Teaching Language arTs in The WaLdorf schooL

Writing
101
The child will say, “Fish.” The teacher responds, “Let’s make this
fish simpler.” Again one will ask the child to sound only the first letter,
in this way obtaining the letter F. And so, from these pictures, we
lead to abstract letter forms.
There is no need to go
back into history to show
how contemporary writing
evolved from ancient pictography.
For our pedagogical
purposes it is really unnecessary
to delve into the history of civilization. All we have to do is find
our way— helped along by wings of fantasy—into this method, and
then, no matter what language we speak, choose some characteristic
words that we then transform into pictures and finally derive the
actual letters from them. In this way we work together with what
the child wants inwardly during and immediately after the change
of teeth. From this you will understand that, after having introduced
writing by drawing a painting and by painting a drawing (it is good
for children to use color immediately because they live in color, as
everyone who deals with them knows), one can then progress to
reading. This is because the entire human being is active in writing.
The hand is needed, and the whole body has to adapt itself—even if
only to a slight degree; the entire person is involved. Writing, when
evolved through painting-drawing, is still more concrete than reading.
[The Child’s Changing Consciousness, pp. 59-61, 73-76.]
7. From A Modern Art of Education (1923), 1972 edition
In the previous lectures I have shown that when the child reaches
the usual school age at the transitional time of the change of teeth,
all teaching should be given in an artistic, pictorial form. Today, I
propose to carry further the ideas already put before you and to show
how this method appeals directly to the child’s life of heart and feeling,
and out of this life develops everything.
Let us take a few characteristic examples to show how writing
can be derived from the artistic element of painting and drawing. I
have already said that if a system of education is to harmonize with