Sensory Sculptures

Wow. Where has the time gone? We have been very busy here with my oldest starting Kindergarten this year and our youngest in Preschool. I've been painting away on 3 commissioned paintings, working on 12x12, teaching a few classes and just busy being Mom!

Before we get to one of my latest projects, I want to say thanks to The Crafty Crow for featuring me again! I was excited to see my Cezanne Still Lifes on your site!

Sensory Sculptures was a class for toddlers-ages 15-36 months. We talked about 3-D sculpture and how it is something we can see from all sides. It might look different on each side, so it is fun to walk around the sculpture and see what it looks like from all angles. We learned we can even walk under some sculptures and see them from the top. We looked at two books. To learn about sensory we read,

Feed Matisse's Fish.
To see examples of sculpture we looked at Bob Raczka's 3-D ABC.
In the Museum we looked at our 3rd floor gallery and looked at Modern Sculpture.

Back in the classroom we got busy.



You will need
-6x6 piece of corrugated cardboard
-a handful of air dry clay. I like Crayola.
-pipe cleaners
-beads, buttons, jewels and feathers
-pom-poms
-glue



First we squeezed and manipulated our clay how we wanted it. We placed it on top of the cardboard and began to add pipe cleaners, buttons, beads, etc by pushing them into the clay. We learned we could bend the pipe cleaners and even slide beads onto them. To finish we glued some pom-poms onto our cardboard. The clay will harden within hours and completely overnight.

They turned out really neat and this is a great sensory-motor skill project for kids. Here are some examples.