Kimberton Waldorf School

Education That Matters

Art Gallery

Let’s talk about Chalkboard Art

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In a Waldorf school, the chalkboard is so much more than a teaching tool – it is a living piece of the classroom. Each drawing is created by hand by the teacher, often changing with the seasons, the curriculum, and the developmental stage of the children. From vibrant nature scenes to historical storytelling, geometric forms, poetry, and scientific illustrations, chalkboard art helps bring lessons to life in a beautiful and meaningful way.

In Waldorf education, beauty and imagination are considered essential parts of learning. These artistic classroom experiences invite students into wonder, help cultivate focus and reverence, and create an environment where learning feels alive and inspiring.

We are endlessly amazed by the creativity, care, and talent of our teachers, who spend countless hours transforming their classrooms with these incredible works of art. Every chalk drawing is a gift to the students, and a reflection of the love and intentionality woven into daily life at Kimberton Waldorf School.

Senior Self Portraits 2026

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There is a special kind of quiet in the studio these days. Our seniors are deep in concentration, working on their final self-portrait projects.

With mirror work and printed photos of themselves, they practice the art of truly seeing. This isn’t just about capturing likeness; it’s about reflection in every sense of the word. Each brushstroke asks for focus, patience, and dedication – the same qualities that have carried them through their Waldorf journey. To look at oneself honestly, to observe light and shadow, strength and subtlety, requires courage and presence.

In Waldorf education, the senior self-portrait is more than a culminating art project. It is a moment of pause before graduation, a chance to reflect inwardly while creating outwardly. As they prepare to step into the wider world, our students first take the time to meet themselves with attention, care, and intention. Thank you Ms. Oswald for guiding them!

12th Grade Sculpting the Human Figure

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by Hilla Haut, Arts Teacher

Sculpting the human figure in an expressive, emotionally charged pose is one of the most challenging-and rewarding-artistic tasks. This project serves as the culmination of the 3-D sculptural curriculum, bringing together the techniques and artistic understanding students have developed over the years, including clay work, individual artistic “fingerprint,” and knowledge of human proportions.

In this block, students studied human-figure sculptures by several artists, focusing especially on Ernst Barlach (1870–1938), a German sculptor known for his powerful emotional forms, and Edgar Degas (1834–1917), a French Impressionist whose work includes dynamic studies of movement and the human body. Students observed how these artists conveyed emotion, gesture, and movement, as well as the practical solutions they used to create balanced and stable sculptures.

Students practiced quick gesture drawings and completed a series of short clay studies in various poses exploring movement and emotional expression. Each student then created two original concept sketches for a human-figure sculpture, each expressing a strong feeling or inner gesture through form and posture. From these, they selected one concept to develop into their final piece.

Throughout the process, students focused on body position, posture, and movement, body proportions, the use of negative space, planning and constructing a balanced sculpture, clay sculpting techniques, including additive and reductive methods and creating surface textures that support and complete the expressive quality of the work.

Ninth Grade Black and White Portraits

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In ninth grade, students engage deeply with their 20th Century History block through a black-and-white portrait project that brings historical figures vividly to life. Each student chooses an influential person from the era, studies their biography and historical context, and creates a black-and-white painting of their face. Working without color challenges students to focus on proportion, light and shadow, expression, and character—learning how a face is structured and how subtle contrasts can convey mood and meaning. The project culminates in a living history experience: students dress as their chosen figure, embody their voice and perspective, and present to their classmates, transforming research into a dynamic, memorable encounter with history.

This artistic work also plays an important role in the long arc of the high school curriculum. The black-and-white portrait lays a technical and developmental foundation for later artistic growth, teaching students how to truly see a face before adding the complexity of color. Three years later, students return to portraiture with a full-color self-portrait, rendered in vivid detail and personal expression. By revisiting and expanding these skills over time, students experience how patience, practice, and self-reflection lead to mastery—mirroring both their artistic development and their growing sense of self.

Class of 2025 Self-Portraits

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“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” -Aristotle 🎨

In the Waldorf curriculum, the self-portrait is more than an artistic exercise – it is a moment of reflection, self-discovery, and inner development. For our seniors, this final self-portrait marks a significant threshold: a chance to look inward, acknowledge their growth, and honor who they have become before stepping into the world beyond High School.

With deep reverence, we share these portraits – each one a quiet testament to the unfolding of individuality, creativity, and courage.

Form Drawing: What is this Unique Waldorf School Subject?

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At Kimberton Waldorf School students in grades 1-5 typically participate in a subject that is unique to Waldorf schools: Form Drawing. Form drawing can be described as freehand drawing of patterns (often repeating forms) that introduces form and movement to our students. The practice of form drawing helps the students integrate developmental reflexes, develops fine and gross motor skills, eye-hand coordination, and control of movement. Form drawing also lays the groundwork for the study of geometry and geometric drawing which is introduced in 6th grade. Learn more about form drawing in Waldorf schools here from the Association of Waldorf Schools in North America:

Read more about form drawing in Waldorf Schools here

The Self Portrait

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“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle

We are not an art school but every senior at KWS paints a self portrait.  This not only represents the culmination of the Waldorf painting curriculum, but requires students to engage with the deep questions of identity:  “Who am I?”, “How am I seen?” and, most importantly, “What is my place in the world?”

In high school, a new questioning about life and the personal search for truth and self-knowledge emerges and students are ready to confront good and evil, questions of destiny, evolution, and identity.  Through the self-portrait project students are challenged to really look at themselves closely to create a physical likeness but to also look deeply at who they are in this world.

Our high school curriculum encourages students to look at themselves, reflect back on their lives and go out into the world and contribute to it from the sense of who they are.

When students graduate from Kimberton Waldorf School, they leave with not only a strong academic foundation but with a sense of who they are, the ability to think for themselves, and the confidence in their capacity to learn and do whatever they put their minds to.

“The senior portrait class represents the culmination of the Waldorf painting curriculum, making use of all the years that come before it in the pursuit of a meaningful piece of art that students and their families can take with them and cherish for years beyond graduation. Pulling from drawing tools introduced and sharpened in 9th grade, painting technique developed in 10th grade, and color theory explored in 11th grade, seniors work for about two months to produce a self portrait that expresses their inner spirit coming into harmony with the external realities of their body.

“The potential for such a portrait is boundless, and seniors are often at first a little daunted. First of all, there is the hard work of really looking at themselves, of being objective and making measurements about things that often times they don’t want to dwell on. Throughout the course, students have to learn to be comfortable with how they look, and in doing so they come to understand that they themselves are beautiful despite what they think of as imperfections. The second daunting task comes in dealing with the number of choices they must make. Do they paint a realistic skin tone, or one that expresses some quality of themselves more metaphorically? Do they choose a background that puts them firmly rooted in the world, or do they paint one that uses color to make it, as we like to say in the painting room, “pop”? How do they pose for their initial photo session, which determines the basic structure of their drawing? The best way to answer these questions is always to jump right in, to do something fearlessly and know that mistakes are where the good stuff happens — learning, growing, correcting. One choice leads to another, which leads to another, and eventually the final outcome looks as if it couldn’t have been painted any other way.”  – Todd Stong, KWS Painting Teacher

This is EDUCATION THAT MATTERS.

Second Grade: Paintings from Fables

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Fables play a vital role in role in the Second Grade. From retelling the stories to the child-generated writing, fables reflex the awakening of children’s awareness about their own qualities and those of others. From characters that have less desirable qualities to those that embody the ideal, second grades bring them into their learning and their play making to create a strong picture of morality and responsibility.

High school: Landscape Studies

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Waldorf High School students travel through time and cultures in their language and history curriculums. There art reflects those journeys. Students learn
to see artworks of each culture as symbolic of the consciousness of the people in
a particular place at a given time. Students work with a variety of mediums to create landscapes reflective of their thoughts and ideas.