Rhythmical pulsation: art, mimesis and mathematics in primary school following Mary Everest Boole

Hands-on approaches to mathematics work nicely in the classroom from preschool to higher education. A comparison of case studies of different grades of education led us to look for the roots of understanding and learning in hands-on activities in mimesis; that is, the kind of identification and recognition by means of representation typical of the arts. We discuss an example regarding a 5th grade class in primary school, where an advanced geometrical topic – curves as generated by an envelope of straight lines – is experienced through storytelling combined with hands-on activities with a needle and thread. In the classroom, the mimetic energy of the children has allowed them access to radically disembedded concepts – because of their abstraction – by means of play, bodily experience and esthetical experience. The activity was drawn from Mary Everest Boole, a pioneer in early introduction of children to scientific thought, who described the mind-body process unleashed by this activity in terms of rhythmic pulsation.