Making Ark: Collage

Here it is the end of summer (or, rather, the beginning of the school year) and I've barely made a dent in the art supplies and lessons I so diligently planned. The summer whizzed by, and we were often too busy to get creative with those things. The kids did spend a lot of time this summer creating with paper and crayons, with legos, with mud, and with their thousands of piles of toys. Since we got so much done through the week, we decided that Sunday would be an art day for the kids and me (while Allen helped supervise.) Saturday at dinner, we told the kids we would have an art-day Sunday, but, for some reason, Maddie kept telling us, "I am really excited to make ark!" Even after correcting her and explaining it was ART, she still called it "ark," and now I'm saying it when I want to be silly.

We worked on paper collages, and the kids were thrilled to get to dig into my piles of pretty papers and use glue and scissors. By the end of the day, five of us had some new creations ... and I may have found something I love to do with paper scraps :)

Here is what we ended up with! Ben insisted on using some "scraps" from Sunday school because he wanted "to remember the numbers." He was excited about the rocket, too, but it ended up being mostly covered.

Jon spent an hour and a half cutting little circles that he wanted "to just keep it in a baggie, Mama." He was creative with the horse, but you can't tell from the photo that the white paper is cut from the bottom to the horse-body. Why? "So the horse can walk or run." (He wiggles the cuts back and forth to do that.)

Maddie wanted a pretty-pink-paper-heart. We used a square punch to cut the papers she chose, then she pasted them onto another sheet. After that, I helped her draw the heart and showed her how we could cut it. She was really excited that it turned out so .... pink!

This was a project Will enjoyed. He loved being allowed to cut up my pretty papers and any magazines he could find that was older than August. He told stories with his art, but I didn't hear all the details as I was helping the other kids. In the first collage, the evil chef is cooking up some buddies -- the turtle and rabbit have been killed for the soup. Sticking with the food-theme, the second project shows Will eating a big stack of pancakes. Some of the other groceries are in the kitchen, too, and the blue bird is anxious for his breakfast, too.

This is my first big collage, inspired by one of Ben's watercolors from earlier this summer. He had painted a garden with a fence in front, and that's where I got the idea. I had so much fun -- making this AND playing with paper with my kids. :)