Clay Babies


After observing some of our preschoolers frequently gravitating to our set of baby dolls, we decided to encourage their play by adding new baby clothes for the children to dress the babies. We also added diapers and blankets for the children to use in their play. 


We chose to provoke a discussion about babies. "Did you used to be a baby?" "Were Mommy and Daddy babies once?" Most of our children agreed that in fact everyone was a baby at some point.


We knew we eventually wanted to draw ourselves as babies, but before that we decided to mold babies out of clay. This gives our children a chance to develop  a sense of body awareness and become aware of proportion, size and how much they have developed since infancy. While looking at pictures of babies we asked questions like "Were you as tall as you are now when you were a baby?" "Were your legs really long or very short?" 


Using clay as a medium gives children an opportunity to make as many changes as needed before being happy with the final product. What was created is adorable sculptures that the children can reference before drawing their babies with pencils. 





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