How does your garden grow?

When making a collage I believe the more varied textures the better. These garden collages were made by ages 5-6 using layers and layers of materials. 

We began by reading the book UP, DOWN and AROUND by Katherine Ayers. This book illustrates so beautifully how things grow both above ground and below ground. 

I had prepared ahead of time shapes cut from thick and thin pieces of fabric appreciating all the patterns. The children could determine for themselves which shape would be which vegetable. I used gorgeous orange velvet and bright purples and pinks in upholstery fabrics and all kinds of cotton green patterns for leaves.

The first layer was drawing a line to mark the boundary of below and above ground. They then painted brown for below ground and whatever color they wanted for above ground, some wanted a blue sky, some pink and some orange. 

Discussing what vegetables they wanted in their gardens, they chose the fabrics and talked about what vegetables they like best. Adding the greens for each vegetable really made the garden complete.

The kids added buttons talking about bugs that live under ground or minerals that are underground. The final layer was a sprinkle of sand. We didn't have brown sand so we had to settle for black sand.  It adds another texture, a rough texture to the collage. 

Happy Collaging!

Haberdashery

I am a believer that if you start with beautiful materials then the final project will too be beautiful. In our haberdashery class, for ages 6-9,  we didn't actually do any sewing. It was mostly gluing both hot gluing and regular starting with beautiful materials to make glorious, playful hats.

We used  sensory materials like plaster or shaving cream and glue as well as familiar materials like plastic flowers, duct tape or pieces of jewelry that I pick up at flea markets ( this is always a favorite with the children,  just looking through the big jar of shiny jewelry to see what they can find). 

We made cake hats, and flower hats and feathered hats and fruit hats and top hats.

The kids would be giddy with delight when they saw the materials on that table for their choosing. It was difficult to hold them back so we could choose fairly and with a bit of order. 

Fabrics, plastic flowers, butterflies, beads, feathers and ribbon.

Look at these gorgeous velvet flowers that I actually found at a thrift store, bags of them.

We used berry baskets as our base for the smaller hats and cardboard as the base for the larger hats.

It was delightful to watch them working out ideas with the materials, discussing if this should be added or if this was too much ( It was almost never too much). The children would draw out ideas, but usually those ideas would change and evolve as they began to work with the materials. 

On the last day of class we invited family and friends together and performed a fashion show with make up and music. We practiced our walks, both slow and fast.  We asked questions. Would each hat have a different walk? Which hat might have a slow walk and which one a faster one or a twirl?

What a fantastic ending to the haberdashery class with no sewing.