Handwork and Handicrafts - Waldorf Research Institute

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APPENDIX II
Questions and Answers from Conferences at the Waldorf School, Stuttgart
Part I:
Kindergarten, Play, Left-handedness and Handwriting
Cutting-out: Picture Books with Moving Pictures in the Nursery Class
The question was asked whether cutting-out should be done in the Nursery Class.
Dr. Steiner: “If you get the children to make artificial things of this kind, you will
discover that one child or another has some talent in this direction. There will not be many;
the others have to be talked into it. If the things are pretty, they are pretty, but in themselves
they are artificial. I would allow it to be done only if I saw that a child had a leaning that
way—there are such children—but I would not introduce the work for its own sake.”
Dr. Steiner, after a further remark: “You mean cutting out and pasting? If you find
that a child has a talent for making silhouettes, you can let him do it. But I would certainly
not use Froebel methods.
“You will probably best occupy the children by getting them to make meaningful
things with the most primitive materials. It could be anything—you must try by listening
to find out what interests them. There are children, girls especially, for whom you can make
dolls out of a handkerchief; the dolls write each other letters and the letters are delivered.
You, or the children, can be the postman or the post office. The point is to make meaningful
things with the crudest objects.
“And then at the time of the change of teeth, when the children are ready for it, they
will want to represent something themselves—one will pretend to be a hare, and the other a
dog—meaningful things that the children can perform in a dreamlike way. The principle of
play, up to the change of teeth, consists in the child’s imitating things that have meaning—
puppets and dolls. There can be a big Punch with a smaller one by his side—they need only
be two pieces of wood. From the seventh year you introduce singing and dancing games,
in which something is acted. Two can be a house; the others live in it. And the child stands
inside it himself.” 1
Dr. Steiner: “A picture book with moving pictures pulled with strings from below
would be particularly necessary in the Kindergarten. If you would work at this! It would
involve a short text with moving pictures above.” 2
Certain forms of play in childhood reappear in a person’s approach to life when he is
over twenty.