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What happens when you mix math, coral and crochet? It’s mind-blowing:  How two Australian sisters channeled their love of STEM and coral reefs into the most glorious participatory art project

December 3, 2018

“We’re used to thinking about math as something you have to learn through textbooks and equations,” says science writer Margaret Wertheim. But through their Institute for Figuring, she and her sister, Christine, have made it their mission to help people see math and science differently by finding hands-on ways to engage them with abstract concepts. Among their efforts: the mesmerizing Crochet Coral Reef. Why crochet and coral? Many reef organisms are living examples of a complicated form of geometry, and crocheting their shapes allows people to work with geometric principles in a tactile way. Started in 2007, the Wertheims’ reef grew out of the Australian sisters’ many interests: their passion for math and science; shared fondness for crochet; love of their country’s Great Barrier Reef and desire to highlight global warming’s impact on coral reefs and oceans in general. Today the Crochet Coral Reef is made up of thousands of handcrafted corals and reef organisms — created by a network of contributors — that Margaret and Christine, an artist and professor, have curated into displays that have been exhibited worldwide. Here, Margaret Wertheim shares some of the amazing organisms created for their project and shows how their crocheted reef has grown and evolved over the years. More »

The Dangers of Distracted Parenting: When it comes to children’s development, parents should worry less about kids’ screen time—and more about their own.

November 26, 2018

Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes—car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle—that it almost seems easier to list the things they don’t mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids’ development, but it’s probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents. Yes, parents now have more face time with their children than did almost any parents in history. Despite a dramatic increase in the percentage of women in the workforce, mothers today astoundingly spend more time caring for their children than mothers did in the 1960s. But the engagement between parent and child is increasingly low-quality, even ersatz. Parents are constantly present in their children’s lives physically, but they are less emotionally attuned. To be clear, I’m not unsympathetic to parents in this predicament. My own adult children like to joke that they wouldn’t have survived infancy if I’d had a smartphone in my clutches 25 years ago. More »

Why an 8th Grade Culminating Trip in Fall Makes Sense

November 6, 2018

The 8th grade class culminating trip is a time for celebration, recognition and remembrance of their shared voyage of discovery and growth and is a special part of the Waldorf experience.  For most classes, this trip happens in the spring of their final year together, before they go their separate ways. Some Waldorf educators have taken a slightly different approach to the culminating trip, seeing it not only as a joyous occasion, but also as a chance to bond the class together through a meaningful shared experience, which then can be nurtured to grow over the course of their final year together. More »

Surgery Students "Losing Dexterity to Stitch Patients"

November 1, 2018

A professor of surgery says students have spent so much time in front of screens and so little time using their hands that they have lost the dexterity for stitching or sewing up patients. Roger Kneebone, professor of surgical education at Imperial College, London, says young people have so little experience of craft skills that they struggle with anything practical. "It is important and an increasingly urgent issue," says Prof Kneebone, who warns medical students might have high academic grades but cannot cut or sew. "It is a concern of mine and my scientific colleagues that whereas in the past you could make the assumption that students would leave school able to do certain practical things - cutting things out, making things - that is no longer the case," says Prof Kneebone. More »

Why Waldorf Students Knit

October 15, 2018

Knitting has been gathering a lot of attention lately by crafters and scientists alike. It turns out knitting and handwork provides a host of brain and wellbeing benefits to people of all ages. For students, in particular, knitting provides an essential learning medium. A child who is knitting a hat or a toy kitten sees their will transformed into art. They see their focused, detailed work turn into something beautiful and purpose filled. They experience how the conceptual becomes concrete. This is why Waldorf education founder, Rudolf Steiner, lectured on the importance of handwork for students just under 100 years ago. More »

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