Build a 3D space of your own

Here's some creative fun from the former Children's Laureate: use the technique of collage to create your own imagined pop-up space.

Inspired by Lauren Child's Clarice Bean, That's Me (Hachette)

Staring into Space: resources from the former Children's Laureate

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Make a 3D space activity sheet

This activity is about making a 3D space using collage – and it's your own imagined space, so it can be just the way you want it.

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Download all the Staring into Space resources

Lauren Child introduces the Staring into Space resources

Six activity sheets to try

From making your own book to a 3D world, there's a creative idea to suit every child and classroom.

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Extra ideas for the 3D space resource

If you have time and want more inspiration, Lauren and Josey have some brilliant ideas of other things to do alongside this activity. They're all very good companions to Lauren Child's Clarice Bean, That's Me, which prompted this resource.

Read these books

Wolf

Sara Fanelli
Sara Fanelli makes everyday things, such as newspapers and old exercise books, seem really interesting. She cuts them out and uses them to make a path, a tree or even a wolf head! She then links it all together with drawings. Even Sara's words are collages, which makes each page extra fascinating.

The Snowy Day

Ezra Jack Keats
Ezra Jack Keats makes different surfaces by printing or painting and then cuts them out to make dramatic backgrounds, such as tall mounds of snow or a colourfully tiled bathroom floor. The key to these pictures is that they are very simple: most of the pages have hardly anything in them, but it makes you really look at what there is.

Elephants Never Forget

Natascha Biebow and Britta Teckentrup
All of the cutout shapes in this book are made from monoprints to create a variety of surfaces. The elephant skin is particularly clever.

Ruby Redfort

Lauren Child
Lauren Child’s Ruby Redfort series (for readers 8+) is not illustrated, and invites you to think up your own ideas of what the locations and characters look like. The series starts with Look Into My Eyes, when Ruby is recruited to the most secret of secret spy agencies, SPECTRUM, to help crack a code. Lauren has spoken about how architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s building Falling Water is what she imagines Ruby’s house to look like – what do you think?

Read our review of Look Into My Eyes