In this personal essay, I explain how my use of visual modelling has the capacity to broaden constructionism in five important ways. (1) It introduces new techniques for students to describe and document, in a personal way, what they are actually doing in modelling. (2) It introduces the big ideas of mathematical modelling and computational thinking in a way that is far more inclusive than many other constructionist-oriented courses that are labelled as math, science or computer science. (3) It favours the modelling of student-selected objects in the physical world over the modelling of concepts and problems drawn more directly from traditional math and science. (4) It introduces the core ideas of design and colour theories in context. (5) It demonstrates the benefits of using narratives and personal journaling to explore the thought processes that help us make sense of the world.