Excerpt from Expressing Creativity in Preschool
Using Collage to Encourage Creativity, High-Level Thinking, and Conversation
by Triada Samaras and Janis Strasser, with Michele J. Russo
Collage is an ideal way to introduce preschool children to basic art concepts. You'll also give them an engaging open-ended art experience. To ensure success, choose materials widely, model how to use glue, and don't make a sample collage. When teachers make a sample, children tend to want to make ones just like it.
Getting Started
Put glue into a recycled plastic pint container with a foam brush or a tongue depressor. Also provide paper clips, tape, and a stapler to offer multiple ways to fasten materials together.
During collage making, use lots of rich vocabulary to discuss children's creations. When they say to you "Look what I did!" or "See what I made!" ask open-ended questions to encourage conversations about their work. You could post a list of questions and prompts in your art center to remind you what to ask.
Torn Paper Collage
This type of collage is the easiest for children to create.
1. Provide white glue and two different colors or types of paper (black and white construction paper work very well, or newspaper with black construction paper as a background).
2. Model tearing paper into unusual shapes. Encourage children to use a pincer grip with their fingertips.
3. Sing this tearing song to the tune of “Frere Jacques”:
Tearing, tearing
Tearing, tearing
1, 2, 3
1, 2, 3
What’s it going to be now?
What’s it going to be now?
Wait and see . . .
Wait and see . . .
4. Demonstrate gluing one piece on the paper and holding it until it sticks.
5. Tear another shape and repeat. Ask some open-ended questions.
6. Give children plenty of time to tear pieces of different sizes and shapes.
7. After children have torn plenty of paper, provide the glue. Give each child one page for attaching pieces.
Cut Paper Collage
For these collages, cut odd shapes of paper. Have the children cut the shapes if they can.
1. Model cutting and placing one or two pieces on the paper.
2. Discuss using unusual shapes (or cut these shapes) in addition to the geometric shapes the children know.
3. Sing the tearing song to the tune of “Frere Jacques” as with torn paper collage, but replace the word tearing with cutting.
From Expressing Creativity in Preschool. Copyright © 2015 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
