Handwork in the Curriculum

by Kerry Maloney, Santa Cruz Waldorf School Handwork Teacher

An old proverb says that a person who works with their hands is a laborer, one who works with their hands and head is a craftsperson, and someone who works with their hands, head and heart is an artist. At the Waldorf School, children learn to make beautiful things with their whole beings, building for themselves the skills, confidence and artistic expression to face future challenges.

What wondrous capacities our hands have! They allow us to touch, to feel and to communicate. Our hands provide us the means to reach out-to give, and the awe-inspiring ability to create. Here at the Waldorf School, students experience tremendous satisfaction in this act of creation. As we say in our verse that begins each first grade handwork class, "My hands are my most useful tools."

Handwork looks to the world of nature as often as possible to give the children a holistic experience. Through imaginative stories, as well as direct observation, we find usefulness, beauty and inspiration all around. The living quality of natural fibers, the feel of different textures and the relationship of colors enrich our observation and expand our awareness of the world we inherit.

Handwork is instrumental in facilitating more than just an understanding of basic stitches or how a project is completed. Knitting and other handwork subjects play an important role in the development of fine motor skills and the fostering of concentration and focus.

Waldorf educator Eugene Schwartz offers some insight into how handwork helps children learn how to think. "Recent neurological research tends to confirm that mobility and dexterity in the fine motor muscles, especially in the hand, may stimulate cellular development in the brain and so strengthen the physical instrument of thinking." The cultivation of attentiveness and concentration serve as a foundation for problem-solving later in life.

Handwork serves an important function in self-sufficiency as well. Activities that were once a necessity and a part of daily life, as well as serving a communal purpose and an important cultural reference point are dwindling or lost in our modern world. In the article The Human Hand, sculptor and teacher Arvia MacKaye Ege soberingly states, "In our age with its vast increase in technology and the manufacture of every conceivable article, the use of the human hand is becoming more and more mechanized and divorced from the realities of life. As a result, hands are growing increasingly helpless. Or their marvelous capacity for skill is regimented and takes on a manipulative character rather than a living agility." Children who learn early in life that their hands are their most important tools learn to use them creatively and artistically. As taught in the Waldorf schools and as with all the curriculum, handwork is specific and designed to support and complement the main lesson, other subjects and the children's developmental stage. In the early grades simple knitting with wool yarns is begun, progressing to purling, increasing and decreasing, and finally learning simple crochet. As they count their rows and stitches, their mathematical minds are stimulated.

In fourth grade as they approach their tenth year, the children experience their individuality and meet the world in a new questioning way. The cross-stitch and more challenging projects are introduced. The fifth grade takes up knitting again, but this time with multiple needles, following a pattern, to make hats or socks. Sixth, seventh and eighth grade find the students ready to deconstruct the whole into its parts and then restore the whole again. They choose projects, design patterns with multiple pieces and construct with hand sewing. Sewing with machines is introduced in the eighth grade. The many joys, challenges and opportunities to work as a group are of great benefit to the emerging individual.