Meditation on a Life Eaten

Apple Snails do not abandon their shells.

One young boy in 3rd Grade said they taste like fish. He grinned when everyone in the classroom choked and coughed and gagged. Only gladly would he eat it again, he said. I whimpered. He ate my new found friend. And that's when I realized that my collection of apple snail shells were found as the result of massive dining.

How do scientists feel both for the life of the snail and for the Kite Hawk which only survives in the Everglades due to the Apple Snail?!  Are the two chambers of the heart divided so we can feel both equally? Perhaps the incoming bluish blood for the lament of the Apple Snail's death and the oxygen rich blood happy for the continued life of the predator? 

There is no room in a classroom to side with snail eaters or non-snail eaters. Both are accepted in a school where tolerance is taught.

But the lesson is this: if over-development and pollution do not end the wasteful destruction of the life of the Apple Snail, the life of the Kite Hawk, now endangered, will perish altogether.

The Clever Snail Doodler

 

This photo is a collection of clues of a "Who Done It" mystery. 

Is the kindergartner with the magnifying glass examining the apple snail shell? Or is the child looking at the crayon marks on the apple snail shell? Did this kindergartner put those crayon marks on the apple snail shell? Did this child choose green to emulate the Granny Apple or was that an intuitional serendipity?

And  most seriously of all, how does a teacher deal with snail shell vandalism? 

Answering the last question first: The teacher holds her breath about the snail shell vandalism. 

Nothing is said. Obviously, the kindergarten child needed to test out the surface of the shell  for its capacity to hold crayon marks. This was not vandalism; it was surface texture inquiry and discovery. 

Marking up the snail shell is not encouraged  because other students have equal right to clean material. Green Crayons are not removal marks. And that's a good reason to hold a rules and behavior lecture.

But there are moments only to behold and not to teach. The teacher was beholding the birthing of science inquiry by a child who only yesterday, entered school for the first time in a 5 year old life.  

With that awareness, there are no other questions to answer. The kindergartner "done" it and "done" it right.

The Apple Snail Rides Again

The Apple Snail is slower than a racehorse or a cheetah but much faster than a plant. And it's about the same rate of speed as Mrs. Giveon on any given day due to her busted knees. Understanding that snails are not necessarily "slow" without having a rate of speed in comparison set the pace of the Science/Art learning experience today.

Opening day at school meant a longer than usual attendance time (more time/speed comparisons!) . After the opening twang of the tuning fork greeting the children back, we got touchy-feelie with the largest fresh water snail on earth.

Snails are part of South Florida children's lives. They race around the gardens or slug along the canal banks. Understanding one's own backyard is the best place to start curiosity investigation.

No sooner did I plop the snail shell in each child's hand did they begin to investigate with rulers, thermometers, two types of magnifying glasses and unaided sight. (Or sight corrected glasses.)

Discussing why the snails change shells due to outgrowth, one student discovered a crack in the shell with the magnifying glass. He said, "I see why it needed to leave!!!!!" Whether or not that was the true reason for the crack, the child made a logical connection to our class discussion.

Imagination, investigation and self-expression...that's Science/Art in a snail's shell.

Fat colored crayons and freshly sharpened pencils teetering in the balance scales enabled the children to express the spirals and shapes of their long whiskered Apple Snail.

It was also their first-hand hand, first -day exposure to  perfect geometry.

The Ancient Greek and Roman artists and architects called it the Sacred or Golden Geometry. Masters Artist / Scientist Leonardo Da Vinci drew the most famous Man in the Circle in this perfect geometry. It is also called the Golden Ratio. Below are the proportions in math. Mathematicians use numbers:  Artists use their eyeballs to sight it.  Artists who are trained Classically eventually zing into the golden proportions instinctively. This golden ratio is so significant that we, in modern times, take it for granted. But it is the very reason our culture uses the rectangle shape for our school note paper. By contrast, do we write on clay spheres? No...not usually.



Exposing children to perfection in mathematical ratios whether they know it yet or not, will positively influence their sense of balance in their art and science life to come. Their sense of balance will become "natural". 

 

The Apple Snail's perfect ratio from the starting spiral to it's tuba-like opening is the closest I could get to the Chambered Nautilus. And it is our own Florida native creature...vital to our wildlife habitat. Unravel the snail and you spiral into the greatest galaxies of learning.

 http://www.geometrycode.com/sacred-geometry/

The Golden Ratio

The golden ratio (a.k.a. phi ratio a.k.a. sacred cut a.k.a. golden mean a.k.a. divine proportion) is another fundamental measure that seems to crop up almost everywhere, including crops. (The golden ratio is about 1.618033988749894848204586834365638117720309180…) The golden ratio is the unique ratio such that the ratio of the whole to the larger portion is the same as the ratio of the larger portion to the smaller portion. As such, it symbolically links each new generation to its ancestors, preserving the continuity of relationship as the means for retracing its lineage.

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_geometry

The Apple Snail's First Day of School

Teacher's Pet

 

 

 The first day back to school is tomorrow, August 20, 2012. This year starts a brand new program: Visual Literacy - Approach to Science Education in the Elementary School through Art Elements and Principles. 

Wow. That's a mouthful for any gastropod. To shorten it for the little teeth in a Kindergartner, I refer to this program as "Science Art". It's in the Science Lab rather than the Art Lab but only because that's where I landed this year. Curiosity can be investigating anywhere on Earth....or even on Mars as proven by our summer successful landing of a space probe.

Starting off this year are the most gigantic fresh water snail: the Apple Snail. They are native to many tropical and subtropical regions on earth. The ones I collected by the hundreds are from a south Floridian agricultural farm.

Mixed in with the young Apple Snails are shells of mollusks that are over 10,000 years old....these are blanched white and very hardened. These shells got dug up from lower soil levels. They were young and fresh during the last Ice Age (I think...I could do more homework on that)...when this part of Florida was part of a shallow sea bed. Some of the elder mollusks are the same as those I pick up on the seashore. These elder mollusks are salt water varieties and that's different from the Apple Snail shells which are fresh water only.

After a long summer break where most children did not need to wake early to think about things, my Apple Snail shells will open their minds wide...like the tuba-like opening of the giant shells.

Children's drawings and reactions will fill following blogs on this topic.


Meanwhile, look at these links:
 

http://fl.biology.usgs.gov/sofla/apple_snail.pdf

http://www.applesnail.net/