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My kindergarten kids just finished these collaborative collage projects featuring communities. In years past when I've done this project, I made sure to model everything for them- how to create a road, how to put windows on a house, how to cut shapes for a tree, etc. This year I didn't do any of that- instead, students created everything completely independently! The end products don't look as polished, but I think the learning was much greater. I did give them some thin black strips to make roads, and I pre-cut some paper into building-sized squares. I also showed them how to cut the squares diagonally to make triangles for roofs. Everything else is all theirs! Students worked in teams of three to create these communities. They started by gluing down the roads, and then from there, they could add anything they wanted! I did display some photographs of things that could be found in communities- like buildings, playgrounds, stop lights, trees, and cars- just to give them somewhere to start. If someone had walked in the art room in the middle of all of this, they would have thought it was complete chaos! It was really noisy, kids were constantly moving around the room to get supplies from different stations, and there were definitely disagreements among team members about the best way to do things- not to mention the thousands of scraps of paper scattered on the floor. But- if you looked a little closer, you saw lots of great things happening, too:
I need to explain my system for distributing glue. We use "glue sponges"- a damp kitchen sponge cut in half, with a puddle of white liquid glue in the middle. Kids use one finger to scoop up a bit of glue and spread it on the back of their paper, then they clean their finger off with the damp sides of the sponge. When kids need a refill, they can help themselves with this glue dispenser. It's just a liquid soap bottle that's been filled with white glue. I tell kids they can get three pumps at a time. Sometimes they have to get help from a friend, like in the above photo- it's hard to be coordinated enough to manage both holding the sponge and pushing the top when you're only five years old!
Here are just a few of the finished collages. The kids kept referring to them as their "maps", even though I never used that word with them. That just goes to show how they are connecting their learning in the classroom to what we are doing in Art!
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