Loose Parts & Found Objects: Sculptures

Earlier this year, we embarked on a journey with "beautiful stuff" in which we collected, sorted, classified and created self-portraits using treasures the children and I brought in from home. As an extension to this, the children used these loose parts and found materials to build their own sculptures.

After exploring the materials, some of the children knew exactly what they wanted to build. Others were asked questions, such as, "What does this remind you of? What can you imagine building with this?" to help get their imaginations going.

Most of the children began by first drawing a blueprint of their design. Then they got to work turning their two-dimensional sketch into a three-dimsensional structure. The final sculptures resulted after days or even weeks of hard work and dedication and were ones the children were extremely proud of.

Here are just some of the examples of what we created:

Many of you have been in to visit the display board outside our classroom that features stories and pictures about the sculpture process, as well as the children's writing about their work. Please continue to pop in and share this exciting learning experience with your child. 

At home: Continue the construction process at home using objects you have lying around (e.g. empty cereal boxes, tin cans, wooden spoons, pots, thread spools). Encourage your child to create a sketch of their design before or even after building and label or write about their work.  The objects do not need to be glued together and instead can be used repeatedly to construct new sculptures. This is a fun and engaging project your child can do with others while learning about topics, such as measurement, balance, stability, shapes and spatial sense.