Construction Paper Play

Every week I have the opportunity to teach a children's art class. Right now, there are only 2 students (Grade 1 & 3) which is perfectly fine with me because that just means I'm able to try a wider variety of lessons since materials for two students wouldn't cost so much.

A recent project I did with them was using construction paper to create 3D sculptures. This was inspired from one of my favourite art teacher blogs, Organized Chaos. In my lesson, I gave the students 5 minutes to draw with markers as many kinds of lines as possible. From these drawings, we talked about the variety of lines (wavy, zigzag, dotted, straight, diagonal, curly, swirly, etc). 

 

Using these drawings as our inspiration, we constructed 3D lines using strips of construction paper. My students loved this idea and had a whole lot of fun constructing a "park" or "skateboard park."

After the success of this lesson, I decided to try it on my almost 3 yr old daughter by just using the strips of paper to make a "park". She seemed to somewhat enjoy it but it required a lot more help in gluing the 3D parts and folding (which meant frustration for my daughter). I would say perhaps this activity might be best left for at least 3.5 year olds but it's worth a try if you're keen on this idea. 

I also found that my husband started making one when he had some father-daughter time :)

PlayMais Sculptures

Yesterday my husband kindly drove me to a kids craft store quite a distance away. I was hoping to pick up some student grade watercolour paper for a really good price but unfortunately, it wasn't the quality I expected :(. We did end up picking up some other really neat things (actually my husband picked them out).

One of them is a box of PlayMais. When I first saw them a couple of months ago, I was skeptical so I never even thought about buying them (I thought they looked just like the packaging peanuts you get from delivery boxes plus it costed almost $20 for a box of them). When I started playing with them today with my daughter, I was very wrong about them. They are FABULOUS!  It's 100% biodegradable (made from corn) and very easy to use (a small dab of water sticks them together). The best part is it's non-toxic (I admit that in the past I did try making sculptures with the styrofoam peanuts using glue and they made this funky smell so I knew not to use it again for kids crafts :S).


A dab of water sticks them together. My daughter is almost 3 and it was easy for her to use.

It came with a little plastic butter knife and my daughter loved cutting the PlayMais in half. She said she's making "a cool nut tree."

My husband and I had as much fun with it as my daughter. Here are our collaborative creations :)

I love the hungry caterpillar. My husband made a hamburger tree :D

I'd recommend this product to children almost 3 and up-that includes big children like me ;)