Lower School

21^st century skills are more important now than ever as employers seek diverse thinkers who are knowledgeable in a wide range of fields and who are able to creatively solve problems.

Competencies commonly associated with 21^st century skills include critical thinking, problem solving, creativity, innovation, perseverance, self-direction, collaboration and teamwork. The rapidly changing world requires students to be equipped with cross-disciplinary skills in order to be successful in furthering their education and to meet the challenges in the workplace.

For almost 80 years, Kimberton Waldorf School has been providing a multimodality, integrated education with a curriculum based on the developmental needs of the child, validated in scientific research. Our unique approach to education utilizes movement, music, arts, and handwork to strengthen academics and help develop motor skills, focus, perseverance, creativity, and critical thinking.

Emphasis on the breadth of skills and opportunities that we value in childhood and in adulthood provides a reminder that education needs to be designed to produce holistically developed learners who are well-equipped to navigate the challenges of life in the 21^st century.

Studies demonstrate that the arts develop neural systems that produce a broad spectrum of benefits ranging from fine motor skills to creativity and improved emotional balance – the driving force behind all other learning.

Creativity is nurtured as students learn to approach tasks from different perspectives and to think “outside the box.” Artistic creations are the result of problem solving. Students’ typically ask themselves: How do I form this clay into a sculpture? How do I step into my role in the play? How will my character react in this situation? How am I going to learn this piece of music?

Movement activities in younger grades, such as circle time, handwork, string games, or playing on a balance board may appear as simple play in the classroom are actually promoting growth toward skills acquisition. The same regions of the brain responsible for movement are also involved in higher level thinking such as problem solving, creating, designing, and anticipating outcomes.

Observational learning is another key component in skills acquisition. When students contemplate a phenomenon with deep curiosity, they are able to hypothesize potential outcomes before testing for the actual answer. Divergent, creative thinking occurs, which is essential for innovation and solving problems.

The goal of Waldorf education and the curriculum at KWS is to provide students with opportunities and training to become autonomous, creative thinkers with the ability to accelerate their ideas into actions. An education that asks students to develop the capacities for collaboration and teamwork, creativity and imagination, critical thinking, and problem solving is an education that prepares students for what lies ahead.

Read more in our article Equipping Students with Skills for Lifelong Success

Critical thinking is essential in health sciences.

Creativity leads to ideas and innovation.

Perseverance is found in entrepreneurs, lawyers, and journalists.

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Unique to Waldorf schools, form drawing is an approach to geometry that begins with simple repetitive ribbon forms in the first grade and becomes more complex by fifth grade.  Its effectiveness is realized in the process, not in the product.  It is the act of drawing that educates, not the result.

In the early grades students begin to draw a form with physical movements before they draw the form on paper.  Children trace a form in the air with their arm or in the air with their eyes closed or by walking out the form in the grass.  From the very first core forms of straight lines and curves, form drawings address spatial orientation, body geography, inner visualization and observation.  To walk a form and then draw it, to keep lines straight, curves smooth, angles sharp, to begin a line in the right place, and stop it exactly where you mean to and to center the form on the page are demanding tasks for the 6 year old.  These lead to foundations for writing and reading by training the eye and hand to work together.

In the later grades, geometric forms further math skills and spatial orientation and running forms help with small motor and body geography skills. Woven forms are introduced and work with forward-backward, estimation, self-movement, balancing the parts, spatial orientation. This type of kinesthetic form drawing encourages visual spatial skills, visual motor skills and body awareness.  It is a definite challenge for kinesthetic awareness.

In the high school, 3 dimensional sculpture circles back to the form drawing work of the earlier grades, working with negative and positive space, and helps to develop more complex skills of inner visualization and design, strong self-movement, flexibility in thinking and balance.

This form of multisensory learning has long lasting benefits for children.  They include a sense for beauty, harmony, and proportion; problem solving and critical thinking skills; creativity and self-confidence.

Geometry holds a central place in Waldorf education’s mathematics curriculum and emerges out of form drawing which students begin in Kindergarten. In sixth grade, students move from creating flat two-dimensional geometric designs to kinesthetic art with curve stitching, which creates circles and curves from straight lines. They are colorful and beautiful and very visually interesting but do you wonder what they have to do with math?

Artistic, but also Technical

In order to construct and shade those drawings or string designs, the students need to have learned many things, including a knowledge and understanding of circles and polygons, how to use a compass and ruler with competence, and how to bisect an arc or a line or an angle. The students learn how to construct straight lines from a curved line by drawing exact polygons within a circle as they learn how to divide a circle into 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, and 24 divisions. Line and string designs show them the many ways that curved lines can be constructed from straight lines. The drawings done in sixth grade represent foundational Geometric concepts, presented beautifully and artistically, that are carried into the high school when students learn about Conic Sections, Trigonometry and Projective Geometry.

Engaging the Hands Creates a Deeper Understanding

Use of string art in learning geometry is a powerful method to ‘experience’ the facts and laws of geometric forms. The precision and beauty of these geometric forms lead the children to a deeper understanding of mathematics as they use their hands to illustrate concepts and develop skills.

These constructions offer abundant opportunity for students to learn mathematical vocabulary and concepts, and the ability to follow directions. String designs helps to improve spatial perception, encourages students to experiment, enriches their learning and lays a foundation for advanced Projective Geometry and the three-dimensional graphs and surfaces encountered in Calculus in high school and college.

 

The brain discovers what the fingers explore.

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In sixth grade, geometrical rules are sought and formulated:

• Geometrical proof of sums of angles of triangles

• Construction of angles using compasses, bisecting angles

• Congruent triangles and the four principle cases for congruency

• Movement properties of triangles and quadrilaterals

• Congruent shapes, construction of similar angles, complementary, supplementary and other angles

• Construction of triangles, with altitudes, and angle and side bisectors

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Why We Teach This Way Matters

Kimberton Waldorf School: Head Heart Hands from CANCAN Productions on Vimeo.

THIS IS EDUCATION THAT MATTERS

These photos are of a 6th grade handwork project at Kimberton Waldorf School. Students first draw an animal, then design their own sewing pattern, and finally construct the animal. Design, problem solving, and manual dexterity, all being developed in a fun and engaging way.