The children completed their form drawing main lesson with such beauty and enjoyment along with discovering the importance of symmetry, patterns, shapes and the use of complimentary colours.

Whilst enjoying this artistic yet mathematical main lesson they are improving their spatial awareness, body geography and making the transition into freehand geometry.

The emphasis of the geometric main lessons are for the children to be introduced to the ‘language’ of geometry and to have an artistic experience while drawing geometric forms.

Lots of practice is first achieved on individual blackboards, marking reference points to assist in creating balance and symmetry to the form or shape.  This week we have looked at triangles, squares, and hexagons.  The Class 5 children will experience using compasses and protractors later on in the year in their formal geometry lesson but we have introduced using rulers to measure the centre, and align our reference points.  It’s wonderful for both classes to reacquaint with measurement and it’s lovely to hear nothing but concentration.

Each Monday, Kate teaches the children.  They have begun their grammar main lesson.  Kate is bringing the wonderful elements of Grammar with witty stories and pictorial illustrations using the Grammar land format.  Their bookwork is beautiful.

Painting, drawing and craft support our more academic subjects.

Handwork is such an integral part of Steiner Education; it grounds the child with the sense of will to meet the challenges of work and to complete it to a high standard.  Healthy pride, patience, application, realism, creativity and focus are all elements that handwork nurtures in the young person.

Class 4 is beginning cross-stitch and the Class 5 children are busily finishing their cross-stitch projects, which were interrupted last year.  Below are some of our finished projects.  This week they will begin their 4-needle knitting.

In class we have also been focusing on music.  Our music notation skills continue to improve and we have begun learning to play the ukulele and understanding chords, strings and tabulation.  We still make time for our beautiful wooden recorders and the children performed a lovely Arabic song at assembly last week.  As part of our music sessions we have been learning about creating harmony from a melody.  We are following the ‘Orff Approach’, developed by the German composer Carl Orff.  The children and I have had a lot of fun with the simple melody of ‘Peas porridge hot’, and performed a wonderful rendition of this adding a beat, colour and an ostinato effect using voice and body percussion at last week’s assembly.  Stay tuned for more.

Robyn x