Collage for kids with a twist is a different way of giving children art collage but adding a new spin on it.

There are so many different types of collage you can give children especially shape collages.

The point is to try to add new ways of doing things by making children think and solve problems and at the same time greatly enhancing their creativity.

So for this activity in case it wasn’t so clear form the video I chose a few different materials for the children to use for their collage.

I decided to stick with shapes for this one and chose a few pieces of foam in a few colors. I also cut up some brown paper bags into different shapes.

I then cut up some of the shapes and glued them on individual cards.

Each child was allowed to choose 3 cards from the pile with them turned over so they couldn’t see what they were choosing.

The children then had to go over to the table with their cards and choose how many they wanted to collage with only choosing the shapes and material that were on their cards.

They then went back to their table and created their collages.

You will once again notice how differently children collage.

one done witha  little more thought

and then this one done with even more intention

and for the child who wanted to make a second collage and was instructed to use only the tissue paper and brown paper shapes she created this image

See how you can use YOUR imagination by thinking of different ways to do collage that helps the children with their creativity so much.

Happy collaging

Winter collages in the summer eh?

Well that’s if you are reading this right around posting time, which is in the summer.

Very easy explanation for that.

Our art camp had topsey turvey day. But the truth is if you live in Australia it is winter now.

Another thing is that this type of crafts, collage can be used with any season and many other topics.

You just prepare the item you think would go well in a picture depicting that season or holiday (In this case winter and snowmen) and let the children create according to their own levels.

If you’ll notice the image above is done by a child of a more advanced level than the 2 below

The child who created the picture in the image below is having difficulty in many areas and it is obvious by her picture.

A child that is given parameters and materials to make a snow picture and creates a picture like the one below, is obviously not ready to create something more sophisticated.

Wouldn’t it be sad if we would push the children into creating what we think is a good picture without waiting to see what they can produce.

If a child totally misses the point of what the craft is supposed to be then we can tell that they still need lots of time for very sensory and free art activities.

Painting with kids can be a wonderful and also a frustrating experience.

Kids who love art and painting often times burn out after a period of painting as a result of not having inspiration ” what to  paint

This series on painting with kids is going to build on a series of  exercises in painting that will hopefully lead them to greater creativity and inspiration.

I read through a particular book called Children And Painting and decided to test out these ideas to see if they actually work with young children.
In my experience many books give activities for children that don’t seem based on reality. So I decided to use this  book as painting guide to see if it works in real life.

I added some of my own ideas and took out ones that I saw were not working.

I began by having the children watch me create various lines on a whiteboard.

We did horizontal, vertical, diagonal, zig zag, curvy, dotted, broken and swirly lines.

The children were then given black paint and some standard, thick paintbrushes and told to make as many of those lines as they could on their papers.

Some of the results are above and another one is below.

One child absolutely who was unable to follow the directions at all and proceeded to just totally paint with the black paint all over.

Which just goes to show that  you must give activities to children that are ready for them.

This child obviously was not.

The younger children I worked with around 4-5 years old did not have much interest in going further with these line paintings so I left them and just let them paint with colors.

The older children,  5-7 yr olds were much more-in tune and interested.

After they had made their line paintings I gave them thin paintbrushes and told them to make a smaller version of  their lines next to the fatter lines they had made.

Below is when this little 6 year old was able to add thin lines the same type as the first ones.

I then told them to connect al of their lines.

Some children did and  some didn’t.

We then discussed lines and weather and how we can tell different types of weather by the lines.

In the book, Cathy Weissman Topal seems to feel that children can depict many types of weather through line. I found the types they could do very limited. But they did do some.

After folding the paper in 8 and telling them to make weather painting using the lines we had talked about, most of them could do only a few.

The other weather conditions  the book talks about to try were beyond them. (icicles, fog etc)

This image was the best of the lot and I learned that it is an exercise that needs to be done with older children.

Could be that in the book  that Cathy Topal shows the children many of the weather patterns before allowing them to do it, but I wanted to see what they really could come up with themselves.

So this was the first lesson. We’ll continue on probably with lines in texture.

We’ll see how that works out.

Watch the video below and learn what goes into making a cafeteria style arts and crafts project, this time it’s American flags for July fourth.

So that’s how we did a cafeteria style July 4th craft, having the children create American Flags for the Fourth of July.

We started by giving the children a template of a flag

We then arranged the materials kind of cafeteria style for the children to choose the red, white and blue materials they were going to use to decorate their flags.

And these were some of the results.

[nggallery id=3]

It doesn’t really matter if their flags are not copies of the American flag. They are gorgeous and each child works according to their own age level and creativity.

Ccollage with kids is one of the best art activities  you can do with children.

It has all of the elements of an educational art activity.

It allows children freedom to make choices, take initiative, be different, think and solve problems and be oh! so creative.

Of course this is all according to their developmental levels.

Give a 2 , 3. 4. 5. 6  yr old children (even adults) all of these circles  and just watch at the different types of collages they can make.

In this collage series I will be taking you on a journey through collaging with children.

Collage can be done step by step leading the children to eventually be able to make their own collages on their own.  (tapping into their own discovered creativity)

Collage is alot more than left over scraps of paper from teachers projects and we hope to share wit you all the different types and ideas that you can do with kids.

Make sure you save these collages in a folder so you can see progress.

When I was a preschool director many years ago, I would walk the halls and look at the children’s artwork hung outside the classrooms. I would always be able to tell certain levels of maturity from the collages  the children had done.

Sometimes I could even pick up problems. If a 5 yr old child was collaging like a 3 yr old, we would know to keep an eye out on that child.

Imagine if children only did copycat arts and crafts,  we would never get to see what they were capable of.

For your first circle collages you can do two activities.

We started by giving the children rectangular tagboard and a few different sizes of paper, colorful circles.

The span of the children in this group is around 3 years but I have put in some of the results of this first activity to show you how differently children make even a simple circle collage.

[nggallery id=1]

After having the children finish this first circle collage, we gave them something more to think about

We gave the children large circles cut  out of tagboard as a background and added small children’ s scissors to the equation.

Then we gave them from the same batch of  circles that they were pasting with beforehand. Below are some of the results of that activity

[nggallery id=2]

As you add new variations to simple and old themes children need to think of what they will do next.

• How will they deal with the new shape of this background
• Will they use the scissors and how
• Will they make abstract designs or try  to create something representational

These and more are just some of the questions that children do have to grapple with even when creating a simple collage.

And then of course their creativity is expanded and they feel great about being allowed to create on their own.