COLLAGES
Creating collages with your children gives them practicle experience in small motor skills associated with manipulating the pages of magazines and catalogs (also offers you a way to recycle all those junk mail catalogs you get during the year...especially at Christmas time) and using scissors, squeezing glue bottles.  It's an art activity and can be modified to any theme your using, or have no theme at all just let the kids select pictures they like, cut them from the pages of the magazines and glue them to large pieces of construction paper.  This is also a language activity if you are actively talking with the kids while they select pictures to use in their collages.
Make a junk collage, from paper and fabric scraps, styrofoam packing material, card board tubes from toilet paper and paper towels, coffee filters new or used (adds the sense of smell and some color to the art work), glitter, dots, stickers, anything you've got place it all on the table in piles of like elements and let the kids decide what should be used in their works of art.  These junk collages make for great displays in your classroom and allow children to really use their own creativity rather than making them follow premade specific art activities which require them to follow someone elses idea of the finished product.
Collages aren't easy time filler art activities they are great opportunities to practice small motor skills and use individual creativity.
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