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Cardboard Play Day at Kujira Yama (#6)

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Cardboard Kryptonite! We had light rain just after our event was set up for The Global Cardboard Challenge on Friday.  Sadly, most of the kids we anticipated didn't show up. We didn't lose heart though, and a few brave souls trickled in after the weather cleared to inhabit the cardboard dwellings that were created. As always, it was great fun and I couldn't have done it without my husband's help, or the wonderful folks that run the play park adventure playground.

I had such a great time this year getting to know the folks at The Imagination Foundation, as well as other Cardboard Challenge organizers from around the world. This year there were more than 43 countries represented and 100,000 kids at the Global Cardboard Play Day. If you've ever thought about planning an event for your community next year, be sure to visit Caine's Arcade to find out more. You can be part of this amazing and inspiring cardboard movement!

Cardboard Heads

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If you're thinking about making a cardboard headpiece for your Halloween costume, this weekend is the time to get started! Last Year we created 2 different kinds of cardboard heads, using two different methods.

the cardboard collective

The first head was for a chameleon costume, and utilized the hood pattern for sewing a kid's jacket. To read the post about adapting a sewing pattern for use with cardboard, click HERE

The second head was built by making a cardboard skeleton and then gluing down layers of  ripped cardboard. You can see more pictures of the development HERE.

Cardboard Wolf Head by The Cardboard Collective

Because every cardboard head is a little different, I'll lay out the most basic steps so you can get started. Have fun and experiment, the point is to develop you're own style...

  1. Make a cardboard band that fits snugly around your head.

  2. Create cardboard side pieces that are similar in shape to the skull of the creature if you look at it sideways.

  3. Glue or staple the pieces to the cardboard band.

  4. Use cardboard strips to connect the side pieces and shape the front of the creature's face.

  5. Cover your cardboard head with crumpled up and flattened out copy paper, fringed newspaper, Kraft paper, torn pieces of egg carton or ripped pieces of corrugated cardboard. You can take a look at the Cardboard Costume Pinterest Board for more inspiration.

Here's a great video by John Gleeson Connolly (via Apartment Therapy) talking about how he made a simple cardboard dragon head for his son's Halloween costume using a similar method. http://vimeo.com/51576209

Loose Parts Play & Cardboard Totem Boxes

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When I released the Totem Box pattern a few weeks ago,  I alluded to the fact that this was a design that I used to manage the "little" toys in our house, but the thought behind the design goes a little deeper.

Quite a few months ago, I made an online friend named Allie who writes the blog, Bakers and Astronauts (as well as Play Lab). Allie's blog is hands down my favorite website about early childhood and inspired play, and it was Allie who first introduced me to the Theory of Loose Parts, which got me exploring with my own children.

"The Theory of Loose Parts Play" was proposed by Simon Nicholson back in the 1970's. His theory is this: "In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it."

When I started thinking about adapting Loose Parts Play inside my home, there were  a few things to rethink. First of all when Nicholson speaks about number and kind of variables, I think he ultimately takes his inspiration from one place, and one place only; the truly wild outdoors. Outside loose parts can fall from the sky, be dug from the ground, plucked from a branch, or drop from a bird's wing. The sounds, textures, and  smells are all ever-changing and we could never, ever recreate such an amazing sensory experience  inside a house, even with dump trucks of glitter.

I had to watch my daughters play a lot to better understand how I could compete with mother nature and increase the number of "variables" (not necessarily the amount of stuff) within our home play environment. Over time, I noticed three categories of objects emerge that they "needed" to make their play more cohesive:

Loose Parts: hand-held objects that assume imagined identities through play.

Containers: objects used by my daughters for collecting, sorting and transporting loose parts as well as defining small spaces.

Expandable Parts: objects used by my daughters to construct and define large spaces

Now, whenever my daughters engage in loose-parts-style play, I try to make sure that all of these elements are available to them. When they are absent, tragic things have happened. Entire shelves of puzzles have been mined for loose parts, fabric and sewing notions have gone missing and Loose Parts Play has ravaged my home like a wildfire, consuming hours of my time in little loose parts cleanup. Although these ideas are only my own expansion on someone else's theory, so far they have proven true for our sample size of two. I'm curious to hear about your observations. What drives the loose parts engine in your home or classroom?

Enjoy our family recipe for Loose Parts Play (indoors):

(Substitute as necessary)

Loose Parts wooden blocks, plastic construction blocks, plastic bottle caps, acorns, shells, stones, cardboard tubes, clothespins, handkerchiefs, fabric scraps, stones, coins

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Containers                                                                                                                   

Sorting Totem Boxes, egg cartons, cardboard fruit trays, graduated boxes

Transporting small paper bags, child sized buckets, baskets, boxes

Collecting nesting eggs (wooden or plastic), Matryoshka dolls, jewelry boxes, matchboxes, small recycled plastic jars, small tins with lids

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Expandable Parts                                                                                                         

Textiles large scarves, large fabric pieces, tissue paper, newspaper, softened Kraft paper, child-sized carpets or rugs, blankets

“Fences” cushions, interlocking cardboard pieces, over-sized lightweight blocks, Hula Hoops, jump ropes, long, lightweight cardboard tubes, fold-up cardboard screens