Students Harvest Color at Lake Champlain Waldorf School
by Abigail Diehl-Noble, Humanities Teacher,
September 22, 2011, page 12.....

Goldenrod as a source of yellow? Onion skins for gold? For most of us, color comes in packages: paint jars, crayon boxes, and perhaps RIT dye packets. Our clothes, too, are colored almost exclusively by synthetic dyes.
At one time, though, all color came from the sun, through the earth, via flowers, berries and roots. Knowing how to bring those vibrant and luminous colors into cloth is an almost lost art that is being revived at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School through its handwork program. The program has received a boost through addition of a new student dye garden—another example of the school’s hands-on, experiential curriculum that connects children to history, the earth, natural science and other cultures.
Funded through a larger grant donation, the garden is located just outside the handwork room at the school’s Shelburne campus. Planted in a traditional circular mound, the garden is organized into six “wedges,” arranged like a color wheel, and divided by stone and brick paths. Each wedge contains different historical dye plants that will be tended, harvested and used by children as part of the handwork curriculum.
A focus of the 3rd grade curriculum at the Waldorf School is farming and fibers, so it’s a natural choice for that class to work the garden. They will be joined in their work by the 5th grade, and both classes will weed, harvest, sow and transplant. The garden includes plants ranging from the familiar—onions, cosmos and marigolds—to the more unusual. Madder and woad, ancient dye plants used in the famous medieval Unicorn Tapestry, are also in the garden.
Work has already begun this fall: the 5th grade harvested and dried cosmos last week, and dyed some yarn to be used in knitting their own socks this winter. Some of this application was layered on top of a goldenrod wash done earlier this week, and the mix of plant dyes made vibrant secondary colors of green and orange. Lessons in the properties of color come naturally in such work.
In the spring, 3rd graders will start onion seeds inside and transplant them to the garden. The onions will be used in kindergarten soup and the skins will dye yarn for knitted lions, the first handwork project in the 2nd grade.
Meanwhile, handwork teacher Wendy Coughlan is planning a foraging trip for black walnuts, a source of brown dye, and students have been harvesting the abundant goldenrod on the school grounds as another source of yellow for their handwork.
Why all this time and work, indoors and out, pursuing an ancient craft? Handwork teacher Nicandra Galper explains, “We want our students to feel connected to all parts of their lives, and to other living things. Working the ground, harvesting the plants, and dying fibers they will later knit into a toy for themselves or another child—there is a feeling of wholeness and satisfaction in that experience that nothing else can match. This kind of work creates children who feel confident and competent, able to take on whatever challenge they need to meet.”
High school botany teacher, Bet Dews, notes that the foundation created by such a curriculum pays academic dividends later. “It’s very different to teach about plant germination to a student who has helped a seed sprout, who knows the plant through their hands as well as the head. The knowledge goes much deeper when there’s a first-hand experience behind it.”