Video 35: Paper Engineers – Part 2! | Go Beyond The Classroom

Paper, scissors and more!

In Part 1 the focus was on paper and scissors, exploring ideas, inverting paper folds, creating new cuts, and open-ended play with patterns. Children are generally eager to take risks, because they are naturally curious. They come into this life ready to touch, create and re-create as they interact with their immediate environment. It’s really wonderful to see the hands and scissors trying new directions, new ways of incorporating three dimensionality to a flat material. All this information is not only enriching the circuitry in the brain but also expanding their problem solving repository. In the course of these explorations children learn how to think, negotiate and develop depth in their knowledge of the physical world around them. It’s not only about learning what works but what *doesn’t* and why.

The benefits are, once again, innumerable: fine motor coordination and strengthening, planning and evaluating plans, and a lot of practical math: measuring, comparing, creating shapes and fitting them together. The opportunity to use familiar and unfamiliar vocabulary to create stories in a pressure-free environment helps children approach story writing playfully.

Enjoy creating new stories with paper and scissors – junk mail and old magazines are great (and free!) resources.

Set-Up for Episode #35:

Paper of all colors and sizes (copy paper and/or origami paper work best for small hands)
Scissors
Glue (best to use use either a quick-dry liquid glue, or glue sticks)
Markers, colored pencils, etc.

This came up around the fourth of July!

The boy and the tree.

Froggy is a storyteller that reminds me of Gorf, from the Willy Claflin stories!

Pop-Up Man.

It’s that time of the year…

We also tried to include versions that are familiar to us: books!

Turn the pages and… We are now taking pictures and will add them to this book later. Then, we will interview each family member and find out what makes them special (i.e.: favorite color, birthday, etc).

This one had an interesting trajectory: the boys started making up different scenes with plain paper and junk mail. We then put them in order and I asked one of them if he could write a story that made sense. It was a great experience!