Movement and Art: Becoming Lines

A Kindergarten artist transformed his squiggle into a dragon!

It is exciting to start another year of teaching with Mind Move Make!  I feel tremendous gratitude that I am able to bring mindfulness, movement, and art to children and adults in the Portland area.  I am thankful to spend my time working on and thinking about how to incorporate these three beautiful elements into a program that benefits others by offering skills and techniques in mindfulness and developing social-emotional learning.  So many of my passions get to interact and play together, all in the hopes of helping individuals find calm, develop self-regulation, cultivate creativity, explore emotions, and encourage a sense of community.  I am fortunate to engage in this work everyday.

During my first class of the school year at Alameda, we started by getting used to the space and getting to know one another.  All students sat in a circle eating their snacks as we went around the room sharing our favorite foods and our names.  This sharing activity allows the students to start to cultivate a sense of community.  After that, I asked them to define the three components of our class: mindfulness, movement, and art.  I also elaborated about each idea, adding on to what was already shared.  In terms of mindfulness, I explained that it was paying attention to what is happening RIGHT NOW!

Then, I asked the returning students if any of them would like to demonstrate what a "mindful body" looks like and talk about what a mindful body is.  One student raised her hand and showed us what her body looks like in the "mindful" position.  Everyone got the chance to try on their own versions of a mindful body, with an upright spine, criss-crossed legs, and hands either resting on knees or on the belly.  After taking a few big, beautiful breaths in this position I asked everyone to try to take a nourishing breath sitting in their most slumped posture.  Everyone agreed that this did not feel good in their bodies and recognized that it was very hard to take a deep breath.

 With everyone inhabiting their mindful bodies, we started our first Mindful Minute practice together.  This is something we will practice every time we come together as a group.  I invited everyone to either close their eyes or gaze down towards the floor.  At first, I asked the students to pay attention to the sound of the singing bowl; to listen to that sound until they could not hear it anymore.  When they could no longer hear the singing bowl sound, they were to put one thumb up.  Then they were supposed to listen closely to other sounds happening all around them.  I explained that at the end of this practice everyone would have a chance to share what they heard.

After that we got the wiggles out with a little movement.  I taught the students Tadasana, or Mountain Pose.  Asking them to become their strongest mountain, I went around and tried to gently knock each student over.  With their feet firmly planted, they created a very sturdy base that is difficult to topple.  Next, the students were invited to dance, move, and shake anywhere in any way that felt good in their own bodies.  And when I rang the singing bowl, they were to once again find their Mountain Pose and follow their breath.  Everyone did a great job, and no mountains were crumbled as everyone remained strong and steady!

This is the second year that Mind Move Make has offered classes at Alameda Elementary.  This year, the students in the class are mostly Kindergarteners with a few returning first graders also participating.  For our first class I wanted to see where they were skill-wise in terms of art.  This would tell me where I could go with them this session in creating art.  To do this I brought back a project I did with first graders for many years while I was an art educator.

First, we read the book The Squiggle by Carole Lexa Schaefer.  In the book, a class of young children are walking with their teacher through a park in a straight line.  One imaginative little girl picks up a red string and proceeds to imagine that it is everything from a dragon, to the moon, to the Great Wall of China.  In terms of art elements, it is a great way to introduce the concept of line.  After reading the book and talking about it, we became many types of lines with our bodies.  Some children worked with partners to become lines, and some chose to work alone.  Together we became wavy, diagonal, horizontal, vertical, scalloped, and many more.  

These students are working together to create a zig-zag line!

Here are some of the different lines we transformed our bodies into!

After engaging in the movement work of becoming lines, I explained the art portion of our class.  For each student I created a "squiggle" line.  As artists, their job was to transform this squiggle into something from their imagination, just as the little girl from the book used her imagination to transform the red string.  Well, I was blown away by the imaginations of the students, their art skills, and the difference between everyone's drawings!  If this first class is any indication, we will be able to do a lot of fantastic artwork this session in Mind Move Make!  Here are some examples of the different drawings: