Spectacular Autumn Collages

It's never too early to expose your children or students to arts and crafts. While it may take extra planning (e.g. finding appropriate materials, tweaking projects for each childs' level of development) and extra supervision, the benefits are exponential. If you're stumped on an easy fall craft for your toddlers to tackle, here's a great suggestion from Kevin and Kristina at Toddler Approved!

Supplies You'll Need

• Fall themed paper plates or cutouts
• Natural elements (fall leaves, acorns, seed pods, pine cones, etc.)
• Decorative embellishments (pom poms, art tissue paper, WonderFoam® shapes)
• School glue

Since it would take quite a bit of assistance to go on a full-fledged nature scavenger hunt, gather all of your natural elements ahead of time and set them out on a table in the classroom. Add the decorative embellishments to the stash, then offer your students a small brown lunch bag and help them explore and collect their favorite fall items in a make-shift (but more controlled) nature hunt.

At their seats, provide them with a fall themed paper plate or cutout (i.e. large fall leaf, pine cone, acorn, etc.). Assist them in putting glue all over the center of their plate or cutout (NOTE: This would be great fine motor practice so if you think your students can handle it, think about letting them add their own glue). When the base has been properly glue, invite your students to decorate it with the fall items they collected.

Kevin and Kristina have wonderful discussion ideas too!

• As they work, talk about texture words (e.g. soft, squishy, rough, smooth, etc.)
• Discuss the different materials as vocabulary words (e.g. pine cone, fall colors, leaf, etc.)

Be sure to read the full post at Toddler Approved! for great pictures and more lesson help!

Toddler Approved!: Easy Peasy Fall Collages