The 7th grade just finished diving into the history of the Renaissance and what beautiful work they did! In Waldorf education, our teachers employ a multi-faceted approach to learning. Ms. Tucker taught the history of the Renaissance through writing, artistic expression, math, reading and even a trip to the Renaissance Faire.
The 7th grade began with the review of life in the Middle Ages, discussing what changed during the Renaissance and why. Next, they learned the biographies and stories of many Renaissance personalities such as Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I & Henry VIII of England, Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, Martin Luther, and Johannes Gutenberg. The history came alive with their field trip to the Renaissance Faire, which was presided over by none other than Queen Elizabeth herself!
The students wrote love letters to Queen Elizabeth. They put Queen Isabella of Spain on “trial” and wrote about her reign from different perspectives. They read several non-fiction articles about the Renaissance and ended the week reading the short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe aloud while sipping hot chocolate. They also learned the “Song of the Witches” verse from Shakespeare’s Macbeth during morning speech work, which they performed for the community at our Harvest Assembly.
The 7th grade ended their study of the Renaissance with an entire week dedicated to Renaissance art. They viewed and heard stories about the creation of some of the great works of 4 Renaissance masters: Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. The students studied the proportions of human faces while drawing a portrait of Queen Elizabeth and they practiced mirrored writing in the style of Leonardo Da Vinci, who notoriously wrote from right to left with mirrored letters in his notebooks. They experimented with sketching hands and painted the “Hands of Adam” detail from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with their paper pinned above their heads to better understand how it would have felt for Michelangelo.
The 7th grade ended this learning block with a research project and presentation featuring 6 “outrageous” women who lived during the Renaissance. Their next main lesson block is Physics, where they will continue their study of acoustics, optics, electricity and magnetism, and introduce a new topic: simple machines.