Watercolor & Meditation w/ The Middle Grades

As winter approaches the kids (mine and the ones who come for Waldorf Enrichment) have been both more meditative in many ways but also more physically energetic! So we have been outdoors a lot but when we come in their favorite activities seem to be painting and bread-making. There is a meditative comfort in these two activities that seems to go so well with the colder months.

And as the kids become older they are not always guided by the stories and verses but sometimes simply guided by their inspirations and their heart. As the kids grow from the early childhood years into the age of awareness of themselves and others I take some time each week for them to express themselves in watercolor AND in writing without being guided by story, verse or lesson. Children in the middle grades enter a world of intellectual depth and insight. At this stage, when they aspire to problem-solving and knowledge, students are challenged with great philosophical ideas, the precision of mathematics, and the beauty of ensemble music. Some time of individual meditative expression is helpful during this period. Part of the reason I do this is to help them to learn how to take time to meditate through the activities they are doing.

At this stage in life children have often been shuttled into a way of life that can involve too many activities and a lot of intense schooling - a lot of head work. Having them sit down and meditate while they watercolor - either to nature or music - is a way for me to help them balance that "Heart" nature with their head and hands and to help keep that element strong in their lives. This is the age when a lot of schooling starts to take the heart out of things and keep the kids occupied in their head and their hands only.

So this week we decided to take inspiration from nature instead of from stories or verses for our watercolors. The kids collected their favorite leaves and I asked them to reproduce them onto their watercolor papers. I was very clear to them that "re-produce" only meant the mood, the colors, what the leaves evoked in them and that they did not have to draw the leaf itself unless they wanted to.

I am always amazed at how insightful and spiritual and artistic the kids can be. The pictures below are some of what they came up with when working with the leaves...

Earth Day - Green Watercoloring & Picnics

What a wonderful Earth Day! It is our second "real" day of spring this year - so we brought our classroom outside and snacktime too! We decided to see what we could do with just the color green and just enjoyed the sun!

Waldorf Purists Cover Your EYES!

Waldorf Purists Cover Your EYES!

Ok, if any Waldorf purist might have a few words to say about this but I decided that we needed a "quick" way to do some watercolor painting as well as the "meditative wonderful dreamy" way. So I took some of the elements of "set-up" and "processs" and improvised a bit. What I came up with is a Waldorf-INSPIRED way of doing water-color that is great when: A. You have kids over that don't do a lot of water color painting B. You don't have a large space to work in C. You don't have paintboards or a place to put your drying paintings C. You are feeling stressed and you want to paint but you want to make it a little easier...so here it goes:

1. Use smaller sheets of water-color paper - 8" x 10" and remember to round the edges!

2. Clip these sheets to a wooden clipboard (you can get these anywhere - office supply stores, etc...)

3. Put a big bowl of water in the middle of the table and put a large paintbrush in the bowl.

4. Instead of using a sponge to get the water on the paper or instead of pre-soaking the paper, have the child stroke the large brush across the paper until it is soaked. This also helps them practice their brush technique and is very relaxing!

5. Once the paper is soaked then take the "raw" watercolors and "dot" the color where you want to start painting. They can spread out the color from there. Remember, the paper has to be VERY WET for this to work!

Have fun! You can just dry the paintings on the clipboard - it works great!

Sharing our Waldorf Enrichment Day :)

I had four Montessori students come over yesterday to share our day with us. They were here from 8am-3pm and we had so much fun. My favorite comment of the day was by the little four-year-old who looked at me while we were making lunch and said, 'Miss Kristie, why are we having so much fun here today?'

Since they don't come over every day we did a little Chinese New Year - Winter Cold inspired lesson. We did a lot of cooking and baking (a great winter activity!) and I told a story about Dragon Stew. Then the kids (having been here before) asked "Oh! Can we do a play about the story?" I really had not planned on it - but they were really into the idea and they already knew what role they wanted in the play so we spent another half hour doing a "play"! What I do for this type of "play" is that I tell the story again but I pause as often as I can and leave out as much as I can (like a narrator and a bit more sometimes) so the kids can have a chance to act out and say their parts. Depending on which child is in the role I will leave out more or less. Some kids really get into the improvisation in this!

We also did some watercolor paintings of dragon flames which everyone enjoyed. It was an easy enough project for the four-year-old but also interesting enough for the 11-year old.

Well, it is said that pictures say 1000 words so I will leave the rest of our day to the pictures above!

Blessings & Health,
Kristie