Exploring art: Autumn Collage

Thursday 17th of May

A tangerine and russet cascade of keleidoscopic leaves

Creates a tapestry of Autumn magic

Upon the emerald carpet of fading summer.

The golden memory of sunsets and twilight

Hover in the backdrop of the peek-a-boo patch

Of silver skylight 

In Autumn, there’s an extra abundance of wonderful, natural materials to incorporate into play, learning and craft activities. Any time we step outside, there are leaves and petals ready to gather on our walk to and from Lemon tree, and it opens up a treasure trove of possibilities for collection. 

Today, we have set up a beautiful invitation to create using all natural materials gathered from the educators walk together through the Carlton Gardens and on our excursions together. This is a lovely art activity for autumn, perfect for our children as a first experience with collage. 

Collage art is one of the best first art experiences for Pre-kinders and should be repeated often in various formats, using a wide range of materials. It is particularly good for little hands as it involves picking, sticking, tearing, ripping, snipping and glueing, all of which are vital fine motor development tasks to strengthen and refine small hand muscles. Simply put, the better the motor skills, the more confident the child will be able to draw and write when the time comes. 

We created one very simple art activity to represent the season of Autumn, by using a leaf collage using recycled materials. We set out an invitation to create using leaves and twigs collected at the park, alongside a large muted tone paper and PVA glue. The kids later added some crayons and oil pastels as they wanted to incorporate their own embellishments too.

Harry made sure that he was picking things up and moving things around with care and deliberation, understanding the delicacy of the material and pasting crunchy leaves onto the page. Olivia J was interested in transferring glue from the paint pot to her page and ensuring she had just the right amount of glue with every turn. Milo wanted to improve his fine motor skills through cause and effect, tearing paper into small pieces to then paste.

Together we cut the paper into strips about an inch wide to show him how to use the pincer grasp to hold the strip with both hands and then move his hands away from each other (one toward her body and the other away) to tear it. Jonny and Olivia P enjoyed smoothing over the leaves after they had pasted and would arrange the leaves to plan how the overall picture would look like before pasting. 

Next, we can experiment with different levels of glue freedom. Some children may develop certain skills before others, so we want to watch their own unique development to know what to introduce next.  Besides the use of pebbles, grasses, leaves, twigs and flower petals to make beautiful collages, we will try adding sand or salt into our collage designs. These materials are a natural fit to reinforce colours, textures, shapes and seasons.

Also we will try using different weights of papers to make tearing and cutting easier. Tissue paper, for example, is easy to tear and fun to crumple up. It makes an interesting texture and it can offer a new auditory dimension to our project. 

Over the month of June we will explore the season further and observe the changes ahead, using art as a platform to express what we see, hear, smell and touch.