I am a Waldorf graduate who has been in love with all things handwork since I was only 12 years old. For the past 16 years I have taught handwork at several schools in the USA as well in Mexico.

I am also the mama to a sunshine-loving jungle boy who is growing up bilingual and loves collecting sticks, stones, and seashells.

I travel back and forth between my two home countries offering classes, working with several Waldorf communities, a group of homeschoolers, and teaching interactive online classes for children and adults.

I am very grateful for this opportunity to work with and teach so many people from all over the world. I never imagined I could teach in such an international way and it has been a gift during this time.

In the Waldorf curriculum, handwork class brings balance between intellectual and movement activities, allowing students to experience the struggle, joy, and care required in the creative process. Handwork helps to move the child from play to meaningful work, easing the “waking up” transition between early childhood (birth to around age 7) and the grade school years.

Children learn to correct their mistakes, value hard work, and develop patience. When they experience frustration with themselves or their progress with a project, they learn how to ask for help, figure it out themselves, or wait for help.

The rhythmic repetition of handwork strengthens concentration, hand-eye coordination, and the life (etheric) sense. Handwork helps to strengthen the forces that are weak within a child, helping them to achieve more balance in their learning development. It strengthens thinking in the dreamy child, feeling in the overly intellectual child, and stimulates activity in the weak-willed child.

Handwork enhances math skills through counting rows and stitches, measuring out patterns, and creating three-dimensional items.

Children learn how to play with available colors, and to see forms emerge through contrasts, tones and shades. They develop a relationship with each color, working for extended periods with one and then another. A love and understanding of the colors’ qualities can speak to them on a very deep “soul” level.

Handwork fosters feelings of reverence and appreciation for the gifts of our earth, plants and animals. Materials used are from the earth, and gratitude and reverence for the earth’s gifts are inherently appreciated. All materials and tools are treated with care and respect. No resources are wasted — not even the end of a thread which can be used for stuffing a future project.

The joy of accomplishment, as the children complete increasingly difficult tasks in small steps, creates the self-confidence necessary to tackle much larger tasks in their future academic and professional lives.