Open-ended Art: Mosaic (Egg Shells)

Yesterday, we kneaded with Playdoh (beans), made dark brown Playdough by mixing brown and black, and cracked an egg. Today, Sophie started the day with a ziploc bag of egg shells. I set aside some egg shells and left the remaining bits in a small ziploc bag for her to crush.

Sophie was examining the egg shells so intensely yet her Mama kept disturbing and asking her to crush them with her hands and feet. I was too "obsessed" to notice what she was doing at that moment.

Anyway, I thought it would be cool to try putting the pieces of broken egg shells onto a Playdough "egg". It would be like "Humpty Dumpty". Personally, I do not really like using egg shells because of the slime and smell. And they break easily when I try to wash them. However, it is a new and interesting material to work with for Sophie.

Sophie was very cooperative initially, but it was not long before she realised it was more fun to just crush the egg shells. I tried to recite "Humpty Dumpty" and get her to "help" putting him back together again. It worked for a short while then she was off again playing with the egg shells. We ended up rolling the Playdough "egg" on the egg shells. Not bad, we picked up a lot more egg shells this way.

Of course, I had to make "cleaning up" part of the activity...Oh well, depends on how "cleaning up" is defined.

Well, looks like "Humpty Dumpty" really cannot be put together ever again! For more interesting Open-ended Art ideas, check out Growing And Learning By Leaps And Bounds.

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