Cardboard Box River

This simple making idea is a great way of exploring landscapes and the science and geography of rivers. The initial box shape offers a strong base to build on and the scale can obviously be easily increased. The design also offers the opportunity to create a larger sculpture by making different sections that then fit back together as one sculpture. As long as the initial ‘sketch’ of the river matches up on each section, then these pieces can be designed and built separately on different tables and then reassembled. You could also get teams to constantly measure their ‘piece’ against adjoining ones, checking that the landscape matched up, brilliant for teamwork and communication.

Your sculpture could easily be based on just the ‘science’ and ‘geography’ of a river, but it could also be used to explore a particular area (The Amazon for example) or a historical place (The Nile). It could even be based on a purely fictitious landscape, one from a famous story or from the children’s own imaginative writing.