Art School | Heart Map Collage
by Deborah Harju, posted on August 15th, 2012 in Art School
This lesson is a great introduction to collage and at the same time explores each child’s passions. What is collage? We can add this to the vocabulary list that has been slowly expanding the last few months. Collage is an art technique where you assemble/glue different items and in doing this you create something new. A collage might include pictures from magazines, newspapers, ribbons, texts, photographs, bits of wood, the item choices are endless. Then these items are glued to a piece of paper or canvas creating a collage.
Today our children will be creating a collage called a Heart Map. These heart maps will be a collage of many things that are important to your child, a variety of their passions and interests, hobbies and ideas. Much like we use a map to tell us about where we are going and how to get there, these heart maps will give us more information about who we are and what we like to do.
Supplies: white poster board, scissors, paper, pencil, crayons/markers, glue stick, magazines, newspapers, photographs
After reviewing what a collage is with your child, you’ll want to help them brainstorm their heart map. Using just a pencil and paper, they can create a list, or a word cloud with all the different words, items, themes that they’d like to include. It’s good to make sure they don’t think too hard or long during this part. Whatever pops into their head have them jot down.
Next, you’ll want to assemble all the tools they will look through to cut out anything that goes with an item on their list. For instance, if baseball is on their list, they may want to search through a sporting goods catalog to find some baseball gloves or balls, or a sports magazine. If family is on their list, some family photographs being handy will help. A lot of the items on their list they may just want to draw themselves, or write the words that symbolize how they feel in large bold letters. 3D items are one possibility as well and can add dimension to their project.
Once they have some clippings to use for their map, they can sketch with pencil and cut out a large heart from the white posterboard. Then they can take a look at what they’ve gathered and where they would like to place everything. Now they can start gluing their items down.
Encourage them to fill up their entire heart. We want to translate their figurative heart about everything they like to do and everything they love, into this symbolic heart map. If they are going to be drawing some of their interests or items, they can sketch them next. One option is to divide their heart into different sections as you see here.
Another option could be to have all their items just overlap and connect with each other. Weaving in and out of one other like sometimes streets on a map will do. Be sure they use crayons or markers to fill in all the areas on the heart. We wouldn’t want any empty spots in our heart, but rather one full of color and life.
And here is a completed heart map by a 5th grader.
Jennifer Cooper Says:
