Book review: Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools

Painting and Drawing in Waldorf Schools: Classes 1-8 by Thomas Wildgruber

This is a book I've been wanting to write a review on for a couple of years.  I first stumbled upon it at the Goetheanum bookstore in Switzerland with my good friend Cari.  One look inside the book and we were both immediately smitten.  It didn't matter that the text was in German or that its purchase price was enough to choke a horse-- we both HAD to have it.

Early this summer it was released in English, and I hemmed and hawed about whether or not I needed a copy of it that I didn't have to translate.  The pre-order price at The Book Depository made it worthwhile though-- a mere pittance compared to what my German copy cost me.  So I winced only slightly before clicking the order button, and I'm so happy that I did, because while most of it is exactly the same, some things and images are different.  Plus, it saves me the time and effort of translating.

Let me repeat myself.  This book is so good that I bought it TWICE.

It's a wonderful guide to every type of painting and drawing experienced within Waldorf education.  Almost every section contains step-by-step guides and thoughtful commentary.  The pictures alone are so inspiring.  This is the book I had wished for when I started homeschooling Sunburst so many years ago and had only the vaguest idea what main lesson artwork should look like.

This is the book we've been waiting for.

Included in this masterpiece are the beginning painting lessons-- the ones that leave most of us homeschoolers with our heads spinning.  It goes on to give a wealth of painting examples for the main lessons in grades 2-5.  As a busy homeschooler teaching three grades, there are not enough hours in the day to do this many paintings.  But I love that they exist.  I love being able to flip though the book and pick and choose a few ideas to bring here and there.  Some ideas I change because that's the nature of art, and others I bring as is because they are just that good.

One major thing this book has done for us is to re-enliven our form drawing.  Form drawing is actually presented very differently in Europe than in the United States.  Okay, I don't know if I can honestly say "all of Europe," but I can definitively say that the main lesson books I saw when I toured the Steiner schools in Switzerland were filled with very colorful form drawings, not much different from the ones in Wildgruber's book.

Here's an example from our own form drawing lessons so you can see what I mean.

It's the same drawing, and yet it looks so much more impressive, inviting, and exciting.  Shaded with rich contrasting colors it becomes this palpable thing.  For those of us who were introduced to form drawing as practiced in the states, this is like a free pass.  There is no need to wait for freehand geometry in fifth grade to make form drawing look this beautiful.  And it helps my children to fill in the enclosed spaces so they can really grasp the feeling-- did they create balance?

Other sections of this book that I particularly love for the lower grades are the botany paintings and the drawing section with inspired artwork to display in the classroom.  If only I could draw this well!  The author goes so far as to recommend that children will learn more from our guided drawing examples on paper than from our use of blackboards.  I have noticed this to be true with my own children, and it is so nice to hear someone say this.

For the middle grades, I love that there are several wonderful explorations of light and shadow using different mediums.  And as if the book wasn't already useful enough, the entire section on perspective drawing is priceless.

But you shouldn't take my word for it.  To see all that's on offer here, you should have a look at the Table of Contents which is available as a pdf download HERE.  And then take a look at some of the images included in the book gallery HERE.  (Note, some of these images have been replaced by even better ones in the English translation.)

I absolutely adore this book.  I could go on and on.  There is one series of exercises that Sunburst and I attempted over the summer that really lifted our work in so many ways.  I look forward to sharing some of our drawings with you in the next few days, so I hope you'll come back for that.

Now if only we had a book like this for the high school grades...  Yes, I can dream!

The last two weeks

Fables and heroes - finishing up second grade work with Moonshine:

Hiawatha




The Peacock and the Nightingale/Peacock and the Crow -- I combined the two, and they went together very nicely:




We all painted peacocks together, but Moonshine's came out the best.




The Sun and the Wind:






Studying the Greek gods and goddesses with Sunburst:

Oh, what a joy Ancient Greek mythology is! The timing really seems to be perfect for her-- I'm so glad we waited for fall and didn't try to cram it in before summer holidays.





We covered the whole set of Greek gods/goddesses. Not all of them made it on the chalkboard. All of them did make it onto paper. Here's just a little taste. The first one is mine, the next two are Sunburst's drawings. The poems were a joint effort.









Sometimes Kitty Bill comes and copies my drawings off the chalkboard. He's almost five. Here are his renderings of Hiawatha and Apollo... notice he didn't draw Artemis?!





With thoughts of a bow and arrow he made a short leap to Robin Hood. He made sure to write the name on the chalkboard because I had written Apollo's name. Sunburst wrote the letters down for him, as he requested, and then he copied them onto the board. Very cute.





We have these lovely, very simple Robin Hood readers from Rosie Earnshaw that we picked up for Moonshine in Sherwood Forest last summer. Can you see the striking resemblance to Kitty Bill's drawing?



With bows and arrows on his mind, Kitty Bill went outside and promptly made a set from branches he pulled off the tree. It worked, somewhat, so Sunburst rushed in and showed him how to make a proper bow and arrow set. Apparently you have to bend the branch as you tie the string on so it will stay taut. Between the two of them I have seen enough "arrows" whizzing through the house to last me a very long time. The phrase "not in the house" doesn't seem to register... I'm starting to think they don't speak English anymore. Perhaps they only speak warrior now?

Week of lions... and Greece!

Last week, to meet Moonshine's request of more "boy saints," I presented her with a story about St. Jerome and the lion. I wrote her a flute song based on this story, and I was so glad that it was such a hit because I had planned a whole week of lions.



I also mentioned last week that Moonshine is trying out some new behavioral territory. Could it be the nine-year-change approaching already? I'm hesitant to label it as such, but I do know that it's making us all crazy, herself included. She's being antagonistic to everyone and she's not sleeping well. It's a dangerous combination... and well, she rather is like a lion.

I carried over the heart theme from last week, and challenged Moonshine with a poem I wrote just for her. She copied it into her copy book, memorized it, and recited it--- all with great joy! And because she's insisting to write things phonetically and without help, I pulled some words from the poem and challenged her to her very first spelling quiz. She was so excited!! She remembered every single word, and she can't wait for her next quiz.

The poem was very simple, but the message is also very clear:

Fill my heart
with gladness.
Fill my heart
with joy.
Fill my heart
with love
For every girl and boy.

Fill my heart
with kindness.
Fill my heart
with care.
Fill my heart
with tender thoughts
For creatures everywhere.

To extend the heart theme, I invited the kids to watercolor-paint some hearts. Then to extend our lion theme, I went ahead and pulled from my second grade materials and told the story of the Lion and the Mouse. It was a good reminder of kindness as well. --Those of you who have Teaching With the Fables by Sieglinde de Francesca will recognize my attempt to recreate the picture from the cover of her lovely, lovely book.








Sunburst and I worked on Greece, Greece, and more Greece. And math, of course. I also tossed another wondrous geometrical form her way, shown at the top of this post. She is lapping it up.

This is our rendition of Helios and the sun chariot with Prometheus stealing fire to give to the humans:





We also worked together to copy out the amazing family tree from the front of D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths. It was a challenge, for sure, but we worked at it little by little over the last two weeks, and it's already helping us to keep all the Greek mythological gods and goddesses sorted. Greece is definitely a lot of fun!

Back to lessons

Last week we got back to lessons. I didn't anticipate how busy we would be, nor that the girls were going to have their own ideas about how things should go, so it was a bit hodge-podge. Despite what I had planned, Moonshine desperately wanted to add Saint Catherine of Siena to her saints book. In fact, her only other request was, "Please, can we do more saints!"

I wasn't planning on doing any this year! We had saved the last few pages in her book for memorabilia from our trips (pictures, postcards, bookmarks, pamphlets), but instead, she wanted to do some more "boy saints." Apparently I didn't give the boys fair coverage in our block this past spring. It's a good thing I still had a few more up my sleeve!

I finally found chalkboard paint this summer, repainted my boards which were in terrible shape, and got them hung back up. It had been so long since I had drawn on the chalkboard, so I was happy to put up my rendition of Saint Catherine gazing at the sunset. Moonshine took one look at it and declared, "Oh, that's just how I imagined it!" ... Whew!



I drew Sunburst a geometric form to wonder about (yes, the heart in the middle is covering up my imperfections... but it's also serving as a reminder to put our hearts into everything we do-- an important reminder, especially given some new behaviors Moonshine is trying out). With chalkboard drawings up and stories to tell, we were off and running.



We also reviewed some math and worked in two German lessons-- I'm trying out a new approach this year, and it seemed to be a big hit. Yay! We also worked in some reading practice, copywork/memorization, and quite a bit of handwork. All that and full afternoons, too!

All in all, it was a good first week.

Saint Elizabeth Dobro Blues

There's something infectious about songs in this family. All it takes is one person to hum a bar, and someone else picks up the tune and carries it around with them. Usually it's Kitty Bill. But any one of us is susceptible to the draw of melody. Even Einstein.

There's something very cool when a Dad picks up a song his child is learning and plays around with it. I think it gives a child more confidence in a way, more respect for what they're learning-- after all, music is cool! Especially when Einstein plays it. The kids always get a kick out of it.

I don't know quite what else to say about this, just that I have to share it with you. This is our Saint Elizabeth song morphed and played by Einstein on a homemade dobro. It makes me smile every time I hear it.

Songs for Saints/Heroes

So... I wrote a bunch of songs when Moonshine and I were doing her unit study/block of the saints for Grade 2. I felt having music to go with this block really enlivened the experience for us, and she absolutely loved every minute of it.

I've got a whole pile of them here, and I've been trying to figure out the best way to share them with you so that if you want to use them in your own lessons, you would have both the sheet music and a sample to listen to. I think I've got it figured out.

As of today I have my own little channel on YouTube and my very first video (huge learning curve for me!). Moonshine was quite eager to have her flute playing and vocals recorded for the experience. Anyway, I hope you like it. And if you would like to hear more of our songs, please let me know and we'll try to put more up soon.

Also, if you use it to enliven your own homeschooling lessons, I'd love to hear about it.

More St. Catherine

I just unearthed the brochure we picked up at Santa Caterina's house and sanctuary. Since a couple of you were going to share pictures with your kids, I thought you might want to see what the inside looks like.

Above is a picture I took of the outside. The rest of the pictures are taken from the brochure, so they're a little grainy. But I think you can get the gist.

From the brochure:

"Since the time of St. Catherine, the House has gradually been turned into a series of Oratories and Chapels which are filled with reminders of the Saint and paintings glorifying the Patroness of Italy."

There are four different Oratories or chapels. They're built where the kitchen, wool dyeing plant, bedroom, and kitchen garden used to be. This is the room we saw... I think it's the old wool dyeing room, but I'm really not sure.




This is another Oratory, perhaps the Kitchen Oratory:






The Church of the Crucifix (kitchen garden):



St. Catherine received the stigmata in 1375 apparently while praying in front of this crucifix, painted by Giunta Pisano, in Pisa. (A quick google images search of this painter turns up some fascinating and inspiring images for Grade 2 saints work.)

And the fresco ceiling in the Church of the Crucifix:



I hope I'm not breaking any copyright laws by sharing these. I did actually purchase the brochure in the gift shop, if that helps any. There aren't any photographers credited on it, so I will just put out a huge universal thank you to whomever took these pictures. You are now a source of inspiration to the Waldorf-inspired homeschoolers everywhere. --Thank you!!

Viva Italia: Day 3 - Siena

We really didn't mean to stay all day in Siena, but once we got there we couldn't help ourselves. It was wonderful!

Here's the view from the parking area:



That's the tower from the Cathedral of Siena in the background. The church you see on the left is San Domenico. And here's one a bit closer where you can start to make out the marbled-stripes of the cathedral:



From here we descended into the city. And the views were spectacular.






The town was smaller, and the streets were even more narrow here than in Florence. There were so many medieval walkways and alcoves -- you could literally lose yourself there!














In one alcove we discovered this-- and we're still not sure what the place is, but the well seemed to be a big deal:





By then we were starving, so we convinced the pizzeria at the edge of the Piazza del Campo, the historical town square, to make us a vegan pizza. Then we sat around the piazza people watching and munching our delicious lunch. Here's the Piazza del Campo and the town hall, the Palazzo Pubblico:









Look closely at that last picture-- there's a she-wolf suckling some human babes. This was a common sculpture in Italy. It's called the Capitoline Wolf, and the babes are supposed to be Remus and Romulus-- this will come in handy for our Grade 6 studies of Ancient Rome.

We finally made it to the exquisite Cathedral of Siena, and it rose up like a giant zebra in the midst of the old city:





You can see the nice details here, while Einstein ponders the map and Kitty Bill (who would now prefer to be called something like "Rocket boy" on my blog) sits on the post and whines about how tired he is of walking around. "Can we PLEASE get some gelato??" --They actually had vegan gelato at some shops in Italy, so it was a reasonable request.



Inside the Cathedral it looks like this postcard here:




Before acquiescing to the gelato demands, we stopped at bought some fruit at this stand here-- truly an example of picture perfect Italy:



Also on offer every few feet was beautiful, painted pottery showing off a perfect landscape of Italy... which we did not buy:




After wandering around town a bit I kept seeing signs for Santa Caterina. We followed them and found ourselves at the home of St. Catherine of Sienna, the other patron saint of Italy. This was not a saint that Moonshine had studied this year, but it was one I had read in my prep work. I told her what I remembered, and we sat in the wee little chapel they had created there and gazed at the pictures. It was a very sweet place (unfortunately I can't show you as we weren't allowed to take photographs). We then popped over to the adjoining gift shop and Moonshine picked out some postcards of Santa Caterina as well as a rosary and starter booklet. She had been seeing rosaries everywhere in Italy, and she was very curious about the whole thing. She found the rose smell enchanting and wore it around her neck for three days before I noticed it was giving her a rash-- probably the rose-scented oil?

Here's a peek at St. Catherine's house:






Apparently they give tours of Saint Catherine's house, but it didn't appear to be open when we went. This was a common theme we ran into, but we were happy enough with what we saw. Siena is such a beautiful city, it's hard to leave there feeling anything but contented.

Out of all the lovely things to see, the thing I loved best about Siena was the laundry hanging out the windows of these really old buildings. Did you ever think laundry could look so beautiful?!?









We had to be in Rome the next day to meet up with an old, dear friend of mine from high school/college days... so next stop: Roma!