Gluing With Scissors!

Arts Explorer #6: Painting With Scissors

"Worlds of Cultures"

An art activity in which children can use their creative skills and also embrace their diversity, allows one another to not only understand more about the various cultures, but opens their eyes to a new world of knowledge.

In the art activity which I have created, children will be given various magazines, newspapers etc, and will be asked to cut out objects that represent their culture, traditions, religion and so on. After cutting out various pictures, the children will paper-mache their cut outs onto a small balloon. Each child will have their own “world of culture” and when combined together with their friends, will have different “Worlds of Cultures”. Every child will be able to explore and visually see all the differing cultures of their peers alongside of their own. This activity incorporates the use of many skills such as cutting with scissors, mixing, gluing and pasting. It is a very hands on activity in which all children can enjoy and take part in. When in an early childhood setting, implications such as combining the various fine motor skills, along with an open environment where children are welcome to work together and share ideas, provides them with opportunities to interact on many levels. I have noticed that children LOVE to get messy when working on any sort of creative art activity, so this is a perfect way to let them work hands on with their peers and get right into their work!

Mass and volume are important within this art activity as the outcome product is a three-dimensional figure. Mass and/or volume can have various meaning with some being “open or closed, heavy, bulky, solid, static or dynamic, hard or soft, etc.” (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009). There are many acceptable meanings for the words mass and volume as they incorporate critiques for height, weight and volume in three-dimensional art (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009).

Schirrmacher, R & Fox J.E. (2009). Art & Creative Development for Young Children. Delmar: Cengage Learning.