Grinnell's Last Visit to Galaxy

Our final visit to the Galaxy space had arrived. In preparation for this workshop, Celeste and I had talked about the way(s) DNA and mitosis are first introduced to kids. So I went on Amazon and looked up "kids books about DNA". One of the first hits was "Have a Nice DNA" by Fran Balkwill & Mic Roplh, published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. It's an interesting book that oddly enough features most of the images I had used with the kids in previous workshops. The illustrations matching the descriptions are a lovely mix of realistic and generalized details. For this visit, we decided to work as one big group the entire time. We began with the group sculpture exercise that we had been doing previously, but this time, after the first student made a sculptural pose, everyone else formed a shape around them so that by the end we didn't just have a 4 or 8-person sculpture, we had close to 20. I led a couple of shape warm-ups, where we tried to move in certain ways and play with movement in various parts of our bodies. Then, I brought out the book and we began moving in ways similar to the phases in mitosis. This workshop played out like most of the others. I read and had one of the students hold up enlarged images that corresponded to what I was saying. The rest of the group then attempted to form the image together. Here's what I read them:

What happens next in a cell with two copies of DNA? Well...

...the cell rests for a while (copying DNA is hard work!).

Then the DNA strands get shorter and fatter - you can see the individual chromosomes.

The chromosomes line up in the center of the cell. They are attached to very fine cables.

Each chromosome breaks into two halves with identical DNA. The two halves are slowly pulled apart by the cables.

The cell begins to split in half. This will make two cells with identical DNA instructions.

The kids were super intrigued by the book and by wanted to understand what the images were. Even though some of them had never been introduced to mitosis, one boy looked at the images and noticed how the last image was exactly like the first one. "How do you think that happened?" I asked him. He didn't really know how to respond, but walked off to a corner with the book in his hands, now curious and intent in figuring out the answer. Throughout the workshop, the kids moved in brilliant ways yet again. Some of them never wanted to leave the floor and performed a beautiful mitosis dance all on a low level! A lot of the kids were gathered around the book once the workshop was over. Some of them even recognized images that were similar to ones we had seen in weeks past, like the ATCG's that symbolize the genetic code or the image of a gel.

Noting that that visit would be our last visit we didn't leave before putting a word in for our upcoming performance with the Dance Ensemble that some of the kids would be featured in! I had just started thinking about how I wanted my presentation of this research to be done in a dance performance-lecture  approach and was thinking of having a slideshow of photos of the kids from throughout the semester displayed behind me as I gave my talk and demonstrated some of the workshops we did.

"Why aren't you coming back next week?" one little girl asked.

"Well, we have a performance coming up at the college and we need to get ready for that" we responded. "But you're more than welcome to come!"

"What day is the show?" she asked.

"December 6th, 7th, and 8th" we answered.

She gave her friend a very serious look at that point.

"Oh," she said "that might be a problem. See, we have [friend's] birthday on the 6th, and the Princess Ball on the 7th...but the 8th might work!"

"That would be great!" we said.

She came in close and said in a hushed voice "but, my friend and I might talk during the show."

We smiled and responded, "We think that'd be OK."