Every Wednesday our members get to ask Waldorf teacher Diane Power questions about their homeschooling experience, Waldorf education and more. These Q & A sessions are posted on the member blog every week so you have access to all the past Q & A sessions. Become a member of Earthschoolingto get your questions answered personally every week.
Question from Earthschooling Member: I have a simple question re form drawing… We’re mid Grade 2 now and starting to work with some finer more intricate design and pattern style forms. Chilli asked to use pencils as she felt she wouldn’t have the control over points aligning in such fine detail etc with stick crayons and I agreed. So she’s been using pencil and doing some lovely forms, but I wondered to ask you if there was a reason to stay with stick crayon until a certain age/grade/stage? I see that she would be mighty frustrated if using stick crayon for these types of patterns and designs, so I’m happy with her using pencil unless there is some big pedagogical reason for her still in the second half of G2, nearly 9 years old, to still be using stick crayons… The ONLY thing I’ve noticed is that with the finer tip medium she tends to draw smaller forms, which I’m encouraging her to still keep the forms as big as possible on her page without them looking abnormally huge in the context of the space/book…. E.I
Reply from Diane Power: Hi! I understand your daughter’s desire for control over the pencil to make the drawing just so. And that is fine. But also try the form big – even in grade 4 training, the teachers stood at a table covered in butcher’s paper and created the form using our entire arm. In G4 we worked with beginning Celtic knots and drew them big while we were standing. With G2 forms if you can practice them big, draw them big with a stick crayon, and also try the pencil when she/you feel I would work. As a rule, we used pencil for FD more in G3.
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