Loose Part Map Making

Last week we explored map making through loose parts. The use of loose parts encourages creativity, as children can adapt and manipulate the loose parts in many ways. Each child started with a blank place, then moved the loose parts to design their own map of an area in the underground.

Eliot & Noah

The red and orange is the fire. The blue pieces are the water. The wooden pieces are the trail. The small yellow pieces are glow in the dark lightbulbs, called glow in the darks, and they are like green lights. They light the pathways. The pink stuff is the houses, the circle pink stuff is the bad guys. Some are the bad guys houses, some are hedgehogs houses that talk in hedge voices they say “hedge hedge hedge!” and some are houses with no chimneys so there is no smoke. 
 

Jack  

This is a map of Battle Island in the underground. The black trail leads to treasure. The treasure is gold in a cave. The little trail leads to bombs for cannons. The trail keeps leading to missiles and after the missiles there is a big long missile. The bombs and the missiles are for protection.

Addie

This is the island of trails in the underground. There are lots of trails. The gray trails go around the whole island. If you want to stop for a swim, you can stop at the blue diamonds. The treasure is at the X for “X marks the spot” on the log. The green yellow pieces lead to the X or to the bottom where there are logs where you can jump over the X’s or just play on the logs. The red and orange triangles are bakeries so you can stop for food. Everything else is treasure!

 

Noah 

The yellow balls are the bad guys. The red and the orange pieces are the good guys. There are glow in the darks, the hot yellow string. There are diamond treasures. There are wooden pathways through tunnels. There is a tree with a treasure, if you climb the tree you can get the treasure. The black pieces are traps! Booby traps! The blue pieces are water. There are seven waterfalls.

Karlee 

Landmarks. There is a castle it is a where the queen of the bats lives with large rocks to help guard the castle. From there you take a path to furry land, this is a place where all of the green monsters are! Then you take a trail to rock land- here all of the rocks and cut down trees exist. There is a BLACK DARK MONSTER. This land has a trail that leads to the wooden diamond land- and here a witch lives who is always stirring her potions. A long trail leads you to a hidden area with so many gems and jewels- here there is a monster that is all white and he guards all of the diamonds and jewels. The next trail will take you to nut and leaf land. Here many squirrels live- they are a underground squirrels who eat and eat and eat. Squirrel Land is connected to pure Diamond land where a critter that is like a snake lives- he has dots all over it. He fights to keep the diamonds to himself. There is also a nature puzzle piece land- here the Queen of worms live.

Jane 

So here is Lila’s house. Her and Mila are going on a walk. They had to dig under into the earth to find the path. They can go on a little rocky path and they have to leap onto little stones. They go on puzzles pieces and many rocky paths. There was a lot if RISK in following the paths. They had to hurry because they wanted to find the treasure before it got too dark and cold. And then in one quick moment they found the X.  It was what they were looking for. They were so happy.

Coco

This is a map connected to Bloomsberry. So you start here and you take a path to Candyland.  The land is full of candy castles and there is candy everywhere! The trees were made of cotton candy. After you visit Candyland you follow a path to Friendship Land. Friendship land is full of snowflakes around to play in and in the snow there are flowers! And rocks to climb and a huge playground and an ice-skating rink. Next the path leads you to a very beautiful land- it is called Crystals Land and it is full of crystal, gems and rocks. After Crystal land you have to ice-skate all the way to Sports Land. There are lots of balls, baseballs, soccer balls and even crystal balls.