Week 3 - Delving into Drawing and Mathematics (with a little microscope magic for some extra fun!)

 OK - right off, when I saw our instructions this week and that we have to DRAW, my fixed mindset about drawing rose up and screamed "Noooooooo!" Knowing I would have to share my drawings on the blog was the biggest part of the reaction, rather than the drawing process itself. Drawing is not something I feel I am good at, not something I ever pursued practicing, and not something I choose to engage with other than once in a while. But I scolded myself gently and took it as an exercise in perspective taking - how might I help a student who is a reluctant drawer if we were to use drawing with math? I won't know unless I experience overcoming the drawing trepidation myself.

My community garden plot

What a great week for needing to go outdoors to draw! Weather forecast was promising, at least later in the days after fog was supposed to clear. So, I set my sights on Wednesday, planning to leave work as soon after 3pm as I could and walk down to my community garden to sketch. The plan was thwarted by a second year teacher needing to talk through a difficult report card (but she was so appreciative, I couldn't begrudge this) and it was nearly 4:30pm by the time I got home to collect my things. Knowing sunset was in about half an hour and my westward bound drive home gave me a view of the fog bank rolling in, I drove to my garden instead and set up on a step stool between my garden boxes.

As recommended, I spent time sitting first for several minutes, observing with my senses and quieting my mind. The fog was already making its presence felt in dampness on my skin and halos around the street lamps that had just turned on. The dampness tickled the inside of my nose. My garden is right along the Arbutus Greenway and it was busy with bicycle commuters and after-work walkers and joggers. I could hear the whirr of bike mechanisms, clear, clipped footprints of pedestrians, and the engine sounds of cars as they drove by on the street side of my little plot. Stretching my ears further, I could hear planes taking off from YVR across the river and horns on tugboats, likely warning each other through the incoming fog. There was chirping coming from the blackberry bushes across the greenway - I think chickadee but not entirely sure. Just before I opened my sketchbook, I could hear bursts of opera being sung (turned out to be someone singing along to what they were listening to as they walked!).

First sketch - Nellie's arbour

The first thing that really captured my eye was an arbour in my neighbour Nellie's garden, or at least the side of it facing me. It is made of strips of wood criss-crossed between sturdy posts. I hadn't read Susan's instructions past section b, so I didn't actually know what we were to do with our sketches but I instinctively made some notes about what I observed looking more closely at this structure than I ever had before. I noticed that the strips cross each other at the top and sides of the frame, creating a little 'v' at 90 degree angles and the strips had been to a point to fit into the corners. My sketch doesn't show well, but the gaps between the strips formed squares, intersecting at 90 degree angels. When I got home and read the c) section of the instructions, I found that looking at these lines and angles was exactly what I should have done!

Second sketch - maple samara

I tackled a maple samara next. My garden is covered in partially decayed samara, whirligigs, or helicopters (what do you favour calling them?) due to a tree in the corner of my little plot. By spring I usually pull out several saplings of the maple variety (and one or two of the walnut variety that I did not plant but my squirrel friends did!). I find smaller things easier to sketch more accurately but my sketch doesn't well depict how fine the exposed veins were where the 'skin' had already decayed nor how the veins feed out of the seed part clumped together and spread from there.

I was already getting very chilled and losing light fast. I was worried my paper would dampen with the creeping fog. However, I committed to sketching two more things - some 'chicken wire' on my fencing and the street lamp.

City street lamp and signage

Chicken wire fencing

That was it - wimped out and headed home to warm up! (Context - my work place is always cold and we have to also have the windows open to circulate air so I had already sat all day in cold and just wanted to be warm!)

Patio mesclum leaf

On Friday I decided to inspect my patio for 2 more living things to draw. I had planted some mesclum mix in the fall and it grew and gave me a couple salads and I left a few leaves out for the house finches that visit regularly to enjoy. I sketched out one of the limp leaves - it is purple and yellow (faded from a deep purple and green) but I kept in pencil sketch. I also found some lichen growing on my plant ladder (a "ladder" with ledges for pots that my dad made me). I sketched that by slowly following the outline with my eye while equally as slowly moving my pencil, then filling in a few more details. (A quick delve into my plant ID book inside makes me think this is Ragbag (Platismatia glauca).

Patio lichen - possibly Ragbag

Digital microsope

During my first sketching session, I decided to bring the maple samara home to look at more closely - the fading light at my garden made it hard to see all the details. At home, I was like "I want to enlarge this!" and excitedly recalled that in one of my yet-to-be-unpacked-boxes from my summer work-site move was a digital microscope.  I brought that home with me on Thursday and used it on Thursday and Friday to look even more closely at the living things I'd sketched.  Here are some of the pictures I took with the microscope's software (clicking on the image should open a larger copy for you to look at):

Maple samara

Maple samara

Maple samara

Mesclum leaf

Mesclum leaf

Lichen

Lichen

The inquiry project through which I got the digital microscope was a mathematics-related one with teachers involved in Reggio-Inspired Mathematics. Part of what we wondered was how looking closely at things, especially natural materials, could inspire children's mathematical noticings and thinking.

Drawing definitely made me look closely and observe in detail for both the living and non-living things. What benefits or drawbacks are there to employing digital microscopes (or ordinary ones) for close up observation? What would asking children to draw from these zoomed-in views do for their noticings, wonderings, connections, thinking?

This is how I approached parts a) and b) of the activity and although I did a little of c) in my notes next to my first sketch, I plan to address some of the questions in connection to my reading and this week's viewing in another blog post. What I really wanted to do here was document my movement through the activity up to the reflection point.