Develop the habit of looking twice at household waste before you throw it out. Egg shells, for example. Before they go into the bin, hand the closest child a pencil and let them draw a face on it. TOP TIP: keep a 2B or 4B pencil in the kitchen drawer – if it’s got H on it, don’t let it in the house. Often, you’ll have more than one egg, so kids can draw a clutch of egg people. With different expressions on their faces.
Take the opportunity to explore facial proportions by getting them to study your face. Heads are egg-shaped (pointier at the bottom), and while we’re all different, this is the basic rule of proportion: eyes half-way down, nose half-way between eyes and chin, and mouth half-way between nose and chin. Egg people are cartoon characters so breaking the rules is half the fun.
Expressions: arch eyebrows for surprise, slant down towards nose for anger, slant up towards centre for a question, etc. Try long, thin noses and broad, flat ones, side-on pointy and bulbous ones. You get the idea. Once you have a few egg people, kids are easily prompted to make up a story about them. Why is this one happy? What is the short one surprised about?
Ben Quilty’s YouTube video will help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XsTkEXr2qo&feature=emb_share&fbclid=IwAR0G6SVWJpui5uDvvrI6uUQ5c3zQ2FGIXzRUIzyG1urrHF-J_pHD-wCzpxg
how to play with kids 