My birthday cards as a Waldorf teacher, grades 1 + 2

One of the things I enjoyed doing as a Waldorf teacher was painting the birthday cards for my students as my gift to them.

sketch prep + watercolor

the final product

As I believe I've partly explained before, German schools in general + Waldorf schools in particular are quite different than typical U.S. schools. In Germany it is standard practice to have one classroom teacher from grades 1-4.

Then after that you have the option of 3 different tracks for your schooling in grades 5 and above. "Hauptschule" (grades 5-9; diploma: "Erster allgemeinbildender Abschluss" (ESA), often called "Hauptschulabschluss") + "Realschule" (grades 5-10; diploma "Mittlerer Schulabschluss" (MSA) often called "Realschulabschluss") can both lead to an "Ausbildung" or learning a trade at a lower or higher vocational school + "Gymnasium" (grades 5-12 or 13; diploma: "Abitur") is the university track.

The material learned is typically more difficult/complex at a Realschule + most difficult/complex and more theoretical at a Gymnasium. And, as I said, only with an Abitur can you study at university. That's the short version :). (Explaining why Gymnasium is sometimes 12 + sometimes 13 grades would get into the long version...so we'll just skip over that for now :) ). More information on the German public school system here.

Anyway, at Waldorf schools you can have one classroom teacher from grades 1-8! Then in the upper grades you have a class "mentor" who is one of your teachers. Unlike the public school system, all the grades are at one school as opposed to switching schools after grade 4. During the lower + middle grades you are still taught by other teachers as well, but you always have the classroom teacher for at least the first two hours of the day. During this time you'll have different units such as math, German (meaning..native language :) with grammar + writing + such), science, history, etc.

This way you, as a teacher, get to know the students a lot better + see their development + progress over several years, as opposed to just a few months.

Now on to my art: In the first grade I painted flowers for the girls + fruits (biologially speaking) for the boys. I probably could have just done fruits for everyone...ah well. I shared several in this post, but here are a few:

2 other cards painted that year, the 2nd for our French teacher :)

In the second grade I painted my cards using one axis of symmetry, because that was one of the things we did in form drawing.

eventually we got to 4-way symmetry too!

We had such fun reading the German for "Happy Birthday" (Alles Gute zum Geburtstag) forwards and backwards (gatstrubeg muz etug sella). The students became well-versed at that, but it was still always an exciting thing to hear the name of the birthday child read forward -- + then backward :).

Stay tuned for part 2 about my cards in grades 3, 4 + 5!