his mother and father—a sad little boy feeling himself on the road between two homes.
The relationship of children's art to their developing consciousness parallels the developing consciousness of humanity as expressed in primitive art and its evolution over the centuries. Just as the first babbling of a baby is unconnected with particular racial or national characteristics, this first picture writing is also universally human. In this early period of the first seven years the language of symbols is the same the world over. Both Strauss's book and The Incarnating Child provide many illustrations of children's drawings, which can become another pathway to increasing your understanding of the changing consciousness of the young child.
Coloring with Block Crayons
Using block rather than stick crayons enables your child to cover an entire page with color with very little effort. By using the flat edges rather than the corners of the block crayons, the child can create bands of color rather than outlines. Within these broad bands of color, forms grow naturally. The yellow streams down and outward; the red is concentrated and strong; the blue gently curves and surrounds. Into these gestures of color spring forms, without demanding precision and intricacy.
When you make a picture in front of a young child, every breath, every thought, every peaceful, careful stroke you make feeds and instructs the child. A picture you carefully and lovingly make for your child is a gift on many levels. It need not be great art! If at night you make a picture for your child from her own experience of the days activities, with what wonder your child will wake up to this gift, just as the Rhyme Elves often left a little poem and drawing of important events for Sylvia in the Seven-year-Old Wonder-Book. (5) Such pictures can be kept in a special collection, perhaps in a special box or drawer.
You'll find your own appreciation of color and artistic ability increasing as you color and paint with your child. All children have innate artistic ability. If they are given watercolors rather than marking pens, if they can color on blank sheets of paper instead of "keeping within the lines," then this ability is more likely to remain alive and accessible to them throughout their lives.
The block crayons used in Waldorf schools are made of sweet smelling beeswax rather than paraffin and can be purchased through several online stores.
THE EXPERIENCE OF COLOR
Children have natural artistic ability that can easily go undeveloped or become stifled by inappropriate activities; this often results in frustration and beliefs such as "I can't draw." Helping your child's artistic ability unfold is a great gift you can give him. Though he will not necessarily grow up to be an artist, he will maintain a living relationship with color, will be able to appreciate the play of light and shadow with a sensitive eye, and will feel confident about expressing himself through some artistic medium and find enjoyment in the process.
The world of color is directly related to the way we feel. Colors affect our attitude to life and our moods, which are then expressed in colors. Even our speech reflects this relationship—"green with envy," "feeling blue," "livid with rage," "seeing red," "rose-colored glasses," "jaundiced view." You could say that the very substance of the world is color. Color is to the spiritual life what food, air, and water are to the physical life. As these nourish our bodies, so color nourishes the soul and spirit.
The world of nature is bathed in color. Color comes and goes seasonally, and indeed it does so each day with the coming and going of the light. Just as sunrise and sunset express their own moods through color, so the mood of spring, with its cold earth and moist air, is very different from the mood of fall, with its warm earth and cool, dry air. (6)
Children love colors and unite with the colors that flow toward them from their surroundings. Children's feelings are also strongly affected by colors, so that one color may produce a feeling of well-being while another calls up a feeling of discomfort. Because children are so much more receptive than adults, their experience of color is all the more intense.
In the first seven years the young child takes in everything with his total being; body, soul, and spirit are still united. The young child is completely open to experiences of color in the environment, and for this reason we need to create environments that reflect this sensitivity to good artistic qualities—colors, forms, wall decorations, sounds, and toys. This achieves a deeper effect than "art education" offered in a few spare hours.
The psychological effects of color on people are now being recognized and are beginning to be put into practice in places such as hospitals and mental institutions. When we consider the psychological effects of color on children, Steiner says that the complementary color must be taken into account up to the age of nine:
A "nervous," that is to say excitable child, should be treated differently as regards the environment from one who is quiet and lethargic. Everything comes into consideration, from the color of the room and the various objects that are generally around the child, to the color of the clothes in which he is dressed. . . . An excitable child should be surrounded by and dressed in red and reddish-yellow colors, whereas for a lethargic child one should have recourse to the blue or bluish-green shades of color. For the important thing is the complementary color, which is created within the child. In the case of red it is green, and in the case of blue, orange-yellow. (7)
I saw this phenomenon in my kindergarten when each day the largest, rowdiest boy would immediately head for the costume rack and put on a huge red satin shirt. When he had it on, he was somehow more settled within himself. I was unaware of the idea that the complementary color works more directly on the young child until I read about it in Steiner's writings. As adults we experience the phenomenon briefly if we stare at a bright red circle and see a green circle when we look away. According to Steiner, the inner experience of the complementary color is stronger for the young child than the experience of the external color; only in the course of time do children experience colors as grown-ups do.
Ordinarily we think of colors as attributes of objects. But to the inward vision of the soul, the essential natures of colors can be revealed. Goethe's Theory of Colours forms a basis for much of Steiner's writing on color. (8) Steiner states:
Goethe draws our attention to the feelings which the colors arouse in us. He points out the challenging nature of red, and his teaching is as much concerned with what the soul feels when it beholds red, as with what the eye sees. Likewise he mentions the stillness and contemplativeness which the soul feels in the presence of blue. We can present the colors to children in such a way that they will spontaneously experience the shades of feelings engendered by the colors, and will naturally feel the colors' inner life. (9)
Parents and teachers are therefore advised to let children live and work in the world of color, to immerse themselves in the feelings color engenders, as early as possible. In Painting with Children Brunhild Müller states, "Not only do children perceive the color but at the same time they sense its quality, they feel in themselves its intrinsic nature, and they are conscious of the non-material essential being of such color. This consciousness is lost as the child grows older, and by the time children go to school, they experience colors as attributes of objects (the blue ball, the red roof and so on)." (10)
It is appropriate to expose the young child to activities such as painting and crayoning in a way that emphasizes the experience of color rather than approach these activities as "lessons" during which the child has to imitate the adult or achieve an end product or finished form. Such experiences of art are valuable for the young child as pure color experiences. Such experiences can also lead to abilities that can be transformed throughout the child's life.
WATERCOLOR PAINTING WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
One of the best experiences of color for the young child comes through painting with watercolors on wet paper. Colors are in their own true element in water. Their waving, shimmering, and streaming nature is manifest the moment they lose their heavy and earthy hardness. Rauld Russell, who wrote How to Do Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Painting and Teach Your Children, explains it thus:
A wet paper surface lends flowing movement to color. Color in a thin sea of water can move, mingle, change, lighten and darken, just like feelings and emotions. To fix all the richness of inner life, all the potentiality, into a rigid form with hard boundaries (as one would do in "dry" painting) can evoke "hardened" images of life. The application of wet-on-wet most truly corresponds to the soft, unfinished, still growing nature of the child. (11)
No one paints like kindergarten-aged children, because they are totally unself-conscious. If you are not familiar with children's paintings done in this wet-on-wet technique, two inexpensive books with color illustrations of such paintings are Painting with Children by Brunhild Müller and Echoes of a Dream by Susan Smith, both listed at the end of this chapter. You can easily do this kind of painting with your child, and the results are beautiful.
Supplies
The thought of stocking up at an art supply store may be intimidating to you, but you only need three tubes of color! In Waldorf early childhood programs we use only the primary colors red, yellow, and blue, which allow an infinite number of other colors to appear on the paper under the child's excited gaze. Russell reminds us that "because watercolor painting reaches into the deep psychobiological processes that affect a child's growth, for a very young child you will want to choose a bright medium lemon yellow, a cobalt or ultramarine blue, and a rose-crimson red. The purity of the color is essential." He recommends Stockmar, Grumbacher, Winsor Newton, or other artist-grade watercolors. Inexpensive acrylics will not work. (12)
It is also worthwhile to invest in some good-quality paper such as Grumbacher or Aquabee all-purpose paper or Strathmore 80- to 90-1b. painting paper. Less expensive paper will not bring out the luminous quality and intensity of the colors and will shred into paper-towel consistency before your child finishes a painting. Large sheets of paper are expensive but can be cut into four pieces, and you and your child only need to paint one picture each session. This kind of painting is special; it's not like covering as many sheets of copy paper as possible with paints from a box.
While you are at the store, buy yourself and your child a large flat brush (at least 3/4 of an inch wide) rather than a pointed brush. The flat brushes enable a greater experience of color and discourage outlining.
Other items you will need include:
Preparation
Starting to Paint
The first time you use these techniques with a young child, you can mix up just one color. Then, over the first several sessions, the child will experience what yellow, blue, and red have to tell him when each is used all by itself.
You will want to demonstrate for your child how to wipe the brush dry on the edge of the water jar and then on the sponge before it is dipped into the color so that later on greater control can be achieved.
When you introduce two colors, demonstrate how the paintbrush needs to be rinsed before changing colors. I often said something like, "Peter Paintbrush needs to take a bath and wash his hair before he puts on his new clothes. And he needs to dry his hair on the sponge first to see if it is clean." We would look at the sponge to see if it was clean, and if so, Peter would go into the next color. Wiping the rinsed brush on the sponge both tests for cleanness and removes excess water. That simple technique is all you need to teach during painting—you don't need to provide lessons or themes—but keep a watchful eye, as young children don't always remember to rinse their brushes. Simply let the child experience the colors as they unfold in his painting. Because young children are so imitative, it is best for you to do a similar kind of color painting without trying to bring form or meaning to it. Let your child lead you rather than the other way around.
When you start working with two colors, your child will be delighted to discover what happens when yellow plays with blue, for example. The children's experiences with color are alive and active when they paint in this way, so they will have had a living experience rather than an intellectual idea that "yellow and blue make green." Not having had the experience of such things myself as a child, I can recall being ten years old and trying to remember whether yellow and blue made green or blue and green made yellow. Children who paint in this way never have that intellectual dilemma!
Over the weeks you can introduce yellow and blue, yellow and red, and red and blue before you put out all three colors at once. You won't need more than the three primary colors until your child is in grade school. For suggestions on how this approach to painting can evolve with older children, see the books and DVDs listed at the end of this chapter. From a foundation of having experienced the colors, older children are gradually able to bring forms out of the colors, rather than trying to paint forms based on outlines like a coloring book.
Children's Experience of Painting
Three-year-olds are often satisfied with a single color, and they are finished painting only when their color jar is empty. If a three-year-old is given two or three colors at the start, he will probably paint the colors on top of, rather than next to, one another, and a muddy surface will result. But if you begin with a single color and only gradually add the second and the third, your child will soon learn to paint by laying the colors next to one another.
Four- and five-year-old children paint with the colors next to one another on the paper, and they will happily share their discoveries of the new colors or the forms that have appeared on their paper. Five- and six-year-olds will approach painting with more of a plan, just as they now approach free play with an idea of what they want to do. Before they dip their brushes into the first color, they often have an image of the color they want to use or an object, such as a tree, rainbow, or heart, that they want to paint. The watercolors and damp paper make it difficult to paint solid outlines, which is good for the further development of the child's fantasy forces. Many times when the children add a new color to the already started form, they will have a new sense association that will interact with the fantasy. These older children will gladly tell you or another child something about their picture, such as which color they especially like or what content they discover in the painted picture.
Be receptive to any comments your child makes, but refrain from asking, "What is it?" or "What does it mean?" The child has had a color experience that may or may not result in any completed forms. Also, it is better to praise the beauty of the colors or the nature of their interaction rather than the artist. This postpones self-consciousness and the element of judgment.
A child who is precocious or "overly awake" can be helped by the fluid qualities of painting. According to von Heydebrand, "Color surfaces or waves of color flowing into each other, not strengthening or crystallizing into too hardened forms, bring the over-precocious child or too clever child back into the right condition of the more dreamy atmosphere of childhood." (13)
Once you have already put any favorite paintings on display on the refrigerator or walls, you will soon have a growing stack of colorful paintings that you can use for other purposes, such as birthday invitations, place cards, gift wrapping, crowns, book covers, or origami figures. Even those paintings that don't appear very interesting often have areas where the colors flow beautifully and that can be cut into wondrous things.
METAMORPHOSIS IN LATER STAGES OF LIFE
In addition to being a wonderful activity, there are other benefits of painting. When a child finds the colors used in this way as true to his own inner experience and being and then finds them again in nature, he will look at them with more sensitivity to the interplay of light and color. Even if it is not his destiny to become an artist, he will have a greater understanding and appreciation of the world, having been awakened to reverence.
There are other benefits less directly related to the artistic experience but still of great value in a person's life. These qualities in later life that were unconsciously influenced by the young child's experience of painting are discussed by Freya Jaffke in her article "About Painting and Human Development through Art." (14) For example, painting includes such processes as being careful, paying attention, waiting, following the course of the work, experiencing the laws of color mixing, and applying color in various strengths. Jaffke sees the following connections:
All of these activities give ever-renewed stimulus to the gradually awakening soul of the child, helping him to grasp his physical body and make his sense organization and his limbs ever more responsive. One who at an early age has learned to pay attention to the strength or delicacy of color and to gradations in applying it will later find it easier to apply the same soul capacities in social situations, for example in self-assertion and in acquiescence or in the ability to hold conversations in which he brings forth his own arguments and is yet receptive to the responses of his partner. In a similar way, the adult process of logical thinking is helped by the inner order in the sequence of the steps of painting. (15)
As Jaffke points out, "sequencing' is best learned by the young child through doing, not by talking about what we did first, second, and last. She writes:
Naturally, the child is not conscious of this. He does not reflect on what he is doing, but lives intensively in the activities. In this way he has experiences at deep levels which can wait there to be grasped by him consciously in later stages of life and to find expression in an ability to lead his own life. These effects reveal the true human justification for artistic endeavors in the preschool. Art is not an aesthetic add-on to "real life," but as an exercise of continual striving it can become the foundation of a truly human mastery of life. (16)
MODELING WITH BEESWAX
Another artistic activity your child will enjoy is modeling with colored beeswax. Beeswax has several advantages over clay. It smells nice, isn't messy, can be used over and over, and involves warmth, since the child must warm the beeswax with his hands before using it. Clay, on the other hand, is cold earth and tends to rob the body of warmth; for this reason, clay is often used with children over nine and beeswax with younger children. With a very young child or in cold weather, it may be too difficult for the child to soften the wax himself. In this case, it can be warmed a bit by your own efforts or by setting it next to a heater to give the child a head start.
The colored beeswax used in the Waldorf schools, which is available from Stockmar, makes a wonderful birthday present or holiday gift. To use it, warm a piece in your hands while your child does the same. This is a good time to tell a little story. Then start to make something. As with the other artistic activities, let your child make whatever comes to him without instruction. For preschool children, art is an expression of their inner experience, and it is inappropriate to try to make it conform to ideas imposed from the outside. Remembering the principle of imitation, do your beeswax modeling along with your child. I always found that by finishing last I was able to see the children's creations without them wanting to make what I had made, or wanting me to make the same thing for them! Very young children will simply enjoy the texture of beeswax, pinching and stretching it. As a fantasy element enters in, they will tell you what it is they have made (even though there may be no resemblance that you can discern). As they turn four and five they can become quite skilled and creative in what they make, and the figures can be placed on a little log in a special place to be played with or to wait until the next time they are warmed and transformed into something else.
MAKING THINGS WITH YOUR CHILDREN
Making things with your child or letting him imitate things he has seen you make are artistic activities that encourage creativity, dexterity, and aesthetic judgment. Because the preschool children often saw me sewing, they loved to work from their own sewing basket, and a couple of them made dolls that were much more creative than mine because they lacked a consciousness about how a doll "should" look. If you find yourself starting to make the dolls and toys suggested in this book, set up a sewing basket for your child. Imitating real work is one of a child's greatest delights.
Similarly, children love to embroider, at first using yarn with large plastic needles on burlap placed in embroidery hoops. In my program we were able to make designs on placemats, bookmarks, and "nature bags," which we used for gathering treasures on walks. The older children were able to use embroidery floss and sharp needles, and soon they learned how to safely handle the sharp scissors for making dolls.
You and your child can also make things out of bark, branches, and slices of logs, such as boats to sail, bird feeders, or doll furniture. The act of creation through the transformation of materials is one of the fundamentally human acts. Actually making something is so much more satisfying for children than cutting out shapes or fitting pegs into holes. Many wonderful ideas for craft projects can be found in the books listed at the end of this chapter.
FREEING YOUR OWN INNER ARTIST
One of the added benefits of doing these artistic activities with your children is that you can reclaim and nourish your own innate creative ability, which may have been squelched through lack of use or beliefs such as "I'm not good enough" or "I can't paint." One of the most exciting things about the LifeWays training and growing along with your child can be the rehabilitation of your own childhood and artistic ability.
Most of us, unless we had a Waldorf education, have probably managed to internalize the criticisms that our creative efforts received from those around us and have stopped having any kind of artistic or creative expression such as painting, writing, dancing, or singing. If you would prefer not to let your children have all the fun and want to unlock your own inner creativity, I highly recommend the approach outlined in The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron. She gives practical exercises and encouragement for attitude adjustments (which she calls "spiritual chiropractic") that can help harried parents and blocked artists alike reclaim their essential creativity.
Taking a little time for yourself not only can change your life, but it can also provide you with the creative and nurturing forces that you need for your parenting. According to Cameron, "A lot of times people think that art is decadent—they say, 'but what about all the starving people?' I say, if you are emotionally and creatively starved yourself, you don't have the sense of abundance necessary to be as helpful as you might be to others. If you are filling your own well, if you are caring for your own spirit, then you are able to effectively help others." The creative path goes well beyond creating art and into every moment of life itself. (17)
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Drawing and Painting
Craft Ideas to Do with Children
Sources for Watercolors, Beeswax Crayons, and Beeswax for Modeling
Nourishing Your Own Creativity
NOTES
Bibliography - You Are Your Child's First Teacher
How and why do children's drawings change over time, and what clues can your child's drawings give you about his or her development? A child often starts drawing before the age of two, either enthusiastically or tentatively grasping the pencil or crayon for the first time. But once he joyously discovers the potential of drawing, he will be delighted to color frequently and on any surface that presents itself! It has been shown that at whatever age within the first seven years that the child starts drawing, he will begin at the two-year-old scribbling stage. If the child is already past that age, he will go through all the early stages in rapid succession and stop at the motif corresponding to his own development. What are the stages and motifs you can watch for in your child's drawings? It will strengthen your appreciation for the being of your child when you observe his development as reflected in his drawings.
The following information is taken from the excellent book Understanding Children's Drawings, by Michaela Strauss, which is based on a lifetime of observations by her father, Hans Strauss, who left behind a collection of more than six thousand young children's drawings that he had assembled and annotated. (1)
Children's drawings can be roughly divided into three stages that are similar to the stages represented in their play. In the first phase, before the age of three, the child creates purely out of the movement that carries him. The process of creation arises in a dreamy way, out of the rhythms and movements coming from within his own body, so if you ask a very young child about his drawing, he will usually be unable to explain the content to you. In the second phase, between ages three and five, the child allows the arising picture to take hold of his imagination. While he draws he will tell you about the picture as it unfolds in front of him. After the fifth year, the child often approaches drawing with a definite idea or picture in mind: "I am going to draw my dog, Mitzy, chasing a rabbit."
Within each phase, certain motifs predominate, and the new ones don't appear until the child has reached the next developmental stage. For example, two types of movement dominate the drawings of children under three. These are a spiral movement and a perpendicular or vertical movement. At first the movements are very large, even larger than the paper, which barely seems to contain them. Strauss observed that until the age of three, spirals are always drawn from the outside in, only gradually forming a center that reflects the child's growing realization of self between the ages of two and three. The flash of ego consciousness is documented by the ability to draw the form of the circle, which, even if the child says "I" earlier on, rarely appears in drawings before the third year. It is also interesting to note that monkeys are quite good at drawing like young children—certainly their jumping and swinging give them an inward propensity toward movement and they have the interest and dexterity to use a crayon or brush—but they are unable to make a connected circle out of the spiral movements that they have in common with the child under three. (2)
Strauss suggests that the spiral movements of scribbling are echoes of the movements of the cosmos and of the flowing rhythms of the fluids within the young child's own body. Similarly, she suggests that the vertical element that appears along with the spiral one is an expression of the child's own recent experience of standing upright.
At the same time a child is able to form a circle, he will probably make crossed horizontal and vertical lines for the first time. Soon the cross will be drawn inside the circle, and circles will also be drawn with a dot inside them. Both examples reflect the child's first experiences of inner and outer in his increasing consciousness during the third year.
After the third year, the circle and crossed lines are fused into a unity, and they continue to appear in more diverse variations until the fifth year and beyond. However, changes continue to occur during this time. The point and the cross, having crystallized as "I" symbols, begin to transform and to radiate from the center outward. At first the radiating lines will stop at the edge of the circle, and then they reach out like feelers beyond the edge of the circle.
As the child continues to develop, trees and people are frequently drawn. Strauss shows how the forms of a tree and a human being are the same for a young child and represent his own changing awareness of his body. First the focus is on the head, with a trunk extending down from it (a floating tree or "pillar person"). It is not until the child is older that the legs become divided and firmly planted on the ground. Around the age of four the child's focal point shifts from the head to the trunk, and a ladder pattern emerges in children's drawings, like the branches of a tree or the branching of the spinal column and the ribs. For the first time drawings now have left-right orientation around an axis of symmetry, like the body around the backbone.
Children at this age also draw people with arms coming off of the head or with huge fingers, reflecting their increasing connection with the world: now they are reaching out and getting into everything. The feet, which take the longest time to be developed in drawings, are thick and heavy, rooted to the ground. The child draws the human being not as we see it, but as he experiences his own self and body. The inner life processes, not the external form, are the determining factors. (3)
The house is another theme through which the child represents his changing relationship between self and world. Drawings of a very young child often show a circle or "head person" inside a larger circle, like the child in the cosmos or the baby in the womb. As the close unity between the self and the world gives way to separate individuality, the spherical "cosmic" house becomes more square in form and anchored near the bottom of the paper. In the third year, the form of the square or box appears for the first time surrounding the person. The narrowing of the perception of cosmic realms through the acquiring of selfhood—the process of becoming an "I"—resembles an encapsulating of the soul. A child may draw a person looking out of the house, and the connections between inner world and outer world can be seen in the doors, windows, and chimneys that now begin to appear.
Using color as a new means of expression is added to the drawing of lines in the middle phase, at ages three to five. Before the third year the child tends to use color mostly to emphasize the line, but toward the fourth year children will draw color for its own sake. Strauss writes, "Touched by the nature of colour, the soul of the child becomes creative. When the world of feeling comes into drawing, the world of colour comes into it too." (4) Before the child uses color for drawing objects, he uses it in drawings to cover a surface, exploring the qualities of colors by filling in areas in a dramatic and somewhat symmetrical "checkerboard" fashion. It is just at this age that block crayons (described in the following section) enable the child to cover large surfaces and increase his color experience.
Around the age of five children will start making illustrative drawings and want to represent objects and scenes from life or stories. These narrative-illustrative drawings will start to wrestle with the elements of space and changing perspective. The profile of the face and the triangle both appear for the first time, and the triangle can become the focus of multicolored geometrical designs that kindergarten children love to make.
When elementary-school-aged children draw a tree and house, the forms look more as we have come to expect them to look, but close observation of such drawings can also reveal interesting things about the inner life of the older child. One very dreamy boy I knew never drew his people touching the ground, even as late as the second grade. And a kindergarten boy in my class drew a sad figure between two houses. He said that one was a house and one was a fire station, but from conversations with his mother I knew that his parents were divorcing and he was spending time with both his mother and father—a sad little boy feeling himself on the road between two homes.
The relationship of children's art to their developing consciousness parallels the developing consciousness of humanity as expressed in primitive art and its evolution over the centuries. Just as the first babbling of a baby is unconnected with particular racial or national characteristics, this first picture writing is also universally human. In this early period of the first seven years the language of symbols is the same the world over. Both Strauss's book and The Incarnating Child provide many illustrations of children's drawings, which can become another pathway to increasing your understanding of the changing consciousness of the young child.
Coloring with Block Crayons
Using block rather than stick crayons enables your child to cover an entire page with color with very little effort. By using the flat edges rather than the corners of the block crayons, the child can create bands of color rather than outlines. Within these broad bands of color, forms grow naturally. The yellow streams down and outward; the red is concentrated and strong; the blue gently curves and surrounds. Into these gestures of color spring forms, without demanding precision and intricacy.
When you make a picture in front of a young child, every breath, every thought, every peaceful, careful stroke you make feeds and instructs the child. A picture you carefully and lovingly make for your child is a gift on many levels. It need not be great art! If at night you make a picture for your child from her own experience of the days activities, with what wonder your child will wake up to this gift, just as the Rhyme Elves often left a little poem and drawing of important events for Sylvia in the Seven-year-Old Wonder-Book. (5) Such pictures can be kept in a special collection, perhaps in a special box or drawer.
You'll find your own appreciation of color and artistic ability increasing as you color and paint with your child. All children have innate artistic ability. If they are given watercolors rather than marking pens, if they can color on blank sheets of paper instead of "keeping within the lines," then this ability is more likely to remain alive and accessible to them throughout their lives.
The block crayons used in Waldorf schools are made of sweet smelling beeswax rather than paraffin and can be purchased through several online stores.
THE EXPERIENCE OF COLOR
Children have natural artistic ability that can easily go undeveloped or become stifled by inappropriate activities; this often results in frustration and beliefs such as "I can't draw." Helping your child's artistic ability unfold is a great gift you can give him. Though he will not necessarily grow up to be an artist, he will maintain a living relationship with color, will be able to appreciate the play of light and shadow with a sensitive eye, and will feel confident about expressing himself through some artistic medium and find enjoyment in the process.
The world of color is directly related to the way we feel. Colors affect our attitude to life and our moods, which are then expressed in colors. Even our speech reflects this relationship—"green with envy," "feeling blue," "livid with rage," "seeing red," "rose-colored glasses," "jaundiced view." You could say that the very substance of the world is color. Color is to the spiritual life what food, air, and water are to the physical life. As these nourish our bodies, so color nourishes the soul and spirit.
The world of nature is bathed in color. Color comes and goes seasonally, and indeed it does so each day with the coming and going of the light. Just as sunrise and sunset express their own moods through color, so the mood of spring, with its cold earth and moist air, is very different from the mood of fall, with its warm earth and cool, dry air. (6)
Children love colors and unite with the colors that flow toward them from their surroundings. Children's feelings are also strongly affected by colors, so that one color may produce a feeling of well-being while another calls up a feeling of discomfort. Because children are so much more receptive than adults, their experience of color is all the more intense.
In the first seven years the young child takes in everything with his total being; body, soul, and spirit are still united. The young child is completely open to experiences of color in the environment, and for this reason we need to create environments that reflect this sensitivity to good artistic qualities—colors, forms, wall decorations, sounds, and toys. This achieves a deeper effect than "art education" offered in a few spare hours.
The psychological effects of color on people are now being recognized and are beginning to be put into practice in places such as hospitals and mental institutions. When we consider the psychological effects of color on children, Steiner says that the complementary color must be taken into account up to the age of nine:
A "nervous," that is to say excitable child, should be treated differently as regards the environment from one who is quiet and lethargic. Everything comes into consideration, from the color of the room and the various objects that are generally around the child, to the color of the clothes in which he is dressed. . . . An excitable child should be surrounded by and dressed in red and reddish-yellow colors, whereas for a lethargic child one should have recourse to the blue or bluish-green shades of color. For the important thing is the complementary color, which is created within the child. In the case of red it is green, and in the case of blue, orange-yellow. (7)
I saw this phenomenon in my kindergarten when each day the largest, rowdiest boy would immediately head for the costume rack and put on a huge red satin shirt. When he had it on, he was somehow more settled within himself. I was unaware of the idea that the complementary color works more directly on the young child until I read about it in Steiner's writings. As adults we experience the phenomenon briefly if we stare at a bright red circle and see a green circle when we look away. According to Steiner, the inner experience of the complementary color is stronger for the young child than the experience of the external color; only in the course of time do children experience colors as grown-ups do.
Ordinarily we think of colors as attributes of objects. But to the inward vision of the soul, the essential natures of colors can be revealed. Goethe's Theory of Colours forms a basis for much of Steiner's writing on color. (8) Steiner states:
Goethe draws our attention to the feelings which the colors arouse in us. He points out the challenging nature of red, and his teaching is as much concerned with what the soul feels when it beholds red, as with what the eye sees. Likewise he mentions the stillness and contemplativeness which the soul feels in the presence of blue. We can present the colors to children in such a way that they will spontaneously experience the shades of feelings engendered by the colors, and will naturally feel the colors' inner life. (9)
Parents and teachers are therefore advised to let children live and work in the world of color, to immerse themselves in the feelings color engenders, as early as possible. In Painting with Children Brunhild Müller states, "Not only do children perceive the color but at the same time they sense its quality, they feel in themselves its intrinsic nature, and they are conscious of the non-material essential being of such color. This consciousness is lost as the child grows older, and by the time children go to school, they experience colors as attributes of objects (the blue ball, the red roof and so on)." (10)
It is appropriate to expose the young child to activities such as painting and crayoning in a way that emphasizes the experience of color rather than approach these activities as "lessons" during which the child has to imitate the adult or achieve an end product or finished form. Such experiences of art are valuable for the young child as pure color experiences. Such experiences can also lead to abilities that can be transformed throughout the child's life.
WATERCOLOR PAINTING WITH YOUNG CHILDREN
One of the best experiences of color for the young child comes through painting with watercolors on wet paper. Colors are in their own true element in water. Their waving, shimmering, and streaming nature is manifest the moment they lose their heavy and earthy hardness. Rauld Russell, who wrote How to Do Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Painting and Teach Your Children, explains it thus:
A wet paper surface lends flowing movement to color. Color in a thin sea of water can move, mingle, change, lighten and darken, just like feelings and emotions. To fix all the richness of inner life, all the potentiality, into a rigid form with hard boundaries (as one would do in "dry" painting) can evoke "hardened" images of life. The application of wet-on-wet most truly corresponds to the soft, unfinished, still growing nature of the child. (11)
No one paints like kindergarten-aged children, because they are totally unself-conscious. If you are not familiar with children's paintings done in this wet-on-wet technique, two inexpensive books with color illustrations of such paintings are Painting with Children by Brunhild Müller and Echoes of a Dream by Susan Smith, both listed at the end of this chapter. You can easily do this kind of painting with your child, and the results are beautiful.
Supplies
The thought of stocking up at an art supply store may be intimidating to you, but you only need three tubes of color! In Waldorf early childhood programs we use only the primary colors red, yellow, and blue, which allow an infinite number of other colors to appear on the paper under the child's excited gaze. Russell reminds us that "because watercolor painting reaches into the deep psychobiological processes that affect a child's growth, for a very young child you will want to choose a bright medium lemon yellow, a cobalt or ultramarine blue, and a rose-crimson red. The purity of the color is essential." He recommends Stockmar, Grumbacher, Winsor Newton, or other artist-grade watercolors. Inexpensive acrylics will not work. (12)
It is also worthwhile to invest in some good-quality paper such as Grumbacher or Aquabee all-purpose paper or Strathmore 80- to 90-1b. painting paper. Less expensive paper will not bring out the luminous quality and intensity of the colors and will shred into paper-towel consistency before your child finishes a painting. Large sheets of paper are expensive but can be cut into four pieces, and you and your child only need to paint one picture each session. This kind of painting is special; it's not like covering as many sheets of copy paper as possible with paints from a box.
While you are at the store, buy yourself and your child a large flat brush (at least 3/4 of an inch wide) rather than a pointed brush. The flat brushes enable a greater experience of color and discourage outlining.
Other items you will need include:
- A set of three baby-food-sized jars for each painter
- Pint-sized jars for premixing and storing each color (you may need to store them in the refrigerator to keep them from spoiling)
- Sirnilar jars for rinsing brushes between colors (the advantage of jars over cans is that they don't rust, and the child can see the changing color of the water as he paints—fully as interesting as the painting itself)
- A wooden or Masonite board (16 x 20 x 1/4 inches), handy both for painting and for keeping the paintings horizontal so they don't run while drying
- A clean sponge for wiping off the wet paper before starting
- A sponge or cloth for each painter to wipe her brush on
- Smocks or painting shirts
Preparation
- Children love to help with the preparations for painting. Putting on your smock and getting out the materials will almost always produce a willing helper.
- Prepare the paper by cutting it to size (a two-year-old will need a smaller piece than a five-year-old). In the Waldorf early childhood programs we always round off the corners of the paper because the rounded form is more fluid and suitable for the young child than the square form. The rounded form also frees the children from painting around the outline of the paper, which many will do with a square sheet.
- Squeeze some color from the tube into your mixing jar and add water to dilute it to the consistency of a light syrup. You'll need more paint for yellow than you will for blue. Then put a small amount of this premixed color (a maximum of 1/2 inch) in each painting jar so little will be wasted if it becomes muddied or spilled. You can store the extra and refill the small jars as needed. Put the individual sheets in water to soak. A sink will do; a plastic tray is helpful if you have many children painting.
- Let your child help put the painting boards down and fill the water jars. Arrange the three paint jars on each board and give a dampened sponge to each painter to wipe her brush on. Keeping the brushes until everything else is ready will prevent enthusiasm from carrying everyone away prematurely.
- Now put a sheet of paper on the board and wipe it off with the sponge that is reserved for this purpose. If the paper is too wet, the colors will float away and dry into puddles. But don't wipe it too dry, either!
Starting to Paint
The first time you use these techniques with a young child, you can mix up just one color. Then, over the first several sessions, the child will experience what yellow, blue, and red have to tell him when each is used all by itself.
You will want to demonstrate for your child how to wipe the brush dry on the edge of the water jar and then on the sponge before it is dipped into the color so that later on greater control can be achieved.
When you introduce two colors, demonstrate how the paintbrush needs to be rinsed before changing colors. I often said something like, "Peter Paintbrush needs to take a bath and wash his hair before he puts on his new clothes. And he needs to dry his hair on the sponge first to see if it is clean." We would look at the sponge to see if it was clean, and if so, Peter would go into the next color. Wiping the rinsed brush on the sponge both tests for cleanness and removes excess water. That simple technique is all you need to teach during painting—you don't need to provide lessons or themes—but keep a watchful eye, as young children don't always remember to rinse their brushes. Simply let the child experience the colors as they unfold in his painting. Because young children are so imitative, it is best for you to do a similar kind of color painting without trying to bring form or meaning to it. Let your child lead you rather than the other way around.
When you start working with two colors, your child will be delighted to discover what happens when yellow plays with blue, for example. The children's experiences with color are alive and active when they paint in this way, so they will have had a living experience rather than an intellectual idea that "yellow and blue make green." Not having had the experience of such things myself as a child, I can recall being ten years old and trying to remember whether yellow and blue made green or blue and green made yellow. Children who paint in this way never have that intellectual dilemma!
Over the weeks you can introduce yellow and blue, yellow and red, and red and blue before you put out all three colors at once. You won't need more than the three primary colors until your child is in grade school. For suggestions on how this approach to painting can evolve with older children, see the books and DVDs listed at the end of this chapter. From a foundation of having experienced the colors, older children are gradually able to bring forms out of the colors, rather than trying to paint forms based on outlines like a coloring book.
Children's Experience of Painting
Three-year-olds are often satisfied with a single color, and they are finished painting only when their color jar is empty. If a three-year-old is given two or three colors at the start, he will probably paint the colors on top of, rather than next to, one another, and a muddy surface will result. But if you begin with a single color and only gradually add the second and the third, your child will soon learn to paint by laying the colors next to one another.
Four- and five-year-old children paint with the colors next to one another on the paper, and they will happily share their discoveries of the new colors or the forms that have appeared on their paper. Five- and six-year-olds will approach painting with more of a plan, just as they now approach free play with an idea of what they want to do. Before they dip their brushes into the first color, they often have an image of the color they want to use or an object, such as a tree, rainbow, or heart, that they want to paint. The watercolors and damp paper make it difficult to paint solid outlines, which is good for the further development of the child's fantasy forces. Many times when the children add a new color to the already started form, they will have a new sense association that will interact with the fantasy. These older children will gladly tell you or another child something about their picture, such as which color they especially like or what content they discover in the painted picture.
Be receptive to any comments your child makes, but refrain from asking, "What is it?" or "What does it mean?" The child has had a color experience that may or may not result in any completed forms. Also, it is better to praise the beauty of the colors or the nature of their interaction rather than the artist. This postpones self-consciousness and the element of judgment.
A child who is precocious or "overly awake" can be helped by the fluid qualities of painting. According to von Heydebrand, "Color surfaces or waves of color flowing into each other, not strengthening or crystallizing into too hardened forms, bring the over-precocious child or too clever child back into the right condition of the more dreamy atmosphere of childhood." (13)
Once you have already put any favorite paintings on display on the refrigerator or walls, you will soon have a growing stack of colorful paintings that you can use for other purposes, such as birthday invitations, place cards, gift wrapping, crowns, book covers, or origami figures. Even those paintings that don't appear very interesting often have areas where the colors flow beautifully and that can be cut into wondrous things.
METAMORPHOSIS IN LATER STAGES OF LIFE
In addition to being a wonderful activity, there are other benefits of painting. When a child finds the colors used in this way as true to his own inner experience and being and then finds them again in nature, he will look at them with more sensitivity to the interplay of light and color. Even if it is not his destiny to become an artist, he will have a greater understanding and appreciation of the world, having been awakened to reverence.
There are other benefits less directly related to the artistic experience but still of great value in a person's life. These qualities in later life that were unconsciously influenced by the young child's experience of painting are discussed by Freya Jaffke in her article "About Painting and Human Development through Art." (14) For example, painting includes such processes as being careful, paying attention, waiting, following the course of the work, experiencing the laws of color mixing, and applying color in various strengths. Jaffke sees the following connections:
All of these activities give ever-renewed stimulus to the gradually awakening soul of the child, helping him to grasp his physical body and make his sense organization and his limbs ever more responsive. One who at an early age has learned to pay attention to the strength or delicacy of color and to gradations in applying it will later find it easier to apply the same soul capacities in social situations, for example in self-assertion and in acquiescence or in the ability to hold conversations in which he brings forth his own arguments and is yet receptive to the responses of his partner. In a similar way, the adult process of logical thinking is helped by the inner order in the sequence of the steps of painting. (15)
As Jaffke points out, "sequencing' is best learned by the young child through doing, not by talking about what we did first, second, and last. She writes:
Naturally, the child is not conscious of this. He does not reflect on what he is doing, but lives intensively in the activities. In this way he has experiences at deep levels which can wait there to be grasped by him consciously in later stages of life and to find expression in an ability to lead his own life. These effects reveal the true human justification for artistic endeavors in the preschool. Art is not an aesthetic add-on to "real life," but as an exercise of continual striving it can become the foundation of a truly human mastery of life. (16)
MODELING WITH BEESWAX
Another artistic activity your child will enjoy is modeling with colored beeswax. Beeswax has several advantages over clay. It smells nice, isn't messy, can be used over and over, and involves warmth, since the child must warm the beeswax with his hands before using it. Clay, on the other hand, is cold earth and tends to rob the body of warmth; for this reason, clay is often used with children over nine and beeswax with younger children. With a very young child or in cold weather, it may be too difficult for the child to soften the wax himself. In this case, it can be warmed a bit by your own efforts or by setting it next to a heater to give the child a head start.
The colored beeswax used in the Waldorf schools, which is available from Stockmar, makes a wonderful birthday present or holiday gift. To use it, warm a piece in your hands while your child does the same. This is a good time to tell a little story. Then start to make something. As with the other artistic activities, let your child make whatever comes to him without instruction. For preschool children, art is an expression of their inner experience, and it is inappropriate to try to make it conform to ideas imposed from the outside. Remembering the principle of imitation, do your beeswax modeling along with your child. I always found that by finishing last I was able to see the children's creations without them wanting to make what I had made, or wanting me to make the same thing for them! Very young children will simply enjoy the texture of beeswax, pinching and stretching it. As a fantasy element enters in, they will tell you what it is they have made (even though there may be no resemblance that you can discern). As they turn four and five they can become quite skilled and creative in what they make, and the figures can be placed on a little log in a special place to be played with or to wait until the next time they are warmed and transformed into something else.
MAKING THINGS WITH YOUR CHILDREN
Making things with your child or letting him imitate things he has seen you make are artistic activities that encourage creativity, dexterity, and aesthetic judgment. Because the preschool children often saw me sewing, they loved to work from their own sewing basket, and a couple of them made dolls that were much more creative than mine because they lacked a consciousness about how a doll "should" look. If you find yourself starting to make the dolls and toys suggested in this book, set up a sewing basket for your child. Imitating real work is one of a child's greatest delights.
Similarly, children love to embroider, at first using yarn with large plastic needles on burlap placed in embroidery hoops. In my program we were able to make designs on placemats, bookmarks, and "nature bags," which we used for gathering treasures on walks. The older children were able to use embroidery floss and sharp needles, and soon they learned how to safely handle the sharp scissors for making dolls.
You and your child can also make things out of bark, branches, and slices of logs, such as boats to sail, bird feeders, or doll furniture. The act of creation through the transformation of materials is one of the fundamentally human acts. Actually making something is so much more satisfying for children than cutting out shapes or fitting pegs into holes. Many wonderful ideas for craft projects can be found in the books listed at the end of this chapter.
FREEING YOUR OWN INNER ARTIST
One of the added benefits of doing these artistic activities with your children is that you can reclaim and nourish your own innate creative ability, which may have been squelched through lack of use or beliefs such as "I'm not good enough" or "I can't paint." One of the most exciting things about the LifeWays training and growing along with your child can be the rehabilitation of your own childhood and artistic ability.
Most of us, unless we had a Waldorf education, have probably managed to internalize the criticisms that our creative efforts received from those around us and have stopped having any kind of artistic or creative expression such as painting, writing, dancing, or singing. If you would prefer not to let your children have all the fun and want to unlock your own inner creativity, I highly recommend the approach outlined in The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron. She gives practical exercises and encouragement for attitude adjustments (which she calls "spiritual chiropractic") that can help harried parents and blocked artists alike reclaim their essential creativity.
Taking a little time for yourself not only can change your life, but it can also provide you with the creative and nurturing forces that you need for your parenting. According to Cameron, "A lot of times people think that art is decadent—they say, 'but what about all the starving people?' I say, if you are emotionally and creatively starved yourself, you don't have the sense of abundance necessary to be as helpful as you might be to others. If you are filling your own well, if you are caring for your own spirit, then you are able to effectively help others." The creative path goes well beyond creating art and into every moment of life itself. (17)
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Drawing and Painting
- Analyzing Children's Art, by Rhoda Kellogg (Mayfield).
- "Coloring with Block Crayons," by Sieglinde de Francesca. DVD available from www.waldorfinthehome.com.
- Echoes of a Dream, by Susan Smith (Waldorf School Association of London). Available used from Amazon.
- Painting in Waldorf Education, by Dick Bruin and Attie Lichthart. Available from www.awsna.org.
- Painting with Children, by Brunhild Müller (Floris).
- Understanding Children's Drawings, by Michaela Strauss (Rudolf Steiner Press).
- "Watercolor Painting: Color Experience and Developing Form," by Kelly Morrow. DVD available from www.waldorfinthehome.com.
Craft Ideas to Do with Children
- The Children's Year, by Stephanie Cooper et al. (Hawthorn).
- The Christmas Craft Book, by Thomas Berger (Floris).
- Earthways: Simple Environmental Activities for Young Children, by Carol Petrash (Gryphon House).
- Echoes of a Dream, by Susan Smith (Waldorf School Association of London). Available used from Amazon.
- Festivals, Family and Food, by Diana Carey and Judy Large (Hawthorn).
- The Harvest Craft Book, by Thomas Berger (Floris).
- Toymaking with Children, by Freya Jaffke (Floris).
Sources for Watercolors, Beeswax Crayons, and Beeswax for Modeling
- Nova Natural (www.novanatural.com)
- Palumba (wvvw.palumba.com)
- Paper, Scissors, Stone (www.waldorfsupplies.com)
- A Toy Garden (www.atoygarden.com)
- Weir Dolls and Crafts (www.weirdollsandcrafts.com)
Nourishing Your Own Creativity
- The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, by Julia Cameron (Tarcher/Putnam). Plenty of practical exercises to explore your inner landscape and free your creativity in all fields.
- The Vein of Gold, by Julia Cameron (Tarcher/Putnam). A journey to your creative heart.
NOTES
- Michaela Strauss, Understanding Children's Drawings (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1978).
- Ibid., pp. 22, 29.
- Ibid., p. 47.
- Ibid., p. 62.
- Isabel Wyatt, Seven-year-Old Wonder-Book (San Rafael, CA: Dawn-Leigh Publications, 1978).
- Rauld Russell, "Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Painting," Mothering, Summer 1987, p. 89.
- Steiner, The Education of the Child, p . 27.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Theory of Colours (Totowa, NJ: Biblio Distribution Center, 1967).
- Rudolf Steiner, Practical Advice for Teachers (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1970), p. 11.
- Brunhild Müller, Painting with Children (Edinburgh, UK: Floris Books, 1987), p. 11.
- Russell, "Wet-on-Wet Watercolor Painting," p. 90.
- Ibid., p. 89.
- Caroline von Heydebrand, "The Child When He Paints," in Education as an Art: Rudolf Steiner and Other Writers, ed. Paul M. Allen (Blauvelt, NY: SteinerBooks/Multimedia Publishing, 1970), p. 86.
- Freya Jaffke, "About Painting and Human Development through Art," translated from Plan und Praxis des Waldorfkindergartens and printed in the Waldorf Kindergarten Newsletter, Fall 1984.
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1992), p. 35.
Bibliography - You Are Your Child's First Teacher