Primary/Elementary/Early Childhood
A fun activity to do at the end of the year or any time. Going for a treasure hunt in the garden is something young children love. My two and half years old granddaughter loves to come with me when I invite her to go for a treasure hunt, so this activity can be adjusted to different age groups. I found that wrapping around sticks with yarns is a meditative activity that results on the students sitting quietly wrapping yarns. Students use lengths of different color yarns of about 50 cmt so every student should have about 10 lengths of yarn plus 3 or 4 sticks 30 cm long.
I’d like to think that this activity can be presented as fun and creative which can be approached in many different imaginative ways.
Note: if working with older students the sticks can be longer so they can set up a big installation.
Very young children will enjoy the hunt and making patterns with the sticks and seed pods like the picture above.
This activity can be done in different sessions:
Session 1
Students wrap the sticks with yarns and then they should be encouraged to create an “object” with the sticks, for example extend the activity by adding other things like colourful feathers, small shells, ties and ribbons or any other decorative small objects they have in the classroom or at home, like the pictured sample.
Session 2
If teachers would like to extend this activity to two sessions, the sticks can be used to make a colourful installation and then draw from it.
It is important, in my opinion, to encourage students to draw what they make, as by doing this they practice drawing and create unique images. Drawing can be done with any drawing tools, charcoal, crayons, pen and ink, oil pastels, soft pastels, paper strips and other imaginative ways to draw.
