Structured all about me collages? S ounds contradictory doesn’t it?
Collages are the epitome of non structured art and here I am giving you a STRUCTURED collage titled all about me.
What’s that all about?
Depending on whose presenting them, collages are usually a pasting activity with a variety of materials that the children can use to create some form of abstract art.
I am a big believer in doing collage in a thought out progressive manner. I did my first post on collage The art of collagae as a beginning on how I would start, I did another post on adding different twists to the collage idea. The idea of collage is to get the children thinking on how to use the different materials.
Very young children are planning placement and deciding if they will plop pieces on top of each other or arrange them in an order on their page. Older children are often trying to figure out how to make representational pictures out of their collage materials
As the children progress through collage activities, we give them collage projects to do with the materials that are suggestive of the picture they can make.
For instance, they can make a winter collage as each child will create according to her developmental level.
The older the children get, the more sophisticated their collages are.
There is actually room for two types of collages. The first, where the children are given materials with no preconceived project in mind, just collaging abstract art and the second where they are given suggestive materials with a project in mind and they will create something a bit more representational.
The materials that are suggestive will give the illusion of a representational picture even if the child is too young to be able to really make a representational picture.
In the case of the all about me collages, we added a bit more structure to them.
We gave the children the piece of tagboard with a circle already drawn on it. But that was all. That was just the little bit of help they needed as this activity was to make a person (themselves)
We then presented them with materials that they could choose to create their person,
The fascinating thing about this is that the developmentally immature children did not even take much notice of the obvious circle drawn on the paper to use as the head but just collaged randomly as appropriate for their age level.
Older children on the other hand will loved that little bit of structure given which will allowed them to branch out into real creative pictures.
You can see from the pictures above the wide differences in how children viewed the activity and how they were able to relate to creating an actual person out of collage materials.
There are many art purists however, who don’t believe in giving children any structure whatsoever in their art and may frown on even giving the children the circle to begin with.
Since I am a big proponent of educational art I believe that children need to be helped in their thinking and creative processes and a little bit of structure given in the right doses through the right activity is very helpful for the children’s creative and thinking skills.
So go ahead try this activity. Take a piece of tagboard (much better for pasting) and draw a circle on it toward the top of the page.
Present the children witha variety of materials that they can use to create a person.
- Yarn
- Googly eyes
- Small sequins
- Cut up round pieces of shiny paper
- Crafts sticks
- Pieces of cut up straws
- Tissue paper pieces
- Small pieces of material
- Anything materials that you have that the children can use to dress or enhance their person
Of course if you want to help them begin by giving them suggestions on how to use the materials, make sure you don’t tell them directly what to do but give at least 5 different suggestions and this will get their minds working.
Enjoy!
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