Collages of all kinds make great crafts – they are a lot of fun for children to make and they offer a lot of different learning opportunities. For example, you could make a nature color collage where you try to find as many different colors as possible in nature and glue your findings onto poster board or a piece of cardboard. Punch holes in the top and tie some string through, and voila!, you’ve got some great artwork to hang on the wall! Other ideas for nature collages could include finding different kinds of seeds, making a collage of different colored and different types of leaves (great autumn project), or a feather collage. For the very young ones, making a collage of anything they find in nature and inevitably bring home (pretty leaves, sticks, small rocks, acorns, etc.) makes a great collage too – it doesn’t always have to follow a theme.

Below is a picture of some collages we made recently with my two children as well as my sister’s three children, all in the two to five year old age range. We decided to make a “touch collage” where the children’s task was to find different textures in nature. They found smooth pebbles, grainy sand, rough sticks and bark, bumpy leaves, spiky pine needles and rough peach pits. We glued all these findings onto cardboard rectangles.