There is nothing about Waldorf Education that does not raise questions, not even the simple matter of Class 1’s first set of personal wax crayons: Should they get stick and block crayons at the same time? Just the primary colours, or the full range from the start? What were they using in Kindergarten? Are there any colours to avoid, and if so, why?
An Open-Ended DEBATE
As usual, opinions vary. Pedagogues with strong views have debated the matter at length. Being one of them, as well as a former Waldorf student who studied Visual Design and has decades of drawing and painting under her belt, I shall outline my reasoning as follows:
Drawing and painting play an important part in Waldorf Education. Not confined to Art lessons, they serve to deepen a feeling for the world and an understanding of its phenomena. They train artistic skills, support the imagination and, through Beauty, strengthen the moral sense.
To absorb a topic by rendering its aspects in some artistic form will naturally engage a child’s interest. Through creative activity, children can be led to an appreciation of the world that leads, ultimately, to knowledge.
The Waldorf Way
Subject matter is not learnt for a test and then quickly forgotten. Instead, it is placed at the centre of attention for the duration of a Main Lesson block. For several weeks, the topic is explored through singing and recitation, drawing and painting, writing and reading, and occasionally even a play.
Such learning experiences engage the whole child, not just the intellect. Individual summaries and illustrations in the Main Lesson Book show that these experiences make a lasting impression on mind and memory.
Not just on the children’s mind, but the teacher’s too. And even on the parents of the class, because Waldorf pupils are often eager to report what fun they had a school and what they learnt that day.
A MAGICAL PROCESS
Introduced to watercolour painting, the children of Class 1 enjoy watching how liquid paint behaves when dabbed onto wet paper. (And the less they have done this in Kindergarten, the better.)
Sunny yellow, spreading out, meets a calm blue. They mingle and blend and create rich shades of green:
Repeated blending exercises show that reliable laws rule the realm of colours, but the young children’s colour experiences in the sphere of the senses are not discussed with them in an abstract way.
Various aspects of painting lessons are described here.
THE RIGHT THING AT THE RIGHT TIME
Class 1’s intimate experience of colour qualities is the firm foundation on which the Theory of Colours will later be built. Class 6, shading a colour wheel with nothing but the three primary colours – yellow, magenta, cyan – awakens to the logic of this concept:
Inquisitive preadolescents are eager to understand how white and black, grey and brown fit in. And now they are intellectually ready to grasp how the quality of these hues differs from the rainbow colours.
At the same time, the teacher experiences the satisfaction that comes from presenting the right topic at the right time, in tune with the children’s developmental stage.
A QUESTIONABLE APPROACH
The blending of colours in painting is an important learning process in the Waldorf curriculum. That may be why some teachers think it right to apply the same concept to the use of wax crayons. They reason that the child ought to mix all tones from primary colours before being given a wider range of hues.
This logic appeals to the adult mind but ignores the child’s unawakened soul state. It also overlooks the fact that drawing with solid wax on dry paper is not at all like wet-on-wet painting.
Solid colours do not mingle and blend of themselves, watched with delighted surprise by the young child. Instead, they must be forced to mix. This act of will needs to be consciously directed and interferes with the dreamlike process of imaginative picturing.
Having to think about how to mix the colour you want disrupts the intuitive act of drawing. It separates the unity of creator and creation. And while this is perfectly alright for adults and adolescents, it is not attuned to the young child.
On a practical level, as pressure is exerted on a wax crayon in the blending process, it picks up other colours that muddy it and make frequent cleaning necessary.
In my view, expecting young children to manufacture secondary and tertiary colours in their drawings is just as inappropriate as making them use diagonal shading. But that too is a topic for another day.
Of course it can be and has been done. Children adapt to their beloved teacher’s expectation and mirror adult enthusiasm. A few outcomes may even look convincing, and yet the approach is not right.
Why? Because young children want to draw pictures without hurdling the axioms of colour theory. And they shouldn’t be made to do so.
Much better to give them a wide range of colours to choose from. Their crayon case should be like a jewel box whose gorgeous shades invite their combination in a purely intuitive way.
WHICH COLOURS TO USE?
I recommend the standard Stockmar box of 16 colours (Article No. 85032500) which contains:
01 carmine red – 02 vermilion – 03 orange – 04 golden yellow – 05 lemon yellow – 06 yellow green – 07 green – 08 blue green – 09 blue – 10 ultramarine – 11 blue violet (purple) – 12 red violet – 13 rust – 14 brown – 15 black – 16 white
Stockmar also stocks a special tin of eight skin tones, called Colours of the World (No. 85032200). Where cost is an issue, it suffices that the teacher has a couple of tins in her cupboard from which individuals can borrow as needed.
My absolute favourite is yellow ochre No. 20. I have found this underrated colour indispensable, especially in blackboard drawing. Its light-brown tone is perfect for people, furniture, masonry, stones, desert sands, maps in general, cats, dogs, camels and more.
I therefore recommend replacing the white of both crayon sets with this ochre. Up to the Middle School years, grey and white are quite unnecessary. We also exclude pastel hues in favour of the luminous rainbow colours.
Regarding the darkest colour, see Beauty, Contours and the Use of Black.
THE BLOCK CRAYON CONTROVERSY
Another much-debated point is when to introduce block crayons. In Kindergarten? In Class 1? Or even later?
My reasoning is the same as outlined above: A wide range of options inspires the creativity of young children. Therefore Class 1 should have both block and stick crayons and learn to use each kind in the appropriate way.
By contrast, achieving artistic outcomes with limited options is a healthy challenge for adolescents. That’s why we do black-and-white or monochrome drawing in Upper School Art lessons.
Note: Waldorf educators are free to decide how to approach a topic and apply a given guideline. As Rudolf Steiner pointed out, freedom is not just the liberty to choose; it is the ability to determine the reasons for one’s choice. In effect: Do as you will, but understand WHY you are choosing to do what you do. In education above all, the deciding factor must be objective insight, not personal whim.
THE WALDORF WAX CRAYON
Stockmar wax crayons are practically synonymous with Waldorf Education, though they are now widely used. Reportedly, the business world discovered block crayons for the designing of flip charts. (Did Waldorf alumni have a hand in this? Most likely!)
The Stockmar brand celebrated its centenary in 2022 and remains committed to natural products of the highest quality, to aesthetic aspects, nature conservation and social fairness. Its manufacture is in Schleswig-Holstein, and it is one of the oldest and most successful anthroposophical companies. (Another is Weleda, the maker of first-rate, heavenly scented, totally natural body care products.)
Three years after the founding of the first Waldorf School, the apiarist Hans Stockmar opened a wax smelter that became a company for beeswax candles and beekeeping supplies.
Heimdal, one of his sons, was a teacher at the second German Waldorf School. He developed the now-famous wax crayons with his brother Anselm, who was helping to run the company.
But it was not until the 1950s that crayons were included in Stockmar’s range of beeswax products. Modelling beeswax, watercolour paints and other nature-based articles would follow.
Read the interesting background story here.
Note: Rudolf Steiner died in 1925, which explains why he never said anything about the use of wax crayons. And because they were not manufactured until the Fifties, Waldorf bookwork will have been fairly conventional for the first thirty years of the young school movement.
In 1979, the Stockmar Company moved ownership to the Neuguss Group, based in Berlin. This corporate management body of several affiliated firms dedicated itself to Steiner’s impulse for a renewal of social structures, known as the Threefold Social Order.
The Stockmar brochure states: “The concept of the economy of the common good aims to shift the focus to behaviour that serves the good of all. Cooperation and solidarity instead of competition and maximizing profits.”
SUPPLIERS OF SCHOOL MATERIALS
One of the Neuguss Group’s subsidiary partners is Mercurius, a Dutch company that distributes Stockmar and other products to schools, Kindergartens and institutions in many countries worldwide.
A look at their delightful catalogue of lovely Waldorf supplies will make you wish you had an unlimited budget.
If you haven’t, go for the essentials: the block and stick crayons, Stockmar’s nature-based watercolour pigments and superb blackboard chalks, and the wonderful LYRA pencils.
Mercurius paper for painting and drawing is of course excellent, but it can be replaced with an economy version from a standard school supplier.
When I decided to go with the many advantages of the loose-leaf Main Lesson Book (described in a previous article), I found the right paper at Consortium, one of the UK’s leading providers of school materials. We also ordered our exercise books, sugar paper and craft supplies from this company. They have anything you may need, and more.
As I recall, Consortium’s A3 Aristo Cartridge Paper of 130gsm in packs of 250 sheets is easy on the budget. Its surface has the right grip for coloured pencils but is not too rough for the ink pen.
Finding the right type of paper is an enjoyable part of preparing for the next year; and so is producing a class set of drawing mats – maybe in teamwork with a few helpful parents.
THE DRAWING MAT
Drawing with wax crayons and coloured pencils requires a soft and even underlay, because hard surfaces will imprint their texture on a drawing from below.
Our drawing mats were made from a section of broadsheet newspaper, covered back and front with grey-blue sugar paper and edged with masking tape.
Other possible mat colours are beige, light-grey or off-white, because artwork needs a neutral background.
If your group numbers fewer than ten children, it pays off to cover the sugar paper with a clear film for easy cleaning and protection. Otherwise, your worn-out drawing mats will need replacing every year.
The children are to keep their drawing mat free of marks and scribbles. Some are better at this than others, so it is essential that each mat is personalised with initials in a corner. Anyone who draws on their mat has to re-cover it with clean paper and tape during a play break. This rule ensures that it is unlikely to happen more than once.
Comments are welcome, so don’t hesitate to share experiences, questions and feedback below.
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First of all, very interesting your blog! I am an ex-waldorf student from Germany, studied bellas Artes and later Waldorf teacher. And my whole life I heard about the pure Bee wax crayons of Stockmar (which ones I love and use in my drawing tutorials in spanish to help teachers become better in drawing with their kids). So far so good, until the moment I read an article from the owner of other wax crayons. He said, that Stockmar don´t use much pure bee wax, only as they say: made WITH bee wax.
Astrid, I have edited your comment because it breaches my site’s rules with its advertising of products. To your question: It is not inconceivable that competitors make such claims to discredit a popular brand. And there is a lot more to Stockmar than beeswax, as you can read in my article. There is even a link to a description of their manufacturing process, with mention of the protected workplaces they provide. You see, it is not the percentage of beeswax that makes this our favourite brand, but its company ethos.
Un article excellent. La différence entre la peinture et le dessin, et le choix des matériaux. Remarque: les blocs ne servent pas à tracer des lignes et surtout pas pour l’écriture! Dessiner avec des blocs est une technique qu’il faut apprendre aux enfants. Ne craignez pas non plus les crayons de couleur. L’écriture se fait à l’aide d’un crayon à papier. En première classe, peu après l’introduction des lettres. Apprenez aux enfants à utiliser le matériel correctement et à bon escient.
Thank you Fabienne, very well argued and, while I agree completely with what you have written here, I also applaud the assertion that everything about Waldorf Education deserves to be questioned. Rudolf Steiner wrote that we can’t understand something we do not love – to my mind it follows that we also can’t love something we do not understand.
Great article, Fabienne, couldn’t agree more. Very clear explanation with sound arguments. Gilbert (class teacher of 35+ years)