Leftovers

 Children play with anything: things they are allowed to play with and things they are not allowed to play with. Things that were made to be a play thing and things where play was never its intended purpose. Children at The Shop of Possibilities are continually presented with (non-play) objects that are familiar, things they've seen elsewhere such as chairs, cupboards and fabric which they re purpose to suit their play but which often hold on to some of the properties of the items original intended function. 

However sometimes they are given strange things which have already been used by somebody else, things that don't fit into their collection of everyday found objects and that have no purpose other than being something that we are allowed to play with. Today was one of those days where we were presented with leftovers from a family workshop at the gallery, and the children were left to their own devices to see what they could make of them.

In the original workshop they were crawled through, in our session children rolled each other around in them:

Then they became little houses:

Decoration was added:

Eventually there were a few other additions:

These strange items had no set purpose and the children were completely free to interpret them in their own way. A lot of fun was had with a few sheets of cardboard and some foam, another fun recycling project at the Shop of Possibilities!