Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

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of the children. Each child is allowed to choose his own colors, even for his first small piece
of white crochet work which is finished off with a colored edge. This should encourage a
personal relationship to color. After the 3rd Class, knitting and crochet, those activities in
which the child’s main experience is the creation of a solid object out of a single thread by the
formation of loops, come to an end.
Steiner advised that at the end of every handwork lesson the children should be given
a picture or imagination connected with their work—something which should also make
them look forward with joy to the next lesson. 6 In addition he gave instructions that during
the last thirty minutes of a lesson lasting two hours, the children should be allowed to do
smaller tasks of various kinds. 7 He said: “They could do something nice, like crochet round
the edge of a colored ribbon.”
To knitting and crochet other work can be added in the lower classes, such as small
drawings and paintings on paper or on the blackboard. These should partly be designs in
preparation for future handwork, and partly exercises to bring about either a feeling for
symmetry or harmonization of temperaments, and so forth. Steiner gave many indications
for such work. We should like to mention the sketches made by him in Stuttgart, 8 Dornach, 9
Torquay, 10 and elsewhere. In the pedagogical seminar in Stuttgart he made special reference
to the four temperaments; he, or someone taking part in the course, drew or painted a motif
for a sanguine child and then a modified version of this for a melancholic child.
This shows that in handwork, as well as in other subjects, the teacher should cater to
each of the four temperaments, and tasks should be allotted to the children in accordance
with these. It is a joy to observe how temperaments are reflected especially in smaller objects
made by Classes 2 and 3, and how they reveal themselves in the color and form of notebooks,
needle cases, pen-wipers, balls, rag dolls, and so forth.
In these first years the children are taught that everything they make must be not
only pleasing to the eye, but perfectly adapted to its use. Steiner once commented on the
appearance of a pen-wiper whose surface had been completely covered with embroidery. He
said that a space should have been left free for the thumb to take hold of it (Plate 1, fig. 3).
When he gave advice on such matters Steiner entered into the smallest details and
gave many new impulses. He insisted that the children should never be made to do anything
that was simply an exercise of no practical use.
After all this preparation the child is now ready in the fourth school year to make
something a good deal larger, such as a bag for handwork or for carrying lunch to school,
and so forth. Here he can learn to sew neatly and to decorate his work in an artistic and,
at the same time, practical way. When, shortly after the opening of the Waldorf School in
Stuttgart, Steiner saw bags which did not satisfy these conditions, he said: “It is not possible
to tell which is the top and which is the bottom of these bags. One should be able to see this
quite clearly just by looking at them; otherwise one might pick them up the wrong way and
everything would fall out!”