Something Playful: The Cardboard Edit
The Setup / Age by Age: What to Expect / The Independence Move / When It’s Not Working / What to Do With It All
I bought a wireless hot glue tool and now we cannot stop making stuff.
Sculptures out of wooden loose parts. Mini monsters, complete with little pom pom buns, out of recycled toilet paper tubes, pom poms and googly eyes.
The stuff we’ve been making got me thinking about the power of cardboard and some glue, and how I’ve used it over the years in my classrooms and in my home to build something much more important than a sculpture.
I have an old video somewhere of my thirteen year old when she was three and a half. She was standing in our tinkerspace in our old house, in old tattered pj’s, hair messy from sleep and the tantrums that kept me from daring to brush it out and she’s holding.. a glue gun.
Yes. Three and a half with a hot glue gun, and not the kind that is so low temp it barely works. She was adding beads and cardboard scraps to an Ikea doll house that we kept especially for “construction” and my kids were constantly “renovating” it with cardboard doors, pulley systems made of little boxes and string, patterned paper and felt for the walls.
But in order for it to work they needed glue, and cardboard scraps. Lots of them. They gave her the power to make something out of nothing. And for a little girl, the youngest of three. That mattered.
When I was teaching four year olds in downtown Manhattan in 2001, I had a brilliant co-teacher. She always carried a small tote bag to school and once a week, she’d pull a collection of cardboard scraps, interesting bottle caps and newspaper ads, things from her recycling bin that she knew the children would use. She’d set them up at the table like an offering of the most valuable spread of goods. Alongside it she’d set little pots of school glue and short stubby brushes. Even the most “wild children,” the ones who preferred wrestling on the carpet, the ones who ran around the classroom playing Power Rangers and almost never stopped to “make art,” would come to the table.
There was a little boy named Oscar, who typically spent all his time in the block area or playing soccer in the rec room. But on the days where we had “junk gluing” out, he would sit and create for the entire morning. Returning back to the table after lunch to ask if he could paint his creations. Looking back, his mom was probably so annoyed- she had to lug those precarious sculptures into the stroller, through the crowded streets of downtown Manhattan and on the subway. Oops.
That child taught me something I would never forget. When we give kids the time and materials, but we don’t tell them the how or the what, they fall in love with creating.
And that’s what today’s Edit is about. The cardboard in your recycling bin right now. How to set it up for toddlers through teens…
Something Playful is a paid series inside this publication. Each installment takes one type of play material (playdough, magnetic tiles, art supplies, sensory toys, chalk, stickers, and more) and tells you exactly what to put out, how much, and what to do when it stops working. Age-by-age.
If you have been thinking about subscribing, this is a good week to start. Use this 7-day free trial on me.
Behind the paywall:
What to put out for your toddler, preschooler, big kid or teen
How I introduce a low temp hot glue gun to preschoolers (my exact words)
When they dump it all, or want you to make it for them
What to do with everything they make
The supplies I use, with links
(The rest is for my paid subs...)
