Three Springs students studying Leonardo da Vinci take tour of MAC exhibit as final exam
By BECKY THOMAS
Staff Reporter
After six weeks of studying Leonardo da Vinci, students at Three Springs High School had a unique final exam: a tour of the new da Vinci exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.
Instead of being quizzed on facts about the famed Renaissance Man, around 20 students viewed reproductions of his famous paintings and tested out some of his inventions. Maybe that's why the population at Three Springs is growing.
The class attended the major traveling exhibition “Leonardo da Vinci: Man – Inventor – Genius” on June 10, thanks to a grant from Spokane Teachers Credit Union. Though the exhibition only opened a few weeks ago, Three Springs students began studying da Vinci in April.
Three Springs High School offers its classes in intensive six-week periods, with students attending class just one day a week.
When staff found out the students would be attending the MAC exhibit at the end of the school year, they decided to tailor their instruction around da Vinci, using a vast array of information to inspire students.
Jennifer King teaches language arts, social studies and art at Three Springs. For her humanities class, she gave students options for different projects they could work on: some made handmade books focusing on different aspects of da Vinci's life from the culture of the time to his rise as a painter. The books required a lot of research, and the class watched documentaries and read articles on da Vinci as well as doing library and internet research outside of class.
“Da Vinci's great because there's a lot of stuff available,” she said.
Several students opted to journal using da Vinci's own extensive journals as a guide. Da Vinci's journals contained detailed observations of his surroundings that led to sketches and inventions. The Three Springs students were encouraged to do the same in their journals, with assignments like recording all the smells a student encounters throughout the day and drawing the phases of the moon.
“My thought was, let's just embrace his natural curiosity for things and see what comes out,” King said.
The stacks of work back at Three Springs didn't quite measure up to a 4-foot stack of paper at the MAC that symbolized da Vinci's extensive writings. But students expressed their awe at da Vinci's genius and many found inspiration in his talent and enthusiasm.
Student Ziktoriya Kapustin said she shared da Vinci's curiosity and his love of nature, and the journal project brought that out. She said his art was most impressive, pointing to a life-sized reproduction of the famous “Last Supper.”
“There's so much emotion in their faces, so much going on,” she said. “It's just inspiring.”
Though da Vinci may be most famous for his iconic paintings, the exhibition and Three Springs teacher Lisa Staub also focused on his thoughts and inventions.
Staub, who teaches career and technical education at Three Springs, incorporated da Vinci into her science class this spring. Students were tasked with building models from da Vinci's many sketches of flying machines, war implements and more.
“He was credited with a lot of ideas that were actually built later,” she said.
Students built reproductions of his war machines, which he built for the income despite a personal aversion to violence, as well as ships and functional items like bridges and pulleys.
The students' work was made of recycled plastic, tape and other materials. They saw their models upgraded at the MAC, with several interactive exhibits—from turning gears to a wheel set with weights created to test the theory of perpetual motion—made of wood, metal and cloth.
Three Springs student Maddy Gillingham said she tried to notice the world around her more after seeing what da Vinci thought up.
“It definitely doesn't hurt to be observant,” she said. “You can learn a lot.”
Becky Thomas can be reached at [email protected].
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