Teaching to your class - Steiner

Supersensible Physiology in Education STUTTGART — SEPTEMBER 21, 1920
IT is essential in life to have the relationships with our surroundings in proper order. We can eat and digest suitable foods furnished by the outside world, but we would be poorly nourished if we ate food already partially digested by other people. The important point is that when we receive things from outside us in a definite form, they acquire value for our life because we need to work on them. It is the same at higher levels too, for example, in the art of education. Here the important thing is to know first what we should learn and then, in the light of what we have learned, what we ourselves must actually invent in handling our class. If one studies education as a science consisting of all sorts of principles and formulas, it means about the same thing in terms of education as choosing to eat partially digested foods. But if we undertake a study of the child, of the true nature of the human being, and learn to understand children in this way, we take into ourselves the equivalent of what nature offers us as nourishment. And in the practice of teaching there will awaken in us, out of this knowledge of human nature, the art of education in a quite individual form. In reality the teacher must invent this art every moment. That is the point I wished to make as an introduction to today’s talk.   Balance in Teaching - Ch 3

Great Handwork article by Arvia

HANDWORK -By - ARVIA MACKAYE EGE found in Journal for Anthroposophy 1982-83 no. 36 Winter

Whole Handwork article

...While all this is being carried out, the teacher may, from time to time, at the beginning or end of a lesson, (but not while the children are using their hands), unfold a story — a story in which are hidden the deeper aspects of the process they are involved in. Perhaps it tells about a child who once visits the star-fairies and dances with them in the great hall of the heavens. There, through the flow and pattern of their dancing, they are weaving a great, wondrous magic veil for the Queen of Heaven. The story tells of the joy of their dance, what they sing and what they say to one another, and of their anticipation of the appearance of the Queen. Ever after this event, the child longs to dance again with the star-fairies — until one day the Queen of Heaven herself comes to him and tells him that he can indeed dance with them again, and can weave a magic veil if he will truly learn to dance with his fingers. She gives him a golden ball with a gleaming thread and two magic wands, shows him how his fingers can dance with them, and how a wondrous veil begins to grow, gives him her blessing — and forever afterward he is able to weave magic veils of every imaginable description for her children here upon the earth. And what then is the meaning of this "veil”? 
These are some intimations of the beginnings of handwork as it may be taught in a Rudolf Steiner school. How all this evolves further can only be touched on here in outline.