The Lost Words

It’s been a busy year for our Morley Makers…

Our first project was based on Robert Macfarlane’s illustrated book ‘The Lost Words’. Written as a response to the loss of the natural world and specific ‘nature words’ from dictionaries, the book contains beautiful illustrations of creatures and plants.

After inspecting the illustrations, our makers (Year 3 and 4) chose an animal they would like to make.

Prior to the club, we had sourced a large amount of our materials from Cambridge Scrap Store, ranging from bottle lids, containers, scraps of material, wire and stuffing. We also ordered a large amount of willow withies which were soaked over a few days and nights to make sure they were flexible and easy to bend.

Our makers were allowed to freely experiment with the different materials available to them to make the main shape of their animal. Some experimented with joining solid shapes together with string, masking tape and glue, whereas others created their main shape by moulding materials such as stuffing and fixing the shape with masking tape. Others had a go at bending wire and willow withies to create their armatures.

After this, our makers used mod roc (plaster bandages) to create an overall hard layer. The last stage was adding paint and decorative materials to create their stylised wildlife models (as seen below!).