In Steiner schools Geometry is introduced as Free Hand Geometry in Class 5.  Class 5 is a special transitional year symbolic of the peek of childhood.  The students study great civilizations of the past, including the ‘Golden Age’ of Greece.  They are at the peak of their development in their child bodies and have gained as much mastery of their physical bodies as they are going to before heading into puberty.  Class 5 also marks the transition from drawing to Geometry.  Freehand shapes are formed as their transition from form drawing to Geometric drawing and the use of Geometric terminology.

In Class 6 with the arrival of adolescence comes a year of rebirth.  We tend to go back to the beginning of curved and straight lines, which was the first main lesson of Form Drawing in Class 1.  This time, however, the children learn to construct lines and arcs with geometric drawing tools.

Learning to use tools to construct and measure is a physical task and it challenges the students as they begin to develop new physical bodies.  Finding the centre of a page, using a compass to make the perfect circumference and then the many arcs that make a beautiful flower but give us points to construct a hexagon.  From the hexagon we can extend outward to construct a Stellar creation.

Last week we have begun to move on from our compass and the useful circumference points it gives us, to using our protractor to enable us to mark points using the degrees that make up a circle.  Set squares came into play to give us perfect lines and angles as our knowledge broadens.

The children and I have really enjoyed the Geometry main lesson and we will complete a second block later in the year.  In Art we have been looking at shading from dark to light to create shadow and their new skills in this area can be seen in their beautiful creations.

Robyn x