I saw an image of interlocking discs on the Instagram feed of Corinne Amato. It's just so exciting to me to see an image from across the country that really speaks to you in some way. I knew this project would be great for our Architecture week of summer camp. Not only do I love the idea of the kids creating their own building materials to build sculptures, but I could just use cardboard boxes that sit in the recycling bins to make the circles.
Which is just what I did. I became that lady going through other people's recycling bins looking for cardboard. That and people who know me tend to drop things like milk cartons, mismatched socks and cardboard boxes into Purple Twig for me. We cut out 100's of circles (over time of course) of different sizes. The children chose their circles and cut the notches themselves.
The cardboard notched discs in themselves are quite appealing.
Believe me there was a lot of complaining about cutting the notches in the circles. The moaning and groaning was comical, but then came the fun part, decorating the circles.
We set up two tables - one covered with bubble wrap and the other with tempera cakes, brushes and water. We created bubble wrap prints using just tempera paints in squeeze bottles and brayers. I am obsessed with this process at the moment because the kids absolutely love the sensory aspect of this process and the layered results are gorgeous.
I offered florescent colors for the tempera cakes because they pop so beautifully on the brown cardboard. The kids added, mixed, and splattered paint onto the circles, creating a different pattern on each one.
