Simple Provocation: Household Objects

The idea behind this provocation is to encourage the twins to view the world around them in 3D. At first I thought of presenting them a few pictures of buildings such as the Louvre museum, Pisa tower, Egyptian pyramid. However apart from identifying the shapes of those structures, I wasn't sure how far they will take the inquiry further.

I also wanted to present to them the fact that most of the structures are made of multiple three dimensional shapes.

So I printed out a couple of castle images and presented it along with a few household objects.

Here is a snapshot of the provocation that was presented.

Simple Provocation - Household Objects

"Hey! Look at all those shapes!" exclaimed Shrini. I am glad she could perceive those objects as shapes rather than considering them as is.

I showed them the castle images and asked them what do they see. They listed all shapes they could identify. 

"Can you build your own castle?". They happily obliged and here are the snapshots of structures they built.

In the background, Shrini carefully studying the castle image before starting to build hers.

 Tada! Look at my castle!

"No Sid! This castle has a cone. You don't have one"- Shrini. "OK, Here's one with a cone"

Sid trying to balance a cube on top of the funnel. 

"Look Amma! Here is the gate that opens and closes"

"Will it stay or fall?!!" It stayed!

This was the most complex of all structures they could build.

Of course, blowing away the structure is more fun than building it.

Sid and Shrini started enacting the scene from Three little pigs - "Iam going to huff and going to puff and blow your house down!"

They discussed about different shapes, balancing them and wondered why it was easy to blow the cardboard tubes but not wooden cubes. Without a doubt, they had a blast!