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jogashill
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29 Dec 2022, 7:11 am

i am curious if anyone else here had/has experience as a student at a Waldorf school and how it helped/hindered with your ASD or other neurodivergence? i attended in the 80s and i have interesting images and memories and how it contributed to my learning...



jogashill
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Joined: 3 Dec 2022
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31 Dec 2022, 4:04 pm

i am going to comment on my own post, because why not :) and my memories are fun for me.

here's some of my memories...

we made wax figurines out of real beeswax. we could color the beeswax to make the shapes more fun. the beeswax is perfect because when it is warm in your hands you can manipulate it into whatever you'd like, and the scent is pleasant. when you leave the wax alone, it hardens and keeps the shape until you warm it again... i have beeswax now that i've fashioned into stims at my workdesk.

we made our own beeswax candles. you could walk around from vat to vat dipping the string into the vats and the candle would "grow" layers and you could make it as thick or long as you wanted.

we spent hours drawing different shapes with two different kinds of crayons - rectangular flat crayons that had "ears" that we should protect so that a broad stroke could always be applied to the paper to make different shapes; and round thick crayons for other, thicker, bolder kinds of lines. we practiced shapes (squares, rectangles, ovals, etc.) on whole large sheets paper, over and over, seeing how they all had somewhat subtle differences. when we drew like this, we were to take out our soft mats we had made -- which were many-layered newspapers inside a large pocket with the edges taped - so a very big, soft mat on which we would use for this type of shape-making with crayons and colors.

all the grades had different colored walls for the classrooms.

we learned different languages very young.

our "gym" was dance called eurythmy - feeling your body express through movement.

math was drawing pictures of sir plus and sir minus battling. now, this is where my memory gets skewed. i don't remember any numbers, just the endless pictures of these battles. :) (maybe this is all i ever wanted to do, ha ha).

i was abruptly transitioned in 2nd grade to a large public school for various reasons and it was pretty traumatic and soon after that we moved across the county to another public school and from there i think is when i turned into myself. i am grateful for this Waldorf experience being my early education, especially because of the multi-faceted sensory experiences.