Free Waldorf Painting Lesson: 1st Grade | Wet On Wet | Simply Waldorf

Try out this free Waldorf painting lesson for first grade and see how simple and easy painting can be for your homeschool child. This lesson is for parents and teachers in any educational setting who want to bring Painting to first graders.
What you will learn:
--How to work with the materials: wet paper, watercolors, brush, painting rag/sponge.
--How to guide paintings through a "color story" process.
--How to support the creative process so that children feel joyful and at ease rather than stressed and/or disappointed.
--To understand that the way we teach any subject, even watercolor painting, can support the first grader in ways far beyond the activity of painting, because you will begin to see this process on a deeper level.
As you can see and hear in this video lesson, the method of first grade painting is primarily focused on the "Color Story" process. In other words, I tell a story about the colors, their moods, their feelings, their actions, and their interactions with one another. In this way, the first grader is gradually learning how to work with this watercolor medium as well as the characteristics of each of the colors. In this gentle way, we build their confidence and enthusiasm for painting (in the immediate sense) as well as the willingness to be creative in general.
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[@achak.l.5966]

Beautiful!

[@teesberry8880]

Lovely video. My struggle is the stories. How to come up with something inspiring

[@SimplyWaldorf]

We include the stories with each lesson so we have you covered. :)

[@wendy2001217]

Do children watch and listen to your story then paint or they listen while painting?

[@nangyaysengnaw8860]

❤❤❤

[@loredanamarghitas486]

Wonderful and such helpful lessons!❤ i just discovered them and I am absolutely in love with them. Can I please ask what type of brush are you using? ❤

[@Patricia21024]

😍😍😍😍😍😍😍

[@pa1attention]

Does the student paint right alongside the parent during this story? Is their an example painting shown beforehand or is this painting process a first showing, like a surprise as they go along in this lesson?

[@SimplyWaldorf]

This is a great question and I’m glad that you asked. For the younger and/or newer children to painting, I strongly recommend that you paint with them. In other words, you have the student paint alongside you as you paint and tell the color story. As they get older and more experienced, they will gain greater skill and be able to do more without that step-by-step model. At that point, it is very healthy to have them sometimes watch the entire demonstration and hear the story, then re-create that whole process on their own.

[@mayita1979]

This is lovely! Thank you 🙏 what type of paper is that you are using for this ?

[@SimplyWaldorf]

This paper is 150g watercolor paper. You can use 200g as well, which is very high quality. 150g is good enough and I would not go below that. I purchased the paper from Mercurius.

[@anotherhomeschoolmom1367]

Is this something you do in front of your child and then they paint, or is it done together at same time you are telling story?

[@liber8lee]

As a Waldorf teacher with a first or second grade class, I have always demonstrated the painting first along with telling the story, and then had the children paint. In older grades, I sometimes led them through the painting when it was more complicated.

[@SimplyWaldorf]

Hi Mandi. Great question and thanks for asking! As with so many things that apply in Waldorf education, there is not a set-in-stone rule. The Waldorf teacher is always asked to do what works best for the children within their care. So, for instance, in a homeschool setting, this would be a very particular set of considerations. An individual child can have any number of factors involved that would affect the choice a parent-teacher may need to make. In the classroom setting on the other hand, where a teacher might be working with anywhere from one to two dozen different children, there could be a way that would be best for most students, but the teacher would sometimes do it the other way in order to reach the smaller group and to perhaps "stretch" the larger group. In order to make this choice it is good to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each way. Neither is right or wrong. Each one simply engages the child in different ways. The advantage of painting with the students and telling the story along the way is that the teacher can really lead the children step-by-step through the process. This is often helpful for the very young first graders and/or students who might join a class later on and are new to watercolor painting. The process and the medium itself can be overwhelming at first. So, helping the student or class step by step, for a while, can establish a really solid basis upon which they will build their skills with confidence and joy. On the other hand, when we do the painting and tell the "color story" while the student / class observes, we work with them on their ability to focus, to carefully observe, to commit their observations to their short-term memory, and then to execute the process that they committed to that short-term memory. And all of this is contingent upon their ability to more-or-less skillfully handle the medium. If you have a single student, that is not quite as necessary because the parent-teacher can be right there the whole time for assistance. In a larger classroom setting, it is not as easy for the teacher to be there in a moment of need for every student. So you can see that, in general, painting with the student / class is typically an early stage of the progression and the "demonstration" method is often more beneficial when it follows upon that, after the students have acquired the necessary basic painting skills as well as the short-term memory abilities that they will need. And again, this is a general trend. Every child and every situation is unique. Now you know the primary factors involved in being able to choose what will work best for the particular child or children with whom you may be working. -- Rev Bowen, Simply Waldorf

[@anotherhomeschoolmom1367]

@@SimplyWaldorf thank you so much for that explanation, that was very helpful! 😊