Homeschool Theater

Creating a collage can be an excellent tool for a homeschool preschooler who needs to work on tearing or cutting skills. It creates focused attention and builds motor skills. It can be used for sorting and classifying if your child has to choose only, say, the square or green pieces out of an assortment. And for a hands-on learner, it’s just plain fun!

Your preschooler may enjoy the very tactile experience of creating a collage art piece . The homeschool materials you need are probably already in your home.

Give your child a background piece, which could be cardboard, thin plywood, a paper plate, canvas, or anything that can support objects glued to it.

A gluestick can be used if all the items are paper. Craft glue is best for thicker objects or fabric.

The materials can be paper, such as tissue, old magazines, ads, junk mail, expired coupons, napkins, candy wrappers, wrapping or scrapbook paper, you name it. Fabric bits, ribbon, buttons, beads, sequins, feathers, stickers, yarn, string, game pieces, tiny toys, etc.

A collage project can relate to anything your child is currently learning about:

–If your little one is learning colors, say, purple, go on a hunt through the house with your child in search of purple bits, and choose the ones that can be adhered to the board.

–Studying birds? How about feathers, nest-building pieces such as string or grass, seeds.

–Plants- leaves, flower petals, seed packets.

–Food groups- food wrappers, ads, dried corn, beans or rice.

–Textures- sandpaper, watercolor paper, foil, wax paper, tulle, burlap, fleece.

–For shapes, you can provide your child a variety of sizes of the shapes you have cut from different papers, or let an older preschooler cut them himself.

Magazines can provide a wealth of images for nearly any study topic.

Provide enough materials for your youngster to choose from to create her art piece, but not too many or she may be overwhelmed (and the clean-up will be too big!).

A collage work, whether to conclude a study topic or for the value and fun of creating, will lead your preschooler through exploring the process of art. And you get a wonderful art piece to boot!

******
Michelle B. is a homeschooling mother who’s been at this homeschool curriculum for 20 years.

Five Minute Tales: More Stories to Read and Tell When Time is Short. By Margaret Read MacDonald

Every storyteller, whether a paid professional or someone who uses story as an addition to their primary job or activities, needs to have quick stories to tell in any situation. On the heels of her “Three Minute Tales” book, Margaret has gathered even more quick-to-tell stories from all over the world.

The stories are divided into nine loose categories such as “Origin Tales,” “Lessons to Be Learned,” and “Riddle Tales.” One of the most useful categories is “Tiny Tales” with stories that can be told in under a minute. Storytellers must always be ready to demonstrate their art form to others and these quick tales are great fillers to have in your repertoire.


Dr. MacDonald is one of the leaders in the classification and understanding of world tales, so one of her expanded comments regarding the type and origin of the story follows each tale. This provides excellent material for research for storytelling for teachers or storytelling in the education.

Margaret has written a number of “must have” books for the potential libraries of storytellers, public speakers and teachers of all types of groups. “Five Minute Tales,” too, will be a book you use often to fill in that “just right” space in your programs and presentations. -Storyteller.net Reviews