Crayon was one of my childhood object when I learned how to do coloring. I learned to use crayon from my first art class in elementary school. Making giant crabs drawing and colored it with crayon. I really amazed with crayon since I could make blended color gradation with it, something I couldn’t easily get from colored pencils.
The only down side of crayon was the smell (which I didn’t realize back then) and the residue. But little me, always saw crayon as an amazing tool to do coloring. You could draw stars on your paper using crayon, paint the night sky using watercolor, but the stars won’t get stained a little bit. The combination between crayon and other tools made me wanted to learn more about other art tools.
When I think about my childhood, I think about creating countless pot holders for friends and family. I loved making patterns with different colored cotton loops. It was not only fun to create, but it was so satisfying when you were done weaving the loops and removing them from the loom.
Born in the middle of a war (and sanctions), my generation grew up with limited access to toys and educational materials. Although as we grow up, there were more materials available…
From a very young age, I got very much into crafting and making stuff with random objects I found: papers, sticks, fabrics, … but something special that I remember I used to play with as a kid was the papers from a hole puncher and also colorful telephone cables, both from my mother’s office. I used the small colorful circle papers out of the puncher to make art on paper and used the colorful cables to make 3D shapes. I think the simple limited material I had access to as a kid expanded my creativity and curiosity, and also help me to have great fine-motor skills.
I was always amazed by this tool when I was a kid. Maybe it was when I was in kindergarten. You can write, draw, stamp, and easily erase all you make by only swiping the toggle bottom of the board. I, as a child, always loved to draw something on this Magnetic drawing board without being afraid to make me dirty. Most children (maybe) love to do abstract scratches using a crayon, water paint, or other tools. With this, we don’t need to worry and can keep drawing and put our imagination to draw
My favorite experience when I was a child, was playing explorers in the hills close to my summer home. My brothers and I will spend all day running, creating roads, creating and imagining new towns within the trees and shrubs. What was special about this place was that we had all the materials needed to create our new world of towns and roads. We even found a water spring that we used to channel water to the towns and forts.
I learned from these experiences that even though the hills look impenetrable with vegetation and trees, there was always a way to enter the forest and I was always surprised how you could find safe places with light within the forest.
One specific material was: beads. I used to love to make bracelets and sell them. This experience helped me understand the importance of process, something I still believe as a kindergarten educator and try to apply in my everyday life with the kids.
The toy that influenced me the most when I was growing up was my LEGO sets. LEGO has been part of my life since I was in school. I could spend hours building my own models and premade sets as well. Nowadays, LEGO is still part of my life, because growing up doesn´t mean you have to stop creating and playing. When I decided to pursue a career in education I understood the power of having an element of fun in my class, so I started promoting building with blocks that involved emotions. When I was little I remember that it was difficult for me to connect with the content they were teaching me through a book, instead I had so much fun representing what I read and what I thought with blocks. Now, thank to that toy, I teach english and soft skills through LEGO based activities.
I don’t remember a partcular object that I especially liked during childhood. For me rather it was the process of playing itself, or of creating something or discovering something–be it a game I created for me and my brother and cousins, a story, or a new money currency that I “invented” and made my parents exchange their real money to pay for the food I made in my ''restaurant", or looking at butteflies and dragonflies. Some say art imitates life, the art that I was a master of in childhood was play, and that is how we all learn life as children. The major activities/games that stand out that I enjoyed the most were: drawing, writing, discovering things, baking with my granny, teaching my toys things that I learned at school, staging plays with my cousins, playing astronomers with my first friend, watching tadpoles become frogs.
I got to think a lot about which object influenced me the most during my childhood, and I cannot find THE one
I always loved drawing and writing, I still do. I had a blue plastic box in which I put my pencils since I wat 8-10 years old.
I enjoy play with Lego, move my body and try new sports, observe nature.
When I was 12, I got my first computer, so I started a period where I had to try to play old school games.
I particulary like to open electronical things to see how they worked. The problem was, sometimes I couldn´t remember how to put things together again!
I loved to play chess, cards, board games and RPG.
I really cannot choose! I´m sp curious, I could still play and try anything new and interesting
Don’t worry. I’m like you - I loved many-many things too: books, board games, chess, drawing, soft toys, and Lego (I and my brother had only one type of them and re-build so many different things from it:)
If ou please I would want to cite you: “I´m sp curious, I could still play and try anything new and interesting”
Nice to meet you here
my childhood object are mostlikely Gilli danda( * Gilli danda is a very popular game in Asia-Pacific (India, Pakistan), quite similar to baseball and cricket , Kho kho (Indo Pak physical game), Hide-n-seek known as “chuppam chappai” * In this game, the players hide and one of the players finds the other members and banta kenchay along with old electronic items
I was always fascinated by the chapter book as a child. Not a particular title, but rather what the “The Chapter Book” represented as a low income child of color in predominately white schools. The Chapter Book (I denote it with capital letters to emphasize the deity-like enlightenment I believed it would bring me) was, to me, a benchmark of becoming an intellectual. I believed that in order to be smart, I must understand stories without imagery. I convinced myself (or perhaps my place as a Black “gifted” child in schools with few brown faces convinced me) that an affinity for picture books is an indicator of contrived thinking—as if an affinity for books without pictures is a sign of a true thinker. This obsession contributed greatly to my fear of being a visual artist. I read and read, and as I grew older in grade school, I aimed for challenging works of classics. I fell in love with words.
And in that romance with words, as I grew into my university years, I found myself curious about pictures again. As if the picture book was a lover I denied for a more practical choice. Somewhere along the way, as I got older, I found myself reading less. At Berkeley, I realized I wanted to be in the film classes rather than the game theory political ones. I wanted to allow myself the joy of pictures. And so here I am now, at 24 and two years removed from college, immensely obsessed with visual art. I design apps for tech companies for a living and I doodle in my free time. I am just now learning (and unlearning) my relationship to words and pictures.
my brother loved taking things apart and he often couldn’t put them back together again–and that irritated me so much because we didn’t have that many toys lol. a lot of friends share how they loved to take things apart, that’s one part of being a child I didn’t do because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to put stuff together again and didn’t want to lose the toys lol
No photo, but a friend included me in a comic about creative workers. I used to take all kinds of trash – particularly cardboard boxes and plastic bottles – and build my own play environments. Which eventually led to my career teaching kids to make cardboard robots!
I had a fascination with chalks and blackboards. During the first five years, I got a tiny slate with pencil chalks and I spent hours drawing and studying. Those years embarked the educator journey in me. As an educator and learning designer, I build experiences where kids can learn by doing and iterating, just like I did using that slate and pencil chalk in my formative years.
Many of the objects mentioned by others were also part of my passions as a child and young adult. I remember weaving potholders, building with Lincoln logs, tinker toys, blocks, and reading, but also outside hobbies. I was always outside and either on roller skates or my bicycle.
My favorite toy in the entire world was my dollhouse I still remember its design vividly. It was a two-story house. It had a blue tile ceiling with beige walls and it opened right in the middle to showcase all the interior rooms.
I could literally spend hours making up stories with that house. I gathered all of my character toys (like Barbie dolls, dinosaurs, animals, and even cars) sit around the house with them, and star narrating all sorts of stories. From adventures, to dramas, to tales, there was no end to the stories I could make up on the spot using the dollhouse as the center stage. I preferred that dollhouse over any computer game or TV show.
The dollhouse was like the perfect black canvas. It gave a simple base structure that I could use and re-interpret any way I desired. I could make anything happened in that house just by using my imagination. Looking back at it now, I still very much make up stories in my head all the time. And it might just be a big reason why I so much desired to be a writer when I was in school (I still do in the back of my mind from time to time ).
I couldn’t find a picture of my dollhouse, so I’ll attach one that gives me a somewhat similar vibe.
I still remember its design vividly. It was a two-story house. It had a blue tile ceiling with beige walls and it opened right in the middle to showcase all the interior rooms.
