Play Spaces

AmeriCorps Museum Educator Annie Blazejack contributed these observations of Play Spaces, a Museum program that encourages imaginative exploration of a variety of open-ended materials - boxes, rope, hoops, tubes, dowels, sheets and more.

One boy built a boat with his father. They used stools and pipes. He crossed the room to find me because he wanted to show me what they'd built. There was a great unveiling: he had used a half dozen sheets and as many carpet squares to cover the whole thing so that we could more or less unwrap his creation.
Three girls built an “apartment” from pvc pipes and sheets. They hung original artwork on its walls and installed an “elevator” constructed with foam hexagons and black ropes. Then they made a huge dining room table, and set it with spaghetti (different colored string and long paper scraps) and a huge layer cake (foam hexagon pieces) with candles and a cupcake on top. They sang happy birthday to the birthday girl (it wasn't really her birthday) and then gave her a present: a paper box full of confetti that rained all over the place very festively when she opened it.
A girl and her mother built a robot with black hair. Then they built a cupcake, and the robot held a sign to offer the cupcake to whoever wanted it.

Many people built forts. One boy built a prison for his dad. One girl built a garden.
A boy built a sculpture using just about every sort of material we provided: in the sculpture's center was a green foam pillar. It was surrounded with symmetrical stools and carpet squares, foam 'swordfish,' and noodles. Then all these were enclosed within two heavy half tubes and wrapped in sheets. His sculpture looked like a lot of kids' forts from the outside, but we both knew the interior was symmetrically packed. I think it could be shown in a gallery.

Click here to see what happened at a previous Play Spaces program.