Familiar Materials vs. Purpose Built Equipment
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Household equipment and recycled materials are not just cheaper to use and easier to find, but they have enormous educational benefits over their pre-packaged counterparts. Some of these are listed below:
See a list of some of the workshops that are run using natural materials.
- Familiarise children with the possibility of reuse. This can have both great environmental benefits as well as making for a very satisfying outcome. When repair around The Lighthouse involves the cannibalization of parts from something broken, it is celebrated much more than those which require the installation of a shop-bought 'spare part'.
- The behaviour of an invention, model or construction can easily be understood as we are already familiar with its 'everyday' components.
- However the material is used, it will relate to us, as we have already experienced it in a previous incarnation.
- If we use the same materials in different contexts then we can begin to see the underlying function of a particular component (i.e. using a garden tap as a valve in a fermentation chamber).
See a list of some of the workshops that are run using natural materials.
