Cardboard Creations

It started out as a doll game, three years ago. We had a family from Hyderabad move here into the village, for a brief period. Their two kids and ours started playing with dolls. This involved making clothes and building spaces for their dolls. They created partitions in a shelf to accommodate a doll-house. The next few weeks went into making miniature furniture, appliances and electronic gadgets. They used cardboard, glue, sticky tape and a pair of scissors. Some of their creations had to go through several iterations (ex. tables) before they were deemed perfect for their dolls. A few months later the Hyderabad friends moved back to their city and there was a lull in the doll game.

In the meanwhile, the kids’ interest in Legos took over. Once a big chunk of their Lego collection got stolen and they were heart-broken for several days. While we were wondering if it would be prudent of us to buy some new Legos, they started using their cardboard skills in making things that were Lego-compatible. Over time this game evolved into a complex one, mimicking real life scenarios and places. 

As their skills were getting better, they started seeing cardboard as a medium to express themselves. To compensate for the lost Lego cars and trucks, they built moving miniature models. When they needed to churn out models quickly in big numbers, like in the case of soldiers, they figured out templates and how handy they were.

Here are some pictures from the kids' cardboard collection:

 

Cardboard Pendants

Helmet with a visor

Inspired by Kathakali

The making of Star Wars' Kylo Ren's helmet:

It took them several passes to get the wheels and spindles to work. Dried thick stalks of lemon grass were used as axle rods.

Merry-go-round

Earth mover

Star Wars' Tie Fighter

Soldiers and an army jeep

2.5" tall car

Handicraft collection

Carcharodontosaurus, with operable mouth and forelimbs

These have seen weeks of hard work, motivation, frustration, perseverance, tears and commitment. The end result has mostly been deeply satisfactory for them. Each one of the projects that they took up was born out of necessity (for the game that they were playing then) or interest. Dev and I had very little to do with any of these.

Observing this self-learning process has been wonderful.  I realized that learning is fun and exciting when initiated by the learner.I think it is an empowering experience for a child to see a project through all its phases, from conception to execution, without any unsolicited input from others.

-- Hema