Curling Kandinsky style!!

The very same day that Britain made it to the curling final by beating Sweden (one of those win win situations for me) we had been curling our own way at Filosofiska...

The Kandinsky painting became the focus... which colour would we land on...

I explained to the children that I was going to experiment as I was not sure if ot would work... I took a piece of cardboard (from an old box) and a carboard lid... and I wafted the cardboard to move the lid... it took a LOT of work but it did begin to glide across the floor, but just couldn't lift onto the painting...

So I tried with a piece of paper... again it didn't work, so I tried again with tissue paper... and it worked!!

This was not one of those occasions for the children to solve the problem, this was one of those occasions where the children could see me try something out, it not working, the children seeing my disappointment and frustration but also my drive to test out something new... they got to see my strategy for failure and my strategy for not giving up but to continue to experiment and test things out until the small adjustments meant the curling game could work...

We then got going... the aim was to create wind with the cardboard to move the piece of snowy white tissue paper across the room and land on one of the circles and to discover which colour it landed on.

This was popular with all ages - 2 to 5 year olds. We then experimented more and started to blow with our mouths... one at a time and also in groups... there was a lot of laughing... children and teachers lying on their tummies... as I had to lie on my stomach to be able to take the photographs!!
They also experimented with different sizes of tissue paper - did it effect the speed that you blew it across the room or your ability to direct the paper?

Then we tested using the lid again (like a puck) with a plastic hockey stick... three hits each... with the aim with one strike to get it to land on the painting... we helped the children learn that failure was not a problem but an opportunity to learn... if the lid went to far then we had learned not to hit it so hard, if it did not reach the painting then we learned that we needed to hit it harder... some children needed to learn too hard, too soft to be able to get it JUST RIGHT.

It feels like this painting is going to remain on the floor instead of being rescued - so that the children can continue to play games with it... and hopefully create their own games too!

GB winning over Sweden and earning their place in the Olympic final

our Kandinsky inspired curling game

blowing - great for training up mouth muscles to support pronunciation

blowing in groups... this was FUN and FUNNY!!

using the hicket stick and taking aim... the lids came from the senior centre next door... they thought we could make good use of them... they were right about that!! (we got LOADS)