„...and suddenly she painted a rainbow“

To spread the word of Waldorf Steiner education in Hong Kong somehow is like working in a spiritual desert where those thirsty for spiritual food gather in front of an invisible spring. In a technological society, people always rush to see the end product and miss the process of how things come into being. They want to see short term results from their children’s education. Some parents start sending their children to nursery from six months old. By the age of six before the children enter primary school, they have been fully scheduled to undertake various ‘supplementary classes’ such as art, music, social skills etc.

Our children’s programs in school and parents’ homes aim to bring a sense of rhythm and real life experience. Through the logical and methodical steps involved in designing and executing a craft project, children will experience a complete process of a set task from conception to finish. While mainstream education pushes children to early intellectual development, we aim at awakening the innate artistic feeling and creative ability as well as educating their will. Artistic feeling and the love of beauty help build up in the soul of the child a sense for the true and a feeling for the good.

Children always lead us to new discovery – the power of archetypal gestures help to centre a child. It is amazing to see how deeply children became immersed in the process – focus, discipline, and totally immersed with movement in their hands. They are absolutely connected with the archetypal movement such as winding wool and weaving. There were some easily distracted and scattered children whom I had to send off to sand a painting board. One sweet little boy could not do much on the weaving board for five weeks. All a sudden, there came a day he was impelled to wind wool into little planets (this is the story I told children giving them the image of the gesture) – he made 16 little planets. This was an absolute impulse which every other child followed. The lesson after that, he completed the entire length on the weaving board – doing in one single lesson as much as what he completed during the previous five lessons.

In other lessons, children studied gestures of metamorphosis in plant growth and experienced in their body movement. We sang and moved in rhythm. Modern society often lacks the rhythm that children desperately need in their lives. At the end of the module, children were involved in preparing a dish made of vegetables. Many of them never in their lives had any opportunity to cut up vegetables or fruit with knives. As you probably know, most of them have a domestic helper at home and are overly protected from “dangers” that we all deal with routinely.

Moving experiences

Storytelling is another amazing experience. Children are so much used to electronic media and artificial images. Parents in my school relied on puppets and many visual images in telling stories. It was such a pleasure to see children immersed in the images created by my stories. There was a little boy who came to school at the age of five and a half. His drawings were usually messy. When he was about to be a big brother, he was highly stressed which affected his classroom behaviour. I told him a story about the little lamb that was jealous of his new born baby sister but found he loved her dearly during a hill fire. The boy was deeply moved and drew a lovely picture. He became settled shortly afterward.

Another moving story is about my four year old little darling. In the beginning of our painting and movement lessons, she would finish her wet-on-wet painting and tell me that the colours were either fighting or quarrelling, no matter the stories or images I had provided. But she loved playing with the watercolours – splashing, pouring paint on paper, exhausting all sorts of experiments. One day, after finishing the entire painting with red quarrelling, she said they were now happy together. The week after, she painted a lovely rainbow. Thereafter, rainbows, stars and the sun appeared on her paintings.

Above are some of the little stories in my three years teaching alternative curriculum in a mainstream school and holding after school programs and Art & Craft as well as Extra Lesson sessions at home. Not being financially viable to support a physical dwelling, we conduct Artistic Parenting Workshops on a weekly basis in a parent’s home. Forming the circle, saying the verse, we have a talk on different subjects followed by artistic work like painting and doll making. Parents are prompted to write a story and perform a puppet show. A member is inspired to initiate a playgroup in her house, incorporating Steiner pedagogy with her eco-orientation. I also hold parenting workshops in school and community centres introducing rhythm, movement and art to them. They commented that they were opened another window to look into their children’s mind.

Constanze Sinmei Chan

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Contact

Children’s Garden 25A-C
Pak Tin Kong Village
Tai Po Lam Tsuen, N.T.
Taiwan

Tel: +852 6026 3203
evera.steiner@gmail.com