During the children’s engagement with some skeleton leaves they mentioned ideas about other materials:
“I want to make it with paper” – Angelo
“It’s like a string” – Ryder said pointing to the stem of the leaf, whilst Arna discovered similarities between the skeleton leaf and the fine fabric of her dress.
So in context with the children’s verbal as well as visual ideas that we had gained from their drawings, we provided a selection of materials for them to discover.
Further materials were selected based upon their characteristics that might evoke a sensory relationship with the leaf as well as offer other transformable qualities. We were curious about how the children would naturally respond to these materials and what ideas and associations might emerge.
Before delving into creating their leaves with these materials though we thought it pertinent to give the children time to explore and engage with them freely, therefore developing their own understandings of the potentialities and properties of these.
Layering and wrapping different papers and fabrics was one of the most intriguing strategies for the group to start with but towards the end, the children became more and more interested in the deconstruction and transformation of the materials.
It was through this experience that we noticed the children deepening in their relationship and understanding of the sensory properties of the materials and their multiple possibilities. We were excited to see how the children extended their dialogue with the materials and how they have started to translate these into representing their own skeleton leaf creations.
