A couple of weeks ago I undertook two days worth of colourful, found object workshops with fiftyYear 5 pupils at Winnersh Primary School in Wokingham. I spent a day with each year 5 group, and both classes were fantastically enthusiastic and creative! For these workshops I tried out a couple of new ideas and concepts, including working with melted plastic bottle tops and creating 3-dimensional structures using twigs from the playing field, which worked really well.
I asked the pupils to bring in colourful bottle tops, old clothes, plastic bags and anything else that they came across and were interested in. We ended up with quite a lot of tops and it took an awful long time to melt them all down in the oven.....
A small selection, pre-melting
Before.......
....and after (6 lovely colours!)
When the metallics melted down they produced some lovely, shimmering results.
Another lovely colour scheme!
This was the lid of a Body Shop container, and when it melted down it produced this lovely,
but slightly strange, face. The pupils were particularly fond of this piece, and it came
in great use during activity 4!
And here it is with its melted neighbours.
The bottle tops that melted down and formed "Os" made up the first of four activities.
This table of drilled driftwood bits made up the second activity.
Twigs, fresh from the field, and the materials below (colourful old clothes and fabric, ribbon, wool, plastic bags, scoobies, and embroidery thread) were activity three; twig wrapping to make decorative objects.
Unfortunately I don't have a photograph of activity four, but it produced some fine and some very humorous results (images of which are hopefully to follow shortly!).
After undertaking all four activities we headed outside to the nature garden to install the pupil's lovely pieces. The children also undertook some video camera reporting on their day, interviewing each other about which activities they enjoyed most during the day, and what they found challenging. Here are a couple of photographs from the slightly blustery nature garden.....
Various bottle tops held together with scoobies (plastic tubing) and cable ties
A lovely example of a very colourful decorative object
We arranged the "Cheerios" along one line of the wooden structure which made
an interesting curtain like feature, and they looked lovely as they moved about in the wind.
One group of pupils clubbed together and made an extra long bottle top piece which they named
"The Random". A small section of which is featured above!
The Cheerios curtain! Very nice and colourful.
Another lovely decorative object featuring wool, plastic bag strips, ribbon and various
types of fabric. The colour scheme is really quite striking and slightly unusual.
Decorative objects moving about as they should in the wind!
I will add further images as soon as I receive them from the school; there are some amazing images to follow!
I must say many, many thanks to Miss Hammond for all of her enthusiasm and help with planning!!
