Main Lesson Books and Form Drawing

This was the week that the first graders began their first main lesson block, Form Drawing. Form Drawing is a precursor to writing and gives students the opportunity to practice using their new block crayons (presented in their very own beautiful crayon pouches sewn by parent volunteers), strengthens hand-eye coordination, and supports the integration of the right and left side of the brain. Even if students already know how to write their letters, Form Drawing is a very important subject in the Waldorf curriculum and continues all the way through eighth grade, where students eventually draw intricate Celtic knots. Form Drawing develops spatial orientation, inner visualization and observation. The very first lesson in Form Drawing is focused on the straight line and the curved line. We talk about these two forms and how everything in this world is made up of straight lines and curves. Later on, these straight lines and curves will help the children with their writing and drawing.

Here are some Form Drawing examples from multiple grades:

http://www.waldorftoday.com/gallery/Form+Drawing/

As the first main lesson block begins, each child also begins to create his/her own main lesson book, which showcases the hard work that he/she is doing each day during main lesson. At the end of the year, you will be presented with a handful of these wonderful books that were created by your child. 

This week, we started working with the primary colors and talked about how powerful and special red, yellow and blue really are. When these colors play together, something magical happens; other colors are born. On Tuesday, the children discovered green by combining blue and yellow, and today red and yellow were layered on top of each other to create orange. 

Also....our little golden fish made out of beeswax!