This is a great way to do some shape recall. If your children are young, you can do some simple shapes but if your children are older challenge them. Can they make a 5 sided 3D shape? What is its name? Note: Dodecahedron!
You will need: 3 different items. If you're in a flat you might use 3 different colours of paper, or fruit on a plate. For those of us out and about, you can use 3 different items you find during your walk or in your garden. You will need quite a number of each item, so do try to avoid picking lots of wild flowers! Instead, use leaves, daisy and dandelions, sticks etc. We found lots of cherry blossom on the floor then used the abundance of dandelions and sticks we could find too!
Initially, create a couple of 2D shapes, so the children get the idea. You might need to work together for this. Lay out the outline of the flowers/sticks/leaves and then fill it in with other items you collected. Tip: its tempting to make very big shapes... don't! It takes a long time to fill them and younger children loose interest. Keep everything small and neat.
Now, see if you can work together to create a 3D shape. Think about the sides you would see. We looked at a cube we had in the house, created the outline with sticks then filled it in.
We had lots of fun with this and looked up the names of lots of 3D shapes where we didn't know them. Then we came inside and tried to draw some of the 3D shapes using a ruler.
You could then use the objects you collected to make our nature stones, repeating patterns or the sticks for our nature wind chimes.
Enjoy!
