Thursday, September 26, 2019

Revisiting Shadow Movement

Before lunch we revisited the video of the "shadows making a video of what looks like to swing." We asked the children what they noticed. Here is what the children said after coming back to this content and the concepts we have been thinking about for a few days now: ​

Evelyn: "I noticed that the shadows are moving."
Leigh: "Because they're swinging."
Sam: "You took a video so the shadows are not making a video." (Sam compares the concept of the video taken which captured Grace explaining her interpretation of the moving shadows as video.)
Grace D.: "When we stop it (the video on the computer), it doesn't look like a video anymore."
Maren: "Lane looks bigger and Grace looks smaller when it looks like that." (Maren describes the scene paused on the screen where Lane's body is stretched long to pump and Grace's body is low and pulled in. Maren is noticing the difference in body movement at the various stages in swinging.)

Evelyn talked about how long Grace and Lane were on the swing. Since she was there observing some of this in real time, the question was asked of her, Grace, and Lane if they noticed what happened to the shadows after the children got off the swing. They were not sure.  This seemed to spark thoughts about when shadows appear or go away:

Sally: "You know how you make a shadow when you're swinging and you move and the sun hits the shadow and the shadow copies you;  it can move like you but when it's shady it's black."
Lane: "So when you go in the shade the shadow doesn't come up but when you go in the sun the shadow comes up."
Evelyn: "The sun makes a shadow."
Austin: "If the sun is gone you don't see your shadow."
Grace M: "And also, when the sun is here, you have a shadow."

Children were invited to explore their shadows in movement...

We observed children moving with the tempo, beat, and movement of the music. Other concepts children seemed to  explore:

• the shapes body movements created by watching their shadows
• the mirroring or "copying" the shadow creates of their experience
• large and smaller, more subtle movements
• ​space as they extended and twirled their bodies in large movements
• capability of the body through trying twirls, leaps, jumps, etc.
• relationship of the body to another's body
• relationship between shadows and projected images
• transparency, translucency, and opacity
• how the shadow changes based on the proximity to the light source
• multiple perspectives (viewing the shadows and projection from a variety of angles and directions)

Many children were interested in experiencing the shadow videos from the perspective of the "audience." 

​Some chose to move-along with the shadows and others observed the various perspectives of what was occurring with light, shadow, movement, and music, such as Maren who moved from one side of the screen to the other  observing. Towards the end, she deciding to join the dancing!

Playing with Light and Shadow through Projection

Most children worked with projection today. They created shapes with the translucent building discs which they placed on the projector, switched transparency drawings, and layered various drawings and transparent/translucent items on the projector. A few times, the children discovered the light seemed to go away and children who were creating shadows alerted the children at the projector that they could no longer see their shadows. So it was discovered that even with several layers of translucent or mostly translucent items, the light would eventually be blocked. Austin again attempted to draw a background for the projector but changed his mind to work with other materials. Austin and Sam eventually created a scene using the translucent discs and chose to dance to the Star Wars theme.

Children also had opportunities for drawing movement and shadow as well as building with magnets:

We're looking forward to our field trip tomorrow with more to discover about our movements, shadow, and maybe even "shadow videos"!