No Snails Were Harmed In the Making of These Paintings

The artwork of teacher Seanna Vail's fourth grade class is one of the featured school projects on display at the office.

The students' paintings are probably the most unique because, instead of using paintbrushes, they used snails. That's right. Snails.

As part of a lesson about the food chain, Vail decided to teach her class about decomposers—those species that convert dead matter into gases that are then released back into the atmosphere—by letting the students experiment hands-on with the snails.

The students dipped the snails in food coloring and put different scents on Q-tips to get the snails to move around on the paper. The goal: to see how snails decompose certain things.

The result was a series of abstract paintings full of colorful blotches and lines created by the snails. The entire class was surprised that they were able to learn so much about the mysterious shelled-creatures, Vail said.

"They were fast at being slow," student Oliver Otake, 9, said of the snails.

A parent, Lisa Starobin, was able to get the snails from an organic farm in Half Moon Bay. After the class was done with the experiment, the snails were released.

Each school in the district has artwork, rotated on a monthly basis, on display at the district office. San Bruno Patch will be featuring the artwork for the next eight days.

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