School will be starting soon. That means teachers, books, and a first ride on a school bus. Get back into school this year by taking an imaginary ride on...the art school bus! Use paper and paste to create a colorful collage of shapes in the form of a friendly school bus.
What You Need:
- Construction paper
- Scissors
- Glue stick or white glue
- Markers or crayons (optional)
What You Do:
- Show your child a picture of a school bus (either from a photo or an illustration in a book). Ask her to find different shapes in the bus. For example, the bus may look like a rectangle and the wheels like circles.
- Help your child to cut out paper shapes with the scissors. This should be fairly large in size and correspond to the shape of a school bus. Talk about all of the parts to a school bus including wheels and windows. If your child is having difficult cutting out the shapes herself, you may cut some for her. Have her watch you, and then mimic what you are doing with her own paper and scissors.
- Have your child arrange the shapes on another piece of construction paper to look like a school bus.
- Glue the shapes to the paper.
- Optional: Have your child add details to her school bus with markers or crayons.
Extend this activity by turning this project into a photo collage. Choose small photos of your child, her friends, and the family. Cut out the people in the photos and place them in the windows of the school bus or outside of the bus waving in.
By Erica Loop
Erica Loop has an MS in Applied Developmental Psychology from the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education. She has many years of teaching experience working in early childhood education, and as an arts educator at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.
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