An Inclusive Early Childhood
Development Program
All About Me: Getting to Know Me
Drawing and using collage materials
Learning Objectives Including All Children Arts Experience
Artist With a Disability Learning Log Learning at Home
Learning through the Arts - Start with the Arts visual arts lessons provide opportunities for children to create through drawing, painting, constructing and sculpting. Children learn to view works of art with sensitivity and appreciation. They are involved actively with expressing themselves through manipulating and controlling tools and working with the concepts of color, line, shape, form and pattern. - More about Learing through the Arts
Learning Objectives
- Express thoughts and feelings about things that are special and meaningful.
- Develop confidence in sharing ideas about self and artwork.
- Identify unique and special personal attributes.
- Identify unique and special attributes of others.
- Build vocabulary about drawing, collage and texture.
- Use scissors, glue, markers and crayons.
- Create a drawing and a collage that describe oneself.
- Use textured materials in new ways.
Teach children the American Sign Language signs for pieces of clothing, and use these signs throughout the activity.
For children with cognitive disabilities, suggest some parameters to the collage theme or other visual arts lessons by giving children more specific ideas for subject matter; for instance: “What I Like To Do (on the playground, with my family, in the summer).”
For children with physical disabilities, avoid very small collage items that may be difficult to pick up. Assist by spreading glue where children wish to add collage materials.
For children with visual disabilities, carefully set up and/or line up the collage materials in open containers. Tell them which material is first, second and third.
Getting Started
Set aside a collage table where children can add their own contributions to the textured materials already there. Making collages could be an ongoing activity.
Connecting to Past Experience
Encourage children to share something special about themselves to validate the importance of individual interests, ideas and feelings.
- What do you like to do?
- What things do you like best?
- What are your favorite toys, games, foods, colors?
- What makes you happy?
- What do you think makes you special?
Expressing Through Art
- Encourage children to draw pictures of themselves that show their special attribute or interests.
- Introduce texture. Have children run their hands or arms or the side of their faces across the clothing they are wearing.
- What does the material feel like?
- Continue the experience by having children feel their shoes, their desks or tabletops.
- Introduce a variety of collage materials. Distribute a sample to each child. What does your object or piece of material feel like?
Key Vocabulary: Rough, Smooth, Scratchy, Silky, Crinkly, Furry, Bumpy, Hard, Rubbery
Introduce collage.
- Collage is a French word that means to cut and paste.
- Demonstrate the collage process by selecting, cutting and/or tearing and gluing.
- Remind children that the glued materials will not stay stuck until the glue is dry.
- Show children how to overlap items.
- Invite children to select and add collage materials to their drawings.
- They may want to make hair, a piece of clothing, grass or trees with the textured materials. Let the collages dry flat.
- Remind children to sign their collages, as artists always sign their work.
Talking About Art
- Tell us about your artwork.
- What does it tell us about you?
- Have children identify the work of their classmates by looking for clues.
- Can you guess who made this collage?
- What did you see in the collage that led you to that guess?
Extending the Experience
- Create an album page, one for each child. Have children bring photographs, if available, greeting cards and other personal items from home to make a collage that tells about themselves and/or their families.
- Create ongoing About Me books. Include self-portraits, and drawings of family members, pets and friends. Add magazine cutouts to pages, and label (for example: “My Favorite Foods”).
- Have children cut out the individual letters of their name. Use the letters to create another collage or add them to one of the pages in their books.
- Visit the library and find books that are illustrated by collage, such as books by Eric Carle.
Introducing An Artist With Disabilities
Magdelena Carmen “Frida” Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907, in Coyoacan, Mexico. As a young child she was often sick and had to stay in bed. To keep herself company she had an imaginary friend whom she would “visit” by blowing her breath on the windowpane and drawing a door on the opaque glass. Through this “door,” Frida pretended that she could leave her bed and play with her friend.
When Ms. Kahlo was older, she was injured in a serious bus accident. Once again she found herself in bed for a long time because she had to have many operations. This is when she taught herself to paint.
Even though she could not get up, she painted! She had a mirror attached to the canopy over her bed, and while she lay on her back, she painted her selfportrait.
She became a well-known artist, famous for her expressive portraits that showed her strong feelings and depicted her Mexican heritage.
Invite children to write or dictate something they learned about their classmates from their collages. What did you learn about your classmates?
Suggest the Title: About My Friend
Dear Family,
Did you know that the word “collage” is a French word that means to cut and paste? In our visual arts lesson, children drew themselves and then added textured materials to create a collage. Ask your child about his or her collage.
Please review the list of ideas for continuing the learning process at home. You may want to select books from the library that are illustrated with collages, or make a collage with your child.
Talking With Your Child
- How did you like making a collage
- What was the hardest part?
- What was easy to do?
- Tell me about your collage.
- Tell me what you are doing in it.
With your child…
Make family collages. Family members could work on one collage together, or each family member could make an individual collage. Cut or tear objects and/or scenes from magazines or newspapers that tell about you. Paste, tape or glue them to a plain piece of paper. You may want to draw pictures and/or add photographs and special things. Hang collages on family members’ bedroom doors or on a wall in a common area.
Create a family book, one page per family member. Start the page with, for example, “Mom likes...,” and finish the sentence. Repeat for each family member. Think of special hobbies or interests to describe.
Collect a variety of materials with different textures for the ART BOX.
Arts Vocabulary
Collage – A work of art created by attaching materials, such as different kinds of paper, fabrics, etc., to a backing with glue or another type of adhesive. It may be combined with painting, drawing or writing.
| Materials |
Heavy drawing paper, construction paper or poster board Crayons and/or markers Large glue sticks, gllue dots, masking tape or clear tape A variety of textured materials, such as wallpaper samples, cloth, aluminum foil and other foiled paper, paper streamers, ribbon, embossed and corrugated paper, and ribbon. Option: Examples of books with actual textures designed for babies to touch, such as Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt or'The Enormous Turnip by Ronne Randall. |
