I’ve been saving scraps from other activities over the past few months, and have amassed quite the assortment of colourful bits and bobs, so last week we used them to make brightly coloured mosaics!
Inspired by ancient Greek and Roman mosaic art, I printed out simple outlines for the kids to fill in using glue sticks and bits of paper (mostly construction paper). I had scissors on hand if they needed to fill in any strange gaps, and colouring supplies if they wanted to add embellishments. Then, I set them to work.
If you’re going to try a project like this (and I absolutely recommend you do, it was a lot of fun), I suggest having a variety of printed outlines in different sizes and level of detail available – the rainbows looked really impressive, but they took a lot of work to fill, and were too much for some of the younger kiddos. The hearts were really popular, because they still looked very pretty when finished, and took much less time (and paper scraps!) to fill in. The activity was a fantastic opportunity to practice fine motor skills, as I find that even my older participants often struggle with tasks like cutting and gluing. It’s also a great exercise in patience, as the process itself can be time consuming, but the outcome is well worth it!
The moral of the story is – save everything, you never know when you might be able to turn it into art! 😉