Alex makes things. Making things is what Alex does. There is no inch of our house that is not strewn with tiny bits of construction paper and string. Our scotch tape budget would bankrupt Mitt Romney.
Her big thing right now is 3-D dioramas. Like this zoo habitat for a little plastic hippo:
Or this tiny, tiny village she started for Colin’s toy train set. The little houses are full 3-D constructions with walls, floor, and roof of construction paper. It’s hard to tell in the picture, but the one in front even has a peaked roof. And check out the little station and platform.
The one she’s spent the most time on is this box-lid house:
I like the box-beds with stairs leading up, the bathing pool complete with towels, and of course, the tiny pipe-cleaner people with adjustable cardboard faces. And the garden beds. Alex informs me that the cardboard cylinder in the middle is supposed to be a chimney with blue smoke coming out the top; apparently, it tipped over before I took the picture.
Her mind is constantly working on these things. She says she wants to be an engineer when she grows up. While there have been many, many versions of her adult career ambitions so far, I do suspect that this is indeed what an engineer’s childhood might look like.
Edited to add: While I was uploading these pictures I happened to look down and see this sock doll, sort of under my desk. She made it only with cutting and tying – no sewing.
?
That’s impressive. I built stuff out of blocks, but never anything like that. I also made tons of “clothes” for my Barbie ™ dolls, mostly out of Kleenex ™ and tape.
My childhood looked a lot like that! That’s PROPER playing, that is.
Oh yeah. Our house is similar. However, the things usually have weird, convoluted stories behind them or are product ideas for their imaginary company. The other day, BalletBoy made the latest generation in gadgets: the BF Pad 5, now with more gaming.
It certainly looks like this engineer’s childhood.
When I was … old enough that I am embarrassed to recount this story for professional colleagues, Bill close your ears … I was making something in my bedroom that resulted in a lot of snips of multicoloured yarn all over the floor. I was too lazy to sweep or pick them up one by one, so I got mum’s new upright “electric-broom” vacuum cleaner. The bits of yarn got all tangled up in the works of the motor and made a burning smell. I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I disassembled it, pulled out the bits of yarn, and put it back together. However, I’d gotten distracted partway through and it took a couple of days, and I did not understand at the time that the little blocks on either side of the motor that didn’t move or attach to anything were actually the brushes without which the motor would not work, and I lost one of them. This in turn resulted in me having to go to some kind of electric-fixing store with my dad while he bought new brushes for the motor and I got a long lesson about how electric motors worked.
Very nice. I have a maker as well – I like the play and the creativity, but the stuff everywhere is a bit hard to deal with …
I love your title! It is the perfect description. I have a maker also (in fact, he is making the Mayflower right now out of an egg carton). It is amazing to see how what they have in their imagination comes out in their creations!
I have an art maker. We go through so much paper, I have to buy it by the box at Costco and it only lasts a few months. There is paper everywhere, full of drawings, in my daughter’s room, in our playroom and all about the house. When she paints a picture, she paints 20 pictures. I am constantly amazed by her skill and attention to detail, as you are with Alex. I am fairly certain this is what an artist’s childhood looks like.