A Summer of Handwork

As the summer holidays have finally begun for our children, we the faculty are hard at work. With the two new classrooms being added to Gulmohar, we have lots of things that we will be needing in order to have lovely things for the children to play with. Handwork is so important to us because as we work and create, wonderful new inspirations and ideas keep pouring in. In the first few days of our holidays we brought out all the colourful woolen felt that we have been collecting over the last few years for this very purpose, and Suzanne Down’s wonderful book on puppetry and storytelling. Suzanne was one of my teachers when I was studying to become a Waldorf early childhood teacher at the Toronto Rudolf Steiner Center, and the wonder that she sparked in me for storytelling and puppetry connected me back to my own childhood when the magic of fairytales was such a living thing for me. She is the founder of Juniper Tree School of Story and Puppetry Arts and has a lifelong connection to Waldorf Education. She has developed some wonderful early childhood story and puppetry resources and has done extensive research on storytelling and puppetry. She has performed fairy tales and folk tales from around the world for many years. She is truly an inspiration for me and one of my favourite puppets that I have ever made was Wee Willie Winkie, a rod puppet that Suzanne taught us to make in Toronto.The beautiful stories with their archetypal characters and colour, light and movement and their therapeutic gestures support the child’s emerging Will and sense of goodness.

As we browsed through Suzanne’s book of verses and finger puppets, the whale stood out for me because all the other animals were from the land and this was the only deep sea creature in the book. The finger puppets have a therapeutic value for the children as the storyteller ensouls and enlivens the puppet with their gestures and movements. I thought that with some blue silks, some beautiful crystals, shells and pebbles, a lovely deep sea scene could be created where the whale would live and a story would emerge. Little did I realise that soon a whole pod of whales would be born. As the little blue whale emerged from the felt, I felt that it was calling for a mother, so I cut out a big blue mother whale and spent the better half of the day finishing both of them up. Then an image flashed through my head of a glistening and beautiful black and white whale diving in and out of the ocean, and soon a big black and white whale was cut out of the cloth with four babies. The next three days were a total blur–all I could do was work with my needle and thread and keep making more and more whales and their babies until I had eight of them. I would almost forget to sleep and for three nights worked into the early hours of morning on the whale family.

It is such a gift for the children to have the warmth and joy of these beautiful handmade animals and dolls to play with. They have a simple innocence about them that really brings forth so much natural and spontaneous play as the children create their own stories with them. The maker’s love and warmth has been poured into the toys. One can literally see the children’s breathing become different as they watch the puppet stories–their breath becomes deeper and one can feel them being transported into faraway lands full of gesture, colour and song. This special story landscape is a place that lives forever in the children and will become invaluable for them as they grow up.