A FORTNIGHT AT HOME
Creative ideas to help pass the quarantine
#ensquedemacasa #StayAtHome
So we have to stay a few days at home. How can we make best use of the time?
Now is when doing things together as a family, and enjoying creative pastimes, might not be such a bad idea!
We at ACVic have gathered 14 easy-to-do suggestions for activities which will help every member of the family express their creativity and imagination!
We’ve chosen a number of activities from ACVic’s family workshops, one for each day.
They won’t take long, and may be adapted according to participants’ ages.
Ready to start? So, listen and concentrate. You’re invited to become real explorers, looking into all the corners of your home. But be warned, you’ll need to make good use of all five of your senses!
1. "Seeing" your house with eyes shut
5. The combination drawing game
6. Spectacles that transform reality
9. Who’s making all that noise?
12. What would this smell look like?
1. "Seeing" your house with eyes shut
Material needed:
A scarf, or a strip of cloth, to use as a blindfold
A blank sheet of paper (DinA3 is better)
A black marker
This activity has two parts.
Part one:
You need two players, one wearing a blindfold, and the other acting as guide, to help the blindfolded player avoid bumping into things and falling over!
The blindfolded player feels their way around the house with their hands, finding out by sense of touch, say, the texture of the walls, the width of the doors, the height of the furniture. The player may explore the space by various means, for example, by crouching down, or by crawling around on the floor, and may even spend a bit of time in one corner, or concentrating on one spot in particular; play as you like!
The player acting as guide has a very important job to do. Without ordering about or directing the blindfolded player, the guide must watch out for the other’s movements, so that no one gets hurt!
Part Two:
After a well-deserved rest, but with your eyes closed – no need for the blindfold this time, just close your eyes – try to draw a plan, or make a drawing, of the space which you’ve just explored.
You could make a plan of your whole house, or maybe just a small bit of it, for example, your own room!
Now swap over. The blindfolded player now gets to be the guide!
Material needed:
Ink pad (for stamps) - If you don’t have one to hand, you can use a saucer with washable paint or some natural dye or colourant, for example, beetroot juice, strawberry juice, red cabbage, etc..
Sheets of blank paper
Fibre-tip or ball-point pens (the effect is better if you don’t use too many colours)
Picture a landscape, and, using your fingerprints, make a picture of it.
You can cut out stencils on bits of paper, to change your fingerprints into different shapes.
Then you can finish off your picture with lines, to change fingerprints into animals, plants, trees, clouds, and anything else you can imagine!
Material needed:
Sheets of cardboard or coloured plastic
Sticks
Fishing line or string
Your house is sure to be full of geometric shapes. Can you find a square? Or a circle? A hexagon, that’s a bit more difficult! Can you find any?
Like geometry explorers, go on an expedition around the house in search of different shapes. Trace them onto cardboard and cut them out.
You could make a mobile with all the shapes you find.
Have you heard of the artist Alexander Calder? Maybe your creations look something like his! Take a bit of time to look on the Web, and learn all about his artworks.
Apart from the giant mobiles, we suggest you take a look at Le Grand Cirque Calder, where you’ll find videos of this amazing circus which might inspire you to think of other activities.
Material needed:
Cardboard box
Marbles
Washable paint
Pour different colours of paint to cover the bottom of the cardboard box.
Now add the marbles, and maybe a few rubber balls (all the better with different sizes)
And shake the box! What just happened?
Tah-dah! Just let the box dry, and remember to wash the marbles after you’ve finished!
You can repeat this experiment, but with variations; for example, using a round plastic plate instead of a box, using boxes of different shapes and sizes, or, using other rolling objects. At the end, you can put on an exhibition of all your creations!
5. The combination drawing game
Material needed:
As many sheets of DIN A4 paper as there are players.
Ordinary pencils, or black marker pens
A stopwatch, or a one-minute egg timer
Fold each A4 sheet of paper in thirds. Players will draw a head on the top fold, a body on the middle fold, and a pair of feet on the third and last fold.
Programme the stopwatch to indicate one minute intervals with an audible signal. Each player will begin to draw the head of an imaginary character on the top of their sheet of paper. When the minute runs out, pass the sheet to the player on the right, and then draw a body on the second fold of the sheet of paper incoming from the left.
Remember, it’s important that the paper is folded so that players can’t see the previous drawings of the players to their left. Also remember to continue the lines of necks and hips across the fold of the paper, so that the receiving player to the right knows where to start drawing.
A very weird character is bound to unfold!
You could even adapt the game and choose different subjects to draw, for example, animals, human figures, aliens … whatever you can imagine!
Once you’ve finished your characters, you can colour them in!
6. Spectacles that transform reality
Material needed:
Coloured cellophane paper
Black cardboard
Scissors
Staples, or a glue stick
Make a pair of spectacles with cardboard and “lenses” of coloured cellophane, to see reality from a different point of view.
You could try to make a realistic drawing of something you see in your house, using coloured pens or pencils, while wearing your glasses, and see if you can pick the “right” colours. Why not try jumbling up your pens or pencils before you start, and make it a bit harder for yourself, as well as a bit more fun?
Material needed:
Tracing paper, or kitchen paper for baking, etc..
Marker pens
This is an activity for a cloudy day!
What’s hidden in the clouds? Why not try looking out of the window, to see the imaginary shapes, animals and characters hidden among the clouds in the sky?
Use sellotape to stick a sheet of tracing paper to the window, so you can see the clouds as you draw them.
Material needed:
A small mirror - works best with a mirror about 15 or 20 cm square.
Holding a mirror under your nose, walk through your house. Easy? What about when you enter a room? Now try going onto your balcony or terrace!
You need two for this activity, one with the mirror, and the other acting as guide. This is how we avoid falling over and hurting ourselves! Then you swap over..
9. Who’s making all that noise?
Material needed:
A mobile phone or voice-recorder, digital or analogue.
Whatever you can find at home which is making a noise. Sticking your head out of the open window would work too.
Blank sheets of paper
Coloured pencils, marker pens or watercolour paints
This activity is divided into two parts:
1. In search of sounds!
Carrying your recording device around, and with ears wide open, pay close attention to what’s all around you. What can you hear?
2. What could could be making these sounds?
Now draw the animal, monster or alien that would make the sound we recorded.
If you use a sheet of thick paper to draw your creature, you could maybe turn it into a moving puppet by cutting it out, cutting off the arms and legs, punching holes in the arms and shoulders, and in the legs and hips, and joining them together, say with string or thread.
Do you know Joan Brossa’s poems? And Chema Madoz’s?
Go online and do a search for their object poems. What do they mean?
Do you dare to do the same with objects from around your home?
Note that the titles and the texts that accompany the objects are sometimes very important.
You could give your sculptures an intriguing title.
Material needed:
A mobile phone or digital camera for taking photos
A computer
How many colours are there around your house? Can you find any pink objects? A yellow shadow? A blue corner?
Try to make a colour palette by finding all the colours you know. You could take photographs of all the colours you can find, trying to get really close up so you only take a picture of the colour, and not the whole object. Then, in your computer, you can download all your colour pictures and open them side by side, sorting them out in different combinations, for example, from light to dark colours, or from yellow to blue, by way of green, to make a rainbow.
12. What would this smell look like?
Material needed:
A blindfold, maybe a scarf or a strip of cloth.
Dark boxes (so you can’t see what’s inside).
A large sheet of paper – A3 should do.
Watercolour paints.
This activity is divided into two parts.
1. In search of scents!
Each player goes around the house (or in twos, if someone needs help) in search of strong-smelling (but not toxic!) substances. Here are a few clues; you might find some likely candidates in the kitchen spice rack, in shampoo bottles, in flower pots on the window sill, or further afield. Probably better to stay away from where the worn socks are kept ...
2. What might this smell look like?
It's more fun if you don't know which substances the other players have collected, and try to guess what they are. Put them in the boxes, so that players can take a sniff with the blindfolds on.
Then you can try to think of a colour which might fit each scent. What would that smell look like if we could see it with our eyes? Blue? Yellow? Would it weigh a lot or a little? And what sound would it make? Would it scream out loud, would it make a big crash like thunder, would it have a thin, sharp voice?
If we were to draw it on a sheet of paper, what would it look like? Would it be spiky, or stretchy, or something else? If it’s a really heavy smell, maybe we should draw it on the bottom of the paper, or if it’s light and floating, maybe we should draw it high up on the sheet. If it’s a smell which spreads quickly throughout a room, we might draw small circles that fill the paper; remember, you’re picturing what the smell makes you think of, not the object which is making it!
Material needed:
A white blanket or tablecloth
A lamp to use as a spotlight
Sheets of cardboard
Scissors
With a lamp to cast light and a white sheet, you have enough to make a shadow theatre. What about your actors? There’s so many ideas to choose from! You could make shadow-puppets with your hands. You could put on some music and dance to it yourselves. You could make figures and puppets out of household objects, or make them out of cardboard; and these suggestions are just for starters.
For our theatre, however, may we suggest you draw your actors onto cardboard, and cut them out. If you add materials which the light can shine through, like cellophane, or transparent bits of plastic, your characters will be full of colour. You can use sticks or strings to move the puppets.
And now, let the curtain rise on the show! What story will you tell?
Here’s an idea to spark your imagination. Each member of the family writes a word on a small piece of paper and puts it in a bag. Mix the words up and pick one at random. Tell a story related to the word which has been picked.
During these days, we probably won’t be seeing many people outside the house. Don’t forget to give hugs, to spoil each other a bit, to be kind to each other.
The last of our games makes use of our sense of touch. Every member of the family sits on the floor, one behind the other in a row, like a queue, only sitting down. Whoever is sitting at the back of the queue thinks of a shape, and draws it with their finger on the back of whoever is sitting in front of them. This player then tries to sketch the same shape on the back of the player sitting in front, and so on, until the final player tries to draw the shape on a sheet of paper. Does it look anything like the shape which the first player imagined?
We’d love you to share your experiences and your creations with us. During these days, please keep in touch with us through the usual social networks: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Tag us, and let everyone see what you did with our activities!
#acvic
#StayAtHome
