My birthday cards as a Waldorf teacher, grades 3, 4 + 5

(This is a continuation from part 1 about the cards I painted as birthday gifts for my students as a Waldorf teacher.)

In the third grade* I painted cards in the style of illuminated manuscripts, because we learned cursive and I wanted to highlight the beauty of the written word. We wrote with quill pens (more about that adventure(!) + several cards in this post) before we transitioned to the Füllfederhalter -- or fountain pen (typical in Germany + much of Europe, I believe).

Here are a few of my cards:

"Alles Gute" = "all the good" + is a short version of wishing someone "all the good for your birthday" or "Alles Gute zum Geburtstag" (i.e. the Happy Birthday equivalent)

In the fourth grade I painted cards with celtic weaving, because that was our focus in form drawing.

Such forms were the preparation...

...and then we moved on to alternating "over" and "under"

At the end of the unit, these were their own forms they created.

The "over" + "under"  requires quite a bit of concentration to draw!

In the fifth grade, because we learned about ancient cultures, such as ancient India, I painted the cards with an Indian aesthetic + had my husband help me write their names in Devanagari -- the script used both for Hindi today and Sanskrit of old (among other languages).

I had so much fun with all of these!

°°° Have you ever written with a quill + ink? What was your experience using this technique?
°°° Do you ever paint/make your own cards?


*Here was another cool thing we did in 3rd grade -- we made animal window art from pressed autumn leaves. (We also used white parchment paper, cardstock + glue.)

A peacock!

Stingrays underwater :)