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Thursday, January 26, 2017

Waldorf art classes for kids: Watercolour painting & crochet

We started our second round of Waldorf-inspired art classes for kids today.  We have been looking forward to meeting all the new children, and reacquainting with the returning ones.  These classes allow the children to explore a variety of art mediums and techniques, using simple classic handcrafting processes, and natural materials.  Today's session for the Young Acorns (ages 4-6) was wet-on-wet watercolour painting, the classic Waldorf tradition of exploring simple colours using wide brushes, simple lines, and wet paper as the base.  The colours run unexpectedly, and blend beautifully. We explored spring themes (even though we are only at the tail end of January), since there is grass showing outside and all our snow has melted (for now) - so yellow and green were our colours today.  The children talked about what those colours represented to them (e.g. sun, dandelions, joyfulness).

The Green Saplings (ages 7-12) also had the chance to try out crochet.  We started with "finger crochet", a basic cord without using crochet hooks, so that everyone could get familiar with the pattern of repeated loops.  Then those who felt ready moved on to using the crochet hooks to create long chains, headbands, bracelets.  The repeated pattern of crochet is simple enough for kids to learn in a few minutes.  Crochet can even feel meditative, and the room felt very peaceful as everyone worked steadily at their creations.  We also love knowing that these classes offer kids practical skills for their life - for example using crochet or knitting to make a warm scarf, wool felting slippers or toys, sewing clothing for themselves, wood working skills to use toward building a house someday, and so on.












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