Form Drawing Program PDF
Form Drawing Program PDF
Form Drawing Program PDF
• Form Drawing for the Homeschooling Parent – from Waldorf Without Walls
Ask Kyta
An important thing to remember when presenting form drawing is that the form which
appears on the paper is in fact a crystallization of the movement made by the person
drawing the form. It's very important then to make sure you draw the form in a
sequence of physical movements before you sit down to draw the form on paper. Miss
Michelle, first grade Waldorf teacher suggests that you do the following:
Additional suggestions –
trace the form on the ground with your foot
trace it on your partner’s back
trace the form with your finger in a tray of sand
For practice work use LARGE sheets of newsprint and stick beeswax crayons
The First Day – see also Eric Fairman’s Path of Discovery, volume 1 grade 1
It is very important part for first grade teachers to make sure that before they attempt
any form drawing lessons the children can understand and differentiate between a
straight and a curved line. Many movement games and exercises allow the children to
experience these two core forms. The straight line usually represents the human being,
standing straight and tall. When a child understands this the teacher introduces the
curved line - usually by making an arch with her arm, swinging it above, below, in front,
behind, to the left and to the right. The curved line represents the world around us.
Children really need to fully grasp this sense before they attempt writing/drawing forms.
Additionally, the children should be doing a series of movements - first of all asked to
stand straight with their arms raised straight above their heads - long and tall. Let them
really understand the concept of "straight". The same is equally important when learning
about the curved line. A wonderful tool for drawing curved lines is a ribbon stick.
"It is thoroughly unnatural to require a child during the sixth or seventh year to
merely copy the signs that we, in this advanced stage of civilization, now use for reading
and writing. If you consider the letters we now use for reading and writing, you will
realize that there is no connection between these letters and what a child of seven is
naturally disposed to do. Remember, that when human beings first began to write they
used painted or drawn signs that reproduced things or occurrences in the surrounding
world. Or they wrote from will impulses, so that forms of writing expressed processes of
the will - cuneiform characters, for example. Today's entirely abstract form of letters,
which the eye must gaze at or the hand form, arose from picture writing. When we
confront a young child with such letters, we are bringing something alien, something
that in no way conforms to the child's nature. Let us be clear about what it means to
"push" a foreign body into a child's organism. It is just as though a child, from the very
earliest years, were being habituated to wearing very small clothes that do not fit, and
therefore damage the child's organism. Today observation tends to be superficial, and
people are even unaware of the damage done to a child's organism by simply
introducing reading and writing in a wrong way."
- Rudolf Steiner, The Spiritual Ground of Education
Printable Lessons
“Castle Ramparts” from Beginning with Form Drawing – first grade
http://www.live-education.com/Curriculum/SampleLesson?lesson=11
“Form Drawing” from Nature Stories for the Second Year – second grade
http://www.live-education.com/Curriculum/SampleLesson?lesson=18
“Form Drawings Using Iranian Motifs” from The Ancient Culture in Persia – fifth grade
http://www.live-education.com/Curriculum/SampleLesson?lesson=36