I particularly like this project because even teenagers can get into collaging, but preschoolers can practice scissor skills with similar techniques. It's perfect for moms like me with children four years apart.
There are two basic versions of this craft:
Older Children: have them cut appropriate colors from old magazines or scraps of paper and use snips of the appropriate color to complete the craft. Collaging is a wonderful art form -- you can use your creativity by doing things like going from darker at the top to lighter near the belly on the wings.
Preschoolers: This is a great project to use when you are first introducing a child to scissors. It requires single "snips" only. Just use black construction paper and a few white scraps to complete the project.
You can also make this a little more challenging by asking older children to create a collage background for your loon (hint: they live in lakes!).
- children's scissors,
- scraps of black, dark brown or dark grey magazine snips or black construction paper
- paper and printer
- Print template of choice or make your own.
- ADULT: Cut the black construction paper into long, one inch wide strips (you can cut fast, they don't have to be perfect)
- show the child how to hold their scissors.
- let the child snip off pieces from the strips of construction paper... As the children get older, you can ask them to try to snip perfect squares, but to begin with, just let them snip away
- Either squeeze the glue onto the template for the child or squeeze some into a margarine container lid and give the child a q-tip or popsicle stick to spread the glue themselves.
- Let the child fill the template with the snipped pieces -- don't worry that they go over the lines
- Cut out snippets from old magazines - use the darkest black you can find and use those pieces to fill in the head.
- Cut out snippets from old magazines - use black, dark brown and dark grey to fill in the wing. Add a few white spots overtop of the dark wing.
- Let dry.
- Cut out the shape along the dark line (you should be able to turn the page over and see the dark black line through the back of the paper).
- Cut out the template beak, eye and neck band (or use more magazine collaging to create them). Glue them to the loon.
- Optional: Glue onto a background -- loons live on lakes in forested areas. You can create a simple blue construction paperbackground to act as a lake or you can use more collage techniques to create your background.
- Close the template window after printing to return to this screen.
- Set page margins to zero if you have trouble fitting the template on one page (FILE, PAGE SETUP or FILE, PRINTER SETUP in most browsers).