Recycled Kids Project: Make a Collage from Old Magazines!

I don't think it was my mom's intention to be "green" when she used to give us magazine and newspaper pages to make collages as kids...she was just being her usual creative, resourceful self. You can do a lot of fun things with recycled stuff.  If it's rainy outside and you can't go do a nature collage, try a recycled magazine collage!

Our project started a little something like this,

Mom: "Hey Sammy, wanna do a project?"
Sam: "YEAH!"
Mom: "Okay, what color paper would you like to use?" (showing him a stack of construction paper)
Sam: "BLUE!"

From here we took some of my old magazines out, some scissors and glue.  I handed him some crayons to start with a little coloring while I flipped through them, cutting out any pages of things I want to keep, remember, try, check out, etc. (I put those pages into a ring binder.  Later I go back and flip through them when I want to find a new recipe to try, or a craft idea for the kids, etc.)  While flipping through I also cut out images of objects, people, animals, and letters and set them in front of Sammy.

He gets to choose whatever images he'd like for his collage, squeeze on the glue and place his images wherever he chooses...

It's fun to see which images he picks.  He immediately picked the car first, and then the pictures of cookies.  ;-)

Later I let him try a pair of scissors.  Being 2 yrs old, and having never used scissors, he couldn't quite cut shapes out yet. But, he had a blast cutting up paper.  If your kids are older, you can hand them the magazine and let them cut out the pictures.  For us, it afforded us the opportunity to have the conversation about how scissors are for cutting paper, not clothing or people.

He immediately had to hang his masterpiece on the frig! (with one of Mommy's magnets of course!)

Not bad for his first collage, eh?!

I saved all the left-over images in an envelope, which I intend to add to over time so he has a little stash of collage materials.  It was really an enjoyable time, sitting at the table together...Sammy working on his collage while I got to look through my magazines!  That's a win-win project if I've ever seen one!