Spinning tops

It's a straw, though. Why's it here?

The paper straw tops were out again from the week before, and Bori picked one up and shook it.

“What's this?”

“What do you think you could do with it?” said Teacher Yepark.

“It's a straw, though. Why's it here?”

It went down on the floor and got pushed along. It did what a straw does on a floor, which is roll.

Then somebody else came over, took one, and stood it up on its end.

“You do it like this, don't you?”

“Round and round it goes,” said Teacher Yepark.

Later the tops had got in among the other toys, and stayed there.

“They work with those as well, then.”

On the table, then

The wooden tops were the small kind. They got turned over, looked at, tried, and then held up to be sorted out.

On the floor it meant bending all the way down, and a top let go on a floor travels — off under the shelf, off behind somebody.

Teacher Yepark brought over the low table with the pattern painted on it.

After that the tops stayed where the hands were, and the hands stayed where they could see.

One of them had not had a go yet and was watching from the side.

“Could you lend one of yours to your friend?” said Teacher Yepark.

Bori looked over at the one who was watching, and then held one out.

The old one has a string on it

There was a poster up of children playing the old games, and the faces on the children were theirs.

“That's me. I'm doing tops.”

“What am I doing?”

Chaewon was told it was jegi, the one you keep up with your foot.

“I don't know that one.”

A finger moved along to the next square. “That one's hopscotch. We've got that in our room.”

“And this one — do you know what this is?” said Teacher Yubok, pointing at the arrows and the pot.

Nobody did. So the names went round the poster, square by square.

Then two tops came out: the old kind and the new kind.

“Tops!”

The old one has a string you wind on yourself. The winding got shown once, slowly.

“It's not working.”

The new kind they already knew from before. Those they set going themselves, over and over, while the string sat where it had been dropped.

This one goes on smooth

The wooden top came with a string, which was not obvious.

“What is it?”

Teacher Yubok said it was a top, and that the string was how you spun it.

“How do you do it, then?”

Pulling on the string took the string off. Top in one hand, string in the other, and nothing joining them.

Chaewon looked up and said nothing at all.

“It's fine. That's how it goes,” said Teacher Yubok. “That's the game.”

Then a smile, and then the winding, shown once.

It spun. Chaewon shouted it across the room.

Everyone came, and there were enough for everyone, and for a while the winding was the hard part. Then it was not.

“They used to say whoever's spins longest wins,” said Teacher Yubok.

“Shall we have a match?”

Some of them did. One of them wanted to do it alone, and did.

“They say if a top has lots of colors on it, the colors go round when it spins.”

The pencils came out for that, and one of them was pressing hard and getting nowhere.

“This is hard. It's not working.”

“What else have we got that puts color down?” said Teacher Yubok.

A marker pen came back from the shelf.

“This one goes on smooth.”

After that it was markers all round, and then the spinning, and then the shouting.

“The colors are beautiful!”

An acorn goes off sideways

The autumn things were out on the table to be handled — acorns, peanuts, chestnuts, walnuts.

Then somebody said an acorn will spin.

Chaewon tried it. The acorn went over onto its side and rolled off across the table, which is what an acorn does.

“Help me.”

“Shall we spin the acorn together?” said Teacher Yubok.

They did it together, and it went round, and Chaewon watched the whole of it from close up.

“It's going.”

A few more together. Then Chaewon did it alone, and kept doing it.

The walnut wouldn't open

A walnut got carried over and put into Teacher Yepark's hand.

“A good autumn nut. We could share these out — but how do you get one out of a shell that hard?”

“You smash it with a hammer.”

That got acted out, hammer and all.

They looked for something to crack them with. Nothing they had was clean enough or safe enough, so the walnuts stayed shut, and stayed out on the floor as something to play with instead.

Which is when Bori put one down and spun it with one finger.

It went round. It kept going round.

The others came and got walnuts of their own.

“It's a race. One, two, three, go!”

Right, but the race first

Chaewon came over holding a construction block.

“This is a spinning top.”

Down it went on the floor, and round it went.

“It does spin well,” said Teacher Yubok. “How did you make it?”

Another one came over before the answer did.

“Can I play too?”

“Yeah!”

Then the answer, with the pieces held up.

“You have to put this one — the round-bottomed one — into here, this hole at the bottom. That's what makes it go round and round.”

So Teacher Yubok built one by following along, and the other child built alongside.

“So what next?”

“You have to make wings on it, like a pinwheel. Then it spins really well.”

“Wings like a pinwheel, apparently,” Teacher Yubok said to the other one.

“Should we make them long or short?”

“I'm making mine short and cute,” said Teacher Yubok.

“Short works too.”

Three tops, so there had to be a race.

“Let's have a spinning race.”

“Time out! Rules!”

“What rule?”

“One spin each!”

“Okay.”

“No rule of your own?” Teacher Yubok asked Chaewon.

“Then — crashing into each other is allowed!”

“Is that all right with you?” said Teacher Yubok.

“That's fine by me!”

A fourth one turned up with a different idea.

“What about making a pretty top, instead of one that spins well?”

“That's good too. But the race first.”

The crashing rule cost them, in the end: the tops kept coming apart. So the whole thing moved somewhere bigger. With room between them nothing collided, and only then could anybody watch which one stopped first and which one kept going. The ones who had wanted pretty tops made those instead, put them out on display, and voted.

What kept it going Teacher Yubok asked how it was made, and then built one by being told. Every step after that — the wings, how long they should be, the rules — came from the ones who had worked it out.

You're not meant to be outside it

“Right — who can keep theirs going longest?”

The battle tops went into the arena and the game got underway, and partway through it two of them stopped.

“When I played it with him before, we did it like this.”

“But you're not meant to be outside it, are you?”

Neither of them gave way and neither of them shouted. They put the two versions side by side and looked at them.

“Shall we decide how we're doing it, then?” said Teacher Yubok.

“Keep them inside!”

“If it goes out, you lose.”

And that was the rule from then on.

Count, then

They had said the day before that tops keep falling off the table, so two of the tables went out into the corridor, and the space where the tables had been became the floor for it.

Anything that would go round got spun: the paper ones, the block ones, a pan lid, a flat ruler.

Starting together was the problem. One would go, then another, then somebody would say that did not count, and they would all stop and set up again. That happened a lot.

“Count, then. You just count.”

So one of them counted, and after that they all went at once — and once they were all going at once, there was something to count on the other end too.

They timed them. The one still going at the end was first place.

Today the race is fun, so let's color them next time

The wooden tops came in pieces to be put together, so they put them together and started spinning.

When one died too quickly, somebody demonstrated.

“If you do it hard it spins for longer.”

The others copied and watched what happened.

“Let's race and see who keeps theirs going longest.”

On the tabletop all the tops ran into each other, which nobody liked, so Teacher Yubok cut squares of foam — and each square became somebody's own spinning floor.

Then one of them wanted to draw on the tops. The others said not yet.

“Today the race is fun, so let's color them next time.”

Which is what happened.

What kept it going The tops kept colliding on the one tabletop, and what came back was not a rule about taking turns. It was a square of foam each, so that everybody could go at once.

It hasn't got a handle

The rainbow-top sheet had been left out in the room, and they found it.

“Can we make these?”

So they cut round the circles, colored them in, cut along the red line and folded it the way it was folded on the sheet.

Then they took them over to spin them together.

“It won't spin properly.”

“What would a top need, to spin properly?” said Teacher Yubok.

Chaewon turned it over.

“There's no handle on it.”

The handles were made out of paper craft sticks with double-sided tape wrapped round them, pushed through the middle.

Then they spun.

It won't go on the mat

They had been talking about tops they had spun before, and about whether you could make one that does not stop.

The spinners were what they wanted — the ones they already play with.

So they made their own, and once everybody had one there was a contest.

And in the middle of the contest somebody found the thing that decided it.

“It hardly goes on the mat. It goes properly on the floor.”

After that the mat had nobody on it.

That's why it doesn't stop

It was too cold to go out, so the giant top came out instead.

They watched tops spinning first, and Teacher Yubok put a name to what they were seeing — rotational inertia, the thing that keeps a top going once it has started.

“Ah — so that's why it doesn't stop.”

Knowing that was no help at all with the top itself. The shaft went down in the middle and got let go, and if it was not centered it wobbled and died. That took a few goes each. There were some hard feelings.

“Try again. You'll get better at it,” said Teacher Yubok.

Then a race, to see who could keep one going longest. And somewhere in the middle of the racing came the part the name had not given them.

“I'm going to press hard this time.”

“That's why it spins for ages.”

I can see purple

The color wheel was on the wall — the one with the three colors on it — and Chaewon took it down and spun it.

“Come and look at this. If you spin the red and the blue, you get orange.”

That brought the others over.

“Blue and red going round — I can see purple.”

“It changes color!”

It got spun again after that, and again, by whoever had hold of it.

“Why do you think it looks different when it goes round?” said Teacher Yubok.

“Because it's going too fast.”

“I think the colors are getting mixed together.”