When Healing Becomes Educating, Vol. 6 - Waldorf Research Institute

upright and moving in the vertical plane lateral to the body. More or less
the same is seen when a skipping rope is used. The posture of children who
are not ready for school is slightly squatting and tensely bent forward. They
cannot yet manage the rope. Once they are ready for school they are able to
visualize the movement of the rope when it is behind them, and one sees
the way they manage the rope when it is behind them. Hopping also serves
to indicate control of the space behind. Children ready for school are able
to jump backwards whilst looking forward.
2) Feeling for rhythm and beat
With the changing of the teeth comes a change in the way children
relate to rhythm and beat. “There is a difference in the way children relate to
rhythm and to beat before the changing of the teeth and afterwards. Before,
rhythm and beat were things children would imitate but transform into
sculpted, modelled form. Afterwards they are transformed into an inner
musical element.” 9
Rhythmic elements come whenever there is repetition. Children ready
for school will happily and voluntarily go through repetitions, e.g., when
doing the jumping jack. Those who have the energy will do it five or six
times in succession, even though they were only asked to do it once. This
may be seen as a short melody. It is possible to see that the musical faculties
have been freed and come to expression in the child’s movements.
Rhythm is needed for skipping the rope, for hopping and for throwing a
ball. The school doctor has to establish if motor weaknesses are due to lack
of maturity or to coordination problems.
Rhythmic musical abilities are also used in some drawing exercises:
zigzag line, simple waves, meanders and angular meanders. Children who
merely copy the individual elements of these lose track; they then do not
know how to go on or start to invent their own “patterns.”
It is possible to relate patterns that are often used at the Waldorf school
in Karlsruhe to different beats: a simple zigzag to duple time, simple and
meandering waves to triple time and the angular meander to quadruple
time.
Rhythm can also be observed in speech. School children demonstrate
this by the use of emphasis, more or less like the intermediate hop when
hopping. Every emphasis or attempt at emphasis may be seen as a rhythmic
element.
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