Waldorf Grade Three Painting: Growing in Color
In Waldorf education, the third grade curriculum includes studying agriculture, shelters around the world, ancient creation stories, and more.
Third grade painting curriculum includes form, color, and beauty!
Through explorations of agriculture and house-building, the children are literally brought down to earth as they carry out practical farming and building activities. In painting lessons, we begin to see more forms and detail than ever before: wheat stalks, log cabins, or a knight overcoming a dragon. Why this shift towards detail and realism in the painting curriculum? Because as educators, it is our task to support the third grade child as they orient themselves in the world.
In the lower grades and in early childhood, children have a deep connection and relationship to the world and people around them. But as they grow into third grade, their independence and individualism begins to bud. Children begin to feel more separate from their friends and family (an appropriate shift at this stage!), they begin to notice some of the challenges and injustices in the world around them, and overall, the world is suddenly new and a bit unfamiliar.
Stories come to life through the watercolor curriculum.
As we can imagine (or maybe even remember) this is not an easy place for a child to be in their development.
It can feel uncomfortable, exciting, or uncertain. As educators, our task is to strive to communicate this overall theme: human beings have lived, thrived, and overcome. Humans have figured out how to make homes and live in community, wherever they may be, with whatever resources they may have. Even through the greatest of challenges and obstacles, humans find a way to persevere.
In Waldorf education, the painting curriculum is designed to meet the growing child right where they are.
The activity of painting mirrors what the children are also exploring in other parts of the curriculum: how human beings live in the world in all different places, circumstances, and challenges.
The third grade shelter curriculum melds perfectly into watercolor painting class.
Painting shelters is not simply painting a structure, but includes observing and appreciating the beauty of the surrounding natural landscape. A log cabin comes to life on the page through the shady forest; an adobe home emerges from the warm and arid desert landscape; snow houses appear through an icy blue snowstorm.
To deepen their studies of farming, the children paint wheat stalks ready for milling, apples ready for picking, and carrots pulled from the carefully tilled earth.
After immersing themselves in ancient creation stories, the children’s paintings of rainbows are not just a combination of colors, but the representation of humanity surviving a storm, and their celebration of all the beauty and potential the world has to offer.
Third grade is a new kind of school year for the child: the world is something new and unfamiliar, and through the painting curriculum, the educator can support their journey in bringing the beauty of the earth, its resources, and the resilience of the human spirit to life!
About the Author
Amanda Ziadeh Mercer is a dynamic Waldorf Teacher! She has had the pleasure of working with children in varying stages of development, ranging from infants in Parent-Child programs to the more mature students of the eighth grade. This wide range of experiences has gifted her a full picture of the developmental stages of childhood.
