Thursday, 13th April 2017

During the second day of our two day course for the Easter Holidays, Thinking in Three Dimensions, we continued experimenting with building, joining, wrapping, painting, gold leafing and the children’s favourite ‘free making’ sessions.

We started the morning with painting the block and pebble sculptures we made the day before, some children chose to leave them in their natural colours.

Others experimented with acrylic paint to brighten them up.

The glue guns were available to make any last minute alterations.

While half the group painted, the other group brought to life one of their sculptures from the day before, by incorporating it into a cartoon storyboard. The children used their imagination to take their new creations on an imaginative journey of their own. They could work together or on their own.

We then went back to our free making sessions, the children’s unanimous favourite activity. All the adults reflected on how little time children of this age get to work on this scale with a choice of materials and so much freedom

You can see how absorbed they were as they worked to their own agenda’s and solved their own problems in small self selected teams or on their own.

There were plenty of adults on hand to help them when they needed and supervise the cutting knives and glue gun tables.

There was also a painting table for those who wanted to add touches of colour or finish off clay work from the day before.

Some children chose to work in a very abstract and conceptual way, exploring form, shape and texture in their own ways.

Others worked on a smaller, figurative scale.

A few worked in small teams to create larger sculptures that you could inhabit.

The eldest children worked on quite a technical piece of their own design. Quite a piece of engineering!

As the pieces came close to completion they wouldn’t look out of place in a contemporary gallery or museum of modern art as fine examples of pieces that explore materials, structure, shape and design.

We then did another more closed activity that involved changing an object by wrapping it somehow in another material – tape, string, wool or even gold leaf! The idea was to disguise the original object somehow.

These little sculptures regained our focus and concentration after the freer making sessions

The gold leaf was particularly popular – adding a little sparkle to our sculptures. Ordinary objects were made to look a little special and precious!

The pirate ship even gained a gold leafed crows nest!