Healing Land-to-Craft Education

Individualized Land-to-Craft Offerings

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become. –Goethe

Individualized Land-to-Craft offerings are designed for the young person based on collective observations of our staff, parents, teachers, and other caregivers (e.g., medical doctors, or therapists).

Farmer Elizabeth has many years of experience teaching practical arts in a farm setting. She has a M.ED. in Waldorf Education with a Transdiciplinary Healing Education focus. Transdiciplinary Healing Education draws on multiple fields—e.g.,curative education, traumatology, and the arts—to support individuals with diverse developmental, academic, cognitive, or emotional needs.

Individualized support can be designed within one our other programs, or in individual/small group sessions. For more about the research behind why it works see below.

For more information about individualized support please email: Elizabeth@wildrosefarmnh.org

Therapeutic Highlights: Our Land-to-Craft Curriculum

When working therapeutically we find the right resistance in the materials for each child – a resistance that allows the child to experience themself and the world rhythmically. Rudolf Steiner calls this our sense of touch. We want the child to have this experience over and over again, as rhythmically as healthy breathing. Finally, we design land and craft processes – or interaction with the materials – such that children can re-step aspects of their development, learn to think creatively, enquire, solve problems, follow instructions, and work independently.

EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION: The Rhythm

One of the most important things we can do for children is to support healthy breathing, or healthy expansion and contraction. If we sit still (inbreath) for too long, we need to stretch, run, and play (outbreath). Inbreath and outbreath patterns are important for growth, so we look for them in our activities. We can see patterns of expansion and contraction in growth: some years the children’s limbs grow long and other years they seem to “fill out.” We grow this way both physically, as well as non-physically (emotionally, psychologically, etc.). When we work with the land, farm, or with craft processes, we work with expansion and contraction rhythmically, as rhythm is found in all natural growth and healing processes. Each craft or farm activity has a particular breathing quality; e.g., in working with the scythe there is more rhythmic expansion than there are contractions. The contractions are there, but they are short lived, so for people who have trouble sitting still or concentrating, scything proves to provide good practice for developing attention while still providing plenty of gross motor movement.

RESISTANCE: The Materials

Wool is soft and warm. Wood is hard, wet when green, and eventually dry. Metal has to be warmed significantly to be worked with. Beeswax can be warmed with the warmth of the hand. Grass goes from soft to dry and crispy, with an effervescent quality. Each material provides a different

level of resistance to work with (e.g., wool vs wood), as well as other sensory qualities. While the softness and warmth of wool might be very good for us when it is difficult for us to expand our focus from our rich inner life out into the world, wood can help us notice our inner world when our focus is too often in the periphery. Not only do the materials give us a picture of our effect on the world when we work with them, they also help us socially by bringing us out into the world, or out of the world into ourselves.

Why it Works: The Research

THREE PLANES OF SPACE: Focus, Grasp, Step

Research shows that movement is significantly important for physical, social, emotional, and cognitive development (Committee on Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment et al., 2013). Land-to-Craft activities require one to move between the vertical, horizontal, and frontal dimensions, to find one’s center, and control one’s movements. We pay special attention to an individual's focus, grasp, and step. If the focus is primarily in the periphery, we try to bring it in, then support moving it from periphery to center and back with flexibility. We aim for building flexibility in every focus, dexterity into every grasp, and balance in every step. We work out of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy, current research, and are inspired by Ruskin Mill Trust.

"Self-generated movement is the foundation of thought and willed action, the underlying mechanism by which the physical and psychological coordinates of the self come into being. For humans, the hand has a special role and status in the organization of movement and in the evolution of human cognition."

–Frank R. Wilson

Neurologist and Author of The Hand: How its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture

Ruskin Mill Trust: Our Inspiration

Ruskin Mill Trust is one of the most prominent organizations providing effective therapeutic and holistic care for young people in the United Kingdom. We are inspired by their cutting edge research, their Seven Fields of Practice, and their Practical Skills Therapeutic Education methodology used across their centers. We have based our Land-to-Craft Curriculum on their wealth of research and experience. Although we have not yet applied all Seven Fields of Practice, we are striving thus. For more information about how Practical Skills Therapeutic Education can support children with Attention Deficient Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder, please see Ruskin Mill Trust publication Practically Minded (Sigman, 2023).

Resources

Committee on Physical Activity and Physical Education in the School Environment, Food and Nutrition Board, Institute of Medicine, Kohl H.W. III (Ed.), & Cook H.D.(Ed.). (2013, October 30). Educating the student body: taking physical activity and physical education to school. National Academic Press. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK201497/

Sigmond, A. (2023). Practically Minded: the benefits and mechanisms associated with a practical skills therapeutic education. Ruskin Mill Trust. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1geiqOPj8tKomOBam4uk7gDcuFbxA6_Tn/view

Wilson, F. R. (1998). The hand: how its use shapes the brain, language, and human culture. Vintage Books.