Sculptures out of pipe cleaners

Our children in pre-schools minors spent a morning creating their own sculptures out of pipe cleaners, sieves and containers with holes. The children were given a wide variety of coloured and sparkly pipe cleaners and a collection of objects with holes ,they explored the materials in a variety of ways. Giving children choice is an important part of self development and enables children to develop confidence, boost self esteem and independence.

All the children immediately became absorbed in feeding the pipe cleaners through the holes without any prompting, they quickly started expressing what they were creating. Some of the children decided that they were making colourful spiders as the pipe cleaners looked like legs; this was an impressive object that represented the children’s association of  a spider.

 This creative activity soon became a social event with all children expressing their ideas and sharing their magical ideas. This activity enabled the children to develop socially, emotionally and physically. Physically the children used pincer and trip pod grips, it increased their hand eye co ordination as they guided the pipe cleaners through the holes.

Children sat together and took it in turns to fill the holes with a pipe cleaner, they sat pulling them out and sticking them back in. This activity enabled children to participate in a fun but simple effective activity that aided many aspects of their development

Many children displayed many of the characteristics of effective learning by concentrating and continuing to persist with the activity even when it became tricky, they were all keen to engage in the open ended activity and were all keen to show off what they had created and have their photos taken with their amazing spiders.