June 17th, 2008 Find, cut, paste then draw Posted by Melitsa in Good reads, Homemade, play activities, Seasonal play

Even though it’s been a couple of days sitting on the side; I finally got around to reading the Sunday papers. After sorting into a pile of ‘to read’ and a pile of recycling, the pile to recycle seems huge- every weekend.

Today before the pile hit the recycling bin we started a project.

The big guy found and cut out all his favourite foods. Stuck them onto paper. This lead to an interesting discussion about food and drink.

He started to find his favourite clothes and that’ll be the next project to add to the large sheet of paper.

Often parts of the body are missing to get a good shot of the clothes so he’ll add legs and feet.

We then plan on moving onto the objects- gardening, patio, houses for sale etc

Eventually we’ll have a collage that we can weave a story together. I’m hoping he’ll tell the story with it.

Before you throw away recycle your weekend paper. Give your kids a chance to use the pages for other things.

Cutting and sticking isn’t just a random activity for toddlers but instead it can be defined and extended by preschoolers and older with a little imagination. Mixing media of magazine, newspaper, construction paper is a fun thing to try especially if you can sit with your kids and draw parts in with them.

He particular liked the freedom to choose what went onto the page and where it went.

Skills that naturally occur:

• Honing their fine motor skills
• giving them choices and letting them share their opinions
• creativity of what materials to use, how to place them on the page
• imagination to link the items into a story
• discrimination- accepting and rejecting objects from the many pages
• Sorting and controlling the environment ( Pile of cut outs? or cut, stick? or plan?)

Whenever planning a collage or large project, I’ve found it best to take bite sized chunks of time and allow the work to develop. They’ll be times when we have to jump in and times when they have a really good idea they need supporting on.

The perfect time for a project like this with summer almost here and all that time..

For more summer time activities try here.

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Melitsa Avila is a former teacher, mother of three boys and military wife who talks about living an intentional play lifestyle using practical and everyday play activities to do with the under 5s. She publishes related ebooks & newsletters. Melitsa is the host and producer of a weekly Early Childhood radio show: Raising Playful Tots bringing parents and carers together with Early childhood practitioners. Thanks for reading!

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