I think one of the most eye-opening events for me was when I tried to start our form drawing block.  Up until now we had been doing Waldorf kindergarten for two years.  Well to be honest, Waldorf kindergarten as we had been doing it was no different from our day to day anyway.  We went for walks, we visited the forest preserve, we spent a lot of time at home.  It was just our life.  Enter first grade, block one, form drawing.  Hmmm…. coloring was never very appealing to my boy, neither was painting for that matter.  (insert pre-dread for water-color block)  I was truly excited to do form drawing.  A little concerned that I didn’t understand it, so I did a few online tutorials with the various Waldorf voices out on the web.  I studied the form drawing book I obtained as part of my curriculum, and I reached out to the experts in the various Waldorf yahoo groups.  By the time we started first grade I felt I was truly prepared.  We would start slowly, we would notice the shapes in nature, we would walk the shapes, draw them with our bodies, move to making them with large muscle movements in our arms and legs.  It all sounded so beautiful.  I was ready.

That’s funny.  It didn’t matter how ready I was, I wasn’t the one who needed convincing.  From the third day of my attempt at Form Drawing the resistance set in.  I reached out to the experts.  These were the responses I got “you must be using a fake sweet voice” (because I said I was being so gentle about it), “you just tell him this is what we’re doing today” (sure that works really well with this kid) “just skip it and come back to it” (best advice I got).

So we skipped it.