This is the cave the boys and dog found in 1940. Almost thirty years later the first boy who discovered it still worked at the cave as a guide! This is also the cave that intrigued Douglas Mazonowicz enough to inspire his life long achievement of capturing and documenting accurate replicas of cave art before they were destroyed.- Do you see the three colors from the earth?
- Describe for me the places where you see the red, the black and the yellow.
- Do you see any difference between how the mane might have been painted and how the rest of the painting was done? Look very carefully at the edges.
- What is the difference? Describe how it looks different and the different ways the artist may have put the colors on the cave wall.
- With hands?
- With a brush? Could they have made brushes? What might they have used to make a brush?
- Was any part painted or drawn with the edge of something hard? How can you tell?
- What do you think all these symbols are?
- What is a symbol, anyway? (Give some examples for those who don’t know. Sometimes children know more than they (or we) know they know. They just don’t have the vocabulary for it. You can always start out by asking about the word or idea. Then you can break it down into examples they will definitely know.)
- For example: A symbol of an idea, concept, feeling and place, all wrapped up together? – The flag. Even the kindergarteners can be introduced to the term. You ask about it. They shrug their shoulders. Then you can look around the room and say, “I’ll find an example. I see something in this room that is a symbol of the United States. It isn’t the country itself. It stands for the country. It means the country. What is it?
- Symbol of an amount ? a number. I see something in this room that is a funny shaped thing. It stands for an amount of something. If I have five things I make this shape to show that. What is it?
- Symbol of a sound? a letter. (For this one use a consonant, rather than a vowel.) I see something in this room that is the symbol for the sound mmm. If I want to tell someone about that sound what do I write on the paper?
- (Does anyone remember Kandinsky’s pictures we looked at? (Man on a Horse, The White Dot, Rows of Symbols) Do you think he might have been inspired by cave art?)
- Why is the horse so fat looking?
- Why might that be important to the artist?
I have story about this one, too. A fifth grade boy once asked me when looking at this print, “If they were hunters, why are those pictures of plants in there?” I said, “Maybe the plants were important, if it was what the animal ate.” Then he told me that he had been thinking about something while looking at this picture. “Well, I’ve been thinking and I’m not saying this to be funny but you know how there are piles of manure wherever there are horses? Well, you know how after a while, plants sprout from manure? Well, maybe that’s why there are those pictures of plants around horses, because plants grew around the horses’s manure.”
I loved this story and this observation. The child and the artist were alike in their ability and willingness to observe nature. I also thought it was as though the boy were watching, in his mind, what the stoneage artist had watched and then theorized as to what these observations might have meant to that person so long ago. I said something like, “Manure, plants, sprouting…That’s fantastic! What an idea! Was the large animal seen as even more magical because its manure sprouted plants? Maybe. In time maybe it was these kinds of observations and thoughts that lead to people trying their hand at planting seeds. Couldn’t those people have observed that the same seeds eaten by the horse grew out of the manure? I think that’s possible and that you have said something very important here today!
I promised the class that I would write to Mr. Douglas Mazonowicz and tell him of the great observations made and theories developed by them. I did write and Mr. Mazonowicz wrote back, telling me that he has learned to never underestimate children.
Which of the three examples of cave art is their favorite, for any reason at all?
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