If you missed my first post about the collage around the room activity, you can find that here.
New this time:
- Just like my drawing game, I went ahead and updated my collage cards to match the word wall format. As soon as we were done with the cards at the tables (2 days) I put one set on the cupboards of the collage center. Usually I just put the center posters on the upper cupboards, but running out of room I realized that my lower cupboards are easily seen by the kids sitting at the nearby tables, so it makes a good space for these.
- Slightly different paper media choices. Last year I had colored paper and “scrapbook paper” as seperate media boxes, but the kids got confused since they were so similar in texture and thickness. So I combined them and just called that box “colored paper.”
The Good:
- Kids love collage! Having the whole room doing collage makes for a much more active and noisy room. Lots of kids standing, sharing choices and supplies, laughing, talking and mess, noise, mess, noise. Kids putting glue on their hands, putting TOO much glue on papers, things getting stuck to each other. Wait a minute, do I file this under good or bad? It’s a little of both. I laughed quite a few times this week, but was exhausted by the end.
The Bad:
- Not really bad necessarily, but I added a “mixed media” box and put out my boxes of ribbon, trim, and fancy tapes and this presented some new challenges. They went crazy for this table! But wow, the resulting collages are very bulky and 3 dimensional. So I think I might ditch that box next year. Plus they weren’t very thoughtful with it and just blobbed stuff on. However, there was some good problem solving for figuring out how to cut and attach these more unusual items. These were stored in small plastic drawers which are now a super disaster. Not sure if I will bother cleaning these, or let someone else take responsibility later.
- Trying to write the vocab on the back of the worksheet after some gluing has happened is difficult. A few kids figured out this would be a problem ahead of time and walked around to get all the vocab first. Others got so involved with the front part that they completed forgot about the back and turned it in without doing the vocab at all. I don’t want to remove the vocab portion because I like the more active way to get some vocab, rather than the just sit and copy from a book or projection. Plus I really do want them demonstrating the words in the collages. Clearly the kids that didn’t write the words, also didn’t use the concepts or techniques. Not sure if I need to do any changes, because the few that didn’t get it are the same kids that would not follow directions in any other version I might do.
Next Time:
- I don’t think I will include the mixed media table. I might need to reduce the number of vocab cards and make the boxes side by side like I did the drawing game so the words don’t get forgotten.
Updated Resources you may use.