The Ever Changing Collage

I have been missing in the blogosphere for quite awhile now.  In light of Val's precious addition and obvious busy-ness I thought I would try to finally post some of our recent activities. We are in the middle of a major move, so please bear with me. I'll do my best!

This ever changing collage is an activity I have done with J a few times over the past few months (3.5-4 years). I tape a piece of white contact paper upside down onto the table (the sticky side should be facing up). I then lay out an array of supplies for him to use to create his artistic masterpiece. I love that this activity truly ignites their creativity. J has evolved from created random collages to images that I can actually interpret clearly.

The fun aspect of this activity is that it is ever-changing. If they don't like the way a certain part of the collage looks, they can rearrange the pieces easily. This is perfect for my little perfectionist. If they begin to lose interest, just add a few new materials to the mix. Creativity rejuvenated!

Here is a picture of his more recent masterpieces.



This is our house and garage with a tree in the front yard, the sun shining, a bird flying, and colorful flower-buttons filling the garden (can't recall a time when my garden looked so good!).

The materials included foam shapes, colorful popsicle sticks, and colorful buttons. These seem to be his favorite materials to use since they leave nothing behind when removed from the contact paper. He gets annoyed when the other materials leave a tiny bit of fuzz or string behind. Did I mention he was a perfectionist?

We have also used pop poms, cotton balls, q tips, fabric pieces, ribbon, larger sequence, toothpicks, straws, pipe cleaners, jewels, rope, and shoe strings. I have found providing just 2 or 3 different materials at a time is enough for him. He gets overwhelmed if I put too many options in front of him. For the above example, I first gave him only the colored popsicle sticks. After he had time to play and create, I brought out the buttons and foam pieces. Bringing out the materials at different times really helps him explore each one's potential (and certainly makes the activity last longer!).

This activity would work for almost any age. Of course watch for choke hazards for those that like to mouth everything in site.