Learners expressively or scientifically assemble and display information or ideas in three dimensions, creating visual media such as the following:
- Art: make a collage, mosaic, sculpture, stitchery; use found objects and experimental art processes.
- Book with special features: make pop-up pages, peek flaps, wheels (see below).
- Environment: transform the classroom into interactive museum, gallery, zoo or store.
- Experiment: follow directions of diagram to put something together.
- Junk: analyze obsolete or common items as unsightly waste, recycled resource or art; implement an ad hocism exhibit that shows objects used in unusual ways.
- Miniature: make a clay figure, puppet, paper doll, shoebox diorama, origami.
- Object: collect micro-cultural or historical items for a game, ritual, meal, storytelling, party, parade, play; may be aromatic, flavored, tactile; may have articulated designs (parts are shown) or closed (parts are hidden); may be standardized or individualized.
- Promotional material: convey ideas or decorations on a class button, T-shirt, etc.
Pop-up books have long been a fun type of nontraditional picture book. In recent years, many well-respected authors and illustrators have increasingly experimented with special movable features in their books. By their very nature, books with special features meet many youngsters' needs to manipulate things, to be surprised, to have multisensory experiences, and to analyze dimensionality and movement first hand and close up.
For many children a most effective way to interest them in early reading is to put a book with special features in their hands. Older children in middle school and high school can also enjoy these books when they are presented as examples of paper engineering and nonlinear thinking. The fact that mechanical paper can create effects similar to that of animated cartoons makes it especially fun for young people.
So children's own experimentation with nontraditional book production offers them exciting interdisciplinary exercises in creative planning and problem-solving in science, math, and visual discrimination as well as language arts. In general paper engineering for a mechanical books results in four basic types of what is called paper performance:
- "Popping out" in three dimensions from the page, usually using a fold, hinge or spring, makes figures go either in or out.
- "Popping up" toward the top of the page, usually using a fold, pull tab, sliding strip, or turning wheel, makes figures go either up or down.
- "Popping over", using a fold, pull tabs or flaps, makes figures go to left and right or diagonally.
- "Popping around", using a turning wheel, sliding slats, or a window, makes figures go around.
Popping out creates three-dimensionality. The other actions generally offer the creator opportunities to include surprises, answers, and changes of all kinds. To help students make pop-up pages, do an Internet search for pop-up card and book instructions or find a copy of Joan Irvine's easy-to-use books about How to Make Pop-Ups.
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