Glenda Moore who has been a Waldorf Kindergarten teacher for many years is now offering Children’s Art Classes for 5, 6 and 7 year old children. Held on a Thursday morning from 9 am to 12 noon, the class will encompass a truly creative artistic experience as well as a closely guided social play experience followed by an organic snack.
This class will be quite similar to a Waldorf class experience because of Glenda’s training in art education as well as Waldorf kindergarten work which emphasizes healthy imaginative play experiences.
The class is offered exclusively to homeschooling families because of its mid-week time frame. A few people have questioned why they would need to enroll children this young in an art class when they felt the children were being offered materials at home by the parents. This class will go far beyond drawing and cut-and-paste projects usually available in a home environment. As an art educator (her minor in college) her primary concern has been that the child be offered beautiful materials and allowed to use them in an open-ended and creative process that will enhance their sense of self. When every child in the group is making the same project, there is little room for creative expression and often frustration with the skills needed to complete the project. When painting with translucent water colors on a wet paper, the colors flow in a magical way and offer a therapeutic color experience that is accessible to the youngest child. Woodworking will be approached with wood rasps, sanding blocks and myriad hard wood pieces to create a boat, a sculpture, something from the child’s own imagination. Modeling beeswax and clay will be worked in response to a nature story and the semester will be completed with fiber arts which may include making a picture from plant-dyed wool roving and sewing a hand puppet for a play to present to the parents. Art classes offered by prestigious institutions in our community are often taught by art students or artists who have no real experience of child development or teaching children. My own observation of such a class was that a college drawing exercise was being inappropriately used with young children.
This is a class taught by an artist and a teacher. The social skills developed through the creative play experience and the table manners offered at the snack table will be of value throughout life in myriad ways. Glenda is also offering consulting work for your individual parenting concerns in which she will help guide you with her thirty years experience as a mother and a teacher working in therapeutic intervention.
The cost is a modest $30/3-hour class thus offering you a priceless experience for baby-sitting prices. For more information, call 314-646-0626.