An Exploration of Spirals: Art, Movement and Feelings

An exploration of spirals began as the children developed an interest in representing snails using winding strokes and by coiling clay. Spirals also began to appear in other drawings portraying water, plants and even “messy cupcakes”.

We set up various provocations to encourage the children to look closely at spirals in nature- e.g. plants, wood biscuits, shells and to explore different ways of representing spirals using marker pens, paints, string, wire and clay. We also began looking at spiral art by Louise Bourgeois. 

Looking closely......

An introduction to Louise Bourgeois' spirals 

"The spiral is an attempt at controlling the chaos"- Louise Bourgeois

 Art and movement:

We listened to Tchaikovsky's 'Trepak Dance', danced, and created large and small spirals to the music.

Inspired by the art and words of Louise Bourgeois, we began to discuss how spiraling in and spiraling out might feel.

Inspired by Louis Bourgeois

Using a black 'pipe cleaner' who we named‘Little Black Arch’ (a supposed friend of Agnes Hsu’s ‘Little White Arch’ from ‘My Color is Rainbow’), we created a story together about how LB Arch began to wind in when he was sad, hungry, sick or when he had no friends.

The children held hands to create a line and wound in to create a tight spiral.

“How did you feel?”

 “Sad” EJ (4 yo)

“Sad” W (5 yo)

“I feel like……very teeny tiny” O (5 yo)

“And you are sick” LJ (2 yo)

 “Mummy scold” TL (5 yo)

Then we continued our story with ideas to make LB Arch feel better. EJ showed a funny face that he would pull, O said that she would give him food, TL said that she would be his friend. A few children said they would give him presents. (This was also a great opportunity to talk about kindness)

We then listened to Enya’s ‘Caribbean Blue’ and spiraled our bodies outwards……

“Bigger! Bigger!” K (3 yo)

The children spun around the room with gusto!

Winding in\Spinning out.....can you see\feel the difference?

Bourgeois stressed the spiral’s two opposing directions: inward and outward. The outward movement represented “giving, and giving up control, trust and positive energy….” While the winding in of the spiral embodied “a tightening, a retreating, a compacting to the point of disappearance.”

~The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

What Happened to Little Sean- An Inquiry into Giant Tiger Snails

YY observing Little Sean and some chewed up paper last year.

11 January 2017

What happened to Little Sean?

Mid-last year, the children discovered a snail in the garden and named it ‘Little Sean’.

The children observed Little Sean, creating observational drawings and discovering interesting traits like how Little Sean had feelers that would go in (disappearing completely) and pop out.

When Little Sean’s poo poo was found to be white in colour and papers in the room began looking a little chewed up, with a photograph of a snail appearing to be eaten up around the edges, the children made a story of how the snail in the photograph was Little Sean’s girlfriend and he would only eat around the photograph. Many stories came out of that!

Little Sean remained in the garden through the year and each time the children went inside, they would look for him.

In Janaury this year, during our first class, LJ and EJ created snails using playdough and little oranges in the atelier.

This play dough activity had been set up to explore mandarin oranges in light of the festive season but the children had their own ideas!

Upon going to the garden, Little Sean’s shell was found. However, inside the shell there was just brown water. There was also a strong smell coming from within the shell.

The children began to hypothesize what might have happened:

“Little Sean came to water already”, LJ (2 yo)

“The snail is here. He go for a walk on the floor maybe. Little Sean wee wee”, NA (4 yo)

“I think Little Sean became water. I think he’s been there for a long long time”, XY (4 yo)

“The shell. Got no more Little Sean. He went out on the forest and the wolf howl and eat Little Sean”, EJ (4yo)

What happened to Little Sean?

Clay representations of snails from their memories of Little Sean, images and videos. 

18 January 2017

Our New Snail Friends

Uncle Sukati who comes in once a week to tend to the garden brought us not one but EIGHT snails! 

Observing slime

Today, we sat down around the snails and we named them. Uncle Sukati told us that snails like it to be a little wet and they don’t like it to be too hot. NA remembered this information and when the snails did not come out from their shells, she said “it needs the water!” We sprinkled some water and LJ grabbed some leaves for them and...... most of them came out! 

“She came out already!” V (2 yo)

“It come out! It so big!” A (3 yo)

In order to name them, we had to figure out how to tell them apart. One of the snails looked different from the others.

“He’s very long," XY (4 yo)

The rest looked similar to Little Sean and XY found in our book that they seemed to be ‘Giant Tiger Snails’.

O got a ruler and began to measure the snail which she said looked the biggest.

“I think he’s 8 or 9,” O (5 yo)

This got us all going with distinguishing between the snails by size.

The largest snail was 7 cubes long and it was named ‘Mi Mi’.

Followed by ‘Ji Mi’ (6 cubes), ‘Spider Man Shell’ (4 cubes), ‘Shrek’ (3 cubes), ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘Batman’ (2 cubes).

The snail that looked a bit different was named ‘Victoria’. Her shell was 2 cubes long but could extend her body much longer.

Here are some observations made by the children:

“Snail. He cold.” V

“He’s eating the leaf!

I draw Mi Mi come out.” XY

“He’s licking the other shell," O

“This one’s moving!

I saw Spider Man moving.

It’s coming out to eat the leaf.

He’s drinking the water. He’s licking.

My one is dancing.” LJ

“I saw it climbing up and around!

Why Kung Fu Panda is not coming out?” E (4yo)

“This is the leg.

This is the shell.

Slime.” NA 

19 January 2017

Who's the Biggest of Them All? +

What's in a Shell?

Today, we created a graph to show the relative sizes of our snails.

We had to recognize and sequence the numbers given to us and then we tried to remember how many cubes our snails were. Then we placed our numbers on the graph to compare the sizes of the snails.

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Among the questions the children had about snails were these two:

What is the snail’s shell for?

What is inside the shell?

We did some line drawings to show what we thought might be inside a snail's shell.

“Leaf. Heart”, XY

“This is the heart. The blood flows here. This is the part of water. Where the water flows. This is the part where his parts of his body makes the lungs…and the sound hong hong hong.” O

"There’s a sound. Ra! Ra!” EJ

“This is the body,” LJ

“Noise. This is noise. Noisy night. And they got heart shapes,” NA

A Visual Representaion of Our Learning

To be continued......