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practical arts & gardening
Handwork is taught by teachers who come into the classroom twice a week from grades one through eight. Handwork brings a balance to the students’ concentration on “head work” in the morning lesson, not only physically, but also in providing a practical application for intellectual concepts such as mathematics, geometry and form drawing. The goal of the handwork program is to help children become clear, imaginative thinkers who can take on any work with new creative ideas.

As people in our society become more isolated, handwork can also bring the social aspect of working together into being. In addition, the children’s effort in manipulating tools and in achieving accuracy and completion in their projects helps to develop their will. The handwork teacher encourages the children to produce original designs that are colorful and creative in form. The children are creating things that are not only useful, but beautiful.

As they learn the practical skills of knitting, crocheting, sewing and felting, they also learn to respect and care for their tools and for the natural resources (the cotton and wool) they are using. The children learn to knit in the first grade and crochet in the second. They make both functional and fanciful items: a knitted case to carry their musical recorders, small animals, hats. In third grade, the class learns embroidery and cross-stitch. 

The students advance to four-needle knitting in fifth grade, when they make socks, hats and mittens. In the upper grades the students make dolls and stuffed animals; they learn to make felt hats and to sew with a machine. The gardening program begins when the students enter the fifth grade. Their ever-increasing capacities of thought, coordination, and strength can be guided in a meaningful way by developing a sense of respect, wonder and responsibility for the earth. 

Through working with tools, observing the plants, creating humus through composting, sowing seeds, nurturing the plants and harvesting the foods, the students share in the processes of nature while learning the cycles of the evolving garden through practical and artistic experience. When their work is over they look on the changes they have made and the effort put forth with a sense of accomplishment and well-being. The social aspects of gardening are crucial, for it is only through cooperating with one another that the projects can be realized.

Some of the activities that each grade undertakes are:

Fifth grade: use of tools, planting bulbs, sketching healing herbs, preparing the garden for winter, sowing spring greens, harvesting them, and salad making.
Sixth grade: harvesting herbs and fall vegetables, care for fruit trees, transplanting seedlings.
Seventh grade: preparing a meal from the harvest, pesto and tomato sauces, nutritional value of plants, composting.
Eighth grade: creating a nursery for annuals and perennials, harvesting seeds and preparing them for planting, growing plants in a greenhouse.

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