‘gooey, cold and great fun!’

 

Our activities today had us investigating the marks on our own fingertips.. we looked for the special lines that make our fingerprint. Some of the children came to the microphone to tell me what their fingerlines were like:

Sean Og told me he had straight lines on his finger tip and Pearse said he had curly, wurly lines! The fact that they saw such different marks was because everyone’s finger tip marks are different!

We dipped our fingers in charcoal powder and paint to make marks on the page, so we could see these special marks and lines.

The children discovered that it was usually the second or third print that was clearer because the first one was nearly always ‘really really black’ the second print was lighter and easier to see the lines. So we discovered what makes a good print depends on:

the amount of paint or dust

how hard you press

 

 

Before the finger was washed, we looked at the darkened, stained tip of the finger and noticed that we could see the lines really well!

 

Click on the link to see some of the photos from the activity.

activity

Before the children took a break, we talked about how else a print could be made using our body and up came the suggestion of a footprint. So I asked the children to keep a look out out in the playground for any footprints during the break.

When the children returned Pearse told me he had seen the footprint of a bird on tar and another noticed the footprint made in cement.

We decided that we would make our own footprints and so the next task was to cover the sole of a shoe with paint and make prints with this footwear. Here’s the sole of a sandal with some paint just marked on it.

The children tried this in class with an old shoe they had brought in and as they engaged with this task, the sound levels in the classroom suddenly dropped……. everyone was totally focused on painting their shoe sole very carefully all over.

Here’s the results of printing the shoe sole over and over. Look how the print fades….

 

We realized that we can see alot of detail in a footprint. and to make several it was necessary to use firm pressure, holding the shoe carefully. In order to get the toe, mid sole and heel, we had to apply good pressure. The children were very good at this and some fantastic footprints were made. Using this technique Riordain was able to get a good shoe print 5 times!

Aisling discovered that her impressions got lighter and lighter as she went on. Lauren’s footprint shapes looked like lovely bubbles!

I told the class that when I was preparing for the session and making footprints myself, our dog, who is called Hobo, came into the room – of course I tried to entice him to walk in paint but he was having none of it  …. he was not going to get his paws dirty!

 

 

Hobo was not in the mood for printing……

 

Activities continued in the classroom for our session and no-one was shy of having a go. Some children worked away on transforming some of their footprints into other things and really let their imaginations fly…

Nikita made his footprint into a self portrait, with the print as the body!

Riordain made a rocket out of his! Aisling made a butterfly and Darragh made a king!

There were some wonderful creative pictures made.

The final task was to try out some bare foot prints. These were made by walking in paint and onto a big sheet of paper, then straight into a bucket of water!!!!

See below on the link some pictures of the activities.

footprints….

We had some trouble with lost connections so I did not witness some of the final task but was assured by Mrs Carolan that this went well.

The children explored the footprints and saw different sizes and shapes.

The report back from the barefoot walk was that it was

“GOOEY, COLD AND GREAT FUN!’

A big thank you to all the class for the great work and to Mrs Carolan and the assistant for the great organization.

I found this image of a project that took place in China. The leaves of tree were made by people’s footprints. This was a giant pedestrian crossing……

Image by Jody Xiong with the Chinese Environmental Protection Foundation, CHINA

 

 

 

All above images from

http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/08/green-pedestrian-crossing-in-china-creates-leaves-from-footprints/

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