The Imagination Tree

Creative play and learning for kids

Foam and Felt Collage (for baby too!)

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To my great JOY I found out that Paperchase (a shop I could happily go on holiday for a week to!) has started selling cheap packs of crafty materials. Woop woop! They have always done various papers in glorious rainbow shades and sequins, ribbons and other stationary essentials, but I’ve only just discovered this new section and I’m liking what I see 🙂 I picked up bags of colourful plastic buttons for £1.50 and this huge assortment of sticky foam buttons for about £3. Yum.

 This is an easy, NO MESS activity (I know that will appeal to many!) that even a small baby can easily get involved with. I let the girls choose a piece of coloured felt each (yes, baby chose her own colour too!) and they started to create a collage by selecting the foam shapes and sticking them down.

For baby Pop I peeled the backings off and stuck the stickers all over her hands. This, by itself, was a fun sensory activity for her and she loved picking them off and feeling the stickiness between her hands. In fact, she spent quite a while each time she held one just staring at it and trying to work out what the strange sensation was!
She watched her big sister and wanted to stick her pieces down in the same way. She has really begun to copy her a lot now and I just love to sit and watch her doing it. 
Lots of her stickers were piled up on top of each other and tended to be closest to the edge where she was sitting.

 Big Sister meanwhile worked really hard to try and get the backings off by herself. Great (subtle) fine motor skill practise!

 And here are the mini-masterpieces!

 I absolutely LOVE how Cakie’s one seems to burst off the edges of the felt canvas! Energetic and vibrant art at its best. I’m thinking of maybe punching holes and threading ribbon through to hang these up (if I can find any wall space to place them!)

This activity is good for:
* creativity and imagination
* free expression and decision making
* independence
* exploring a range of textures and tactile experiences
* talking about shapes and colours
* developing fine motor skills

Linking this to!

Comments

  1. They look fab, have never thought of trying this but it’s perfect for when you dont really want to get out anything messy. lovely bright colours too.

    I havent been into a Paperchase in ages, I remember shopping there for new school stationery!! Off to go look at their online shop now xx

  3. I absolutely love sticker time in our house: a craft they can both join in despite being different ages and abilities. I love faom shapes too: an extra dimension. Those pictures are quite beautiful!

  4. Fun! I love how the collages turned out, so colorful. I sometimes bring these types of stickers to restaurants to occupy the kids.
    Thanks for the nice comment on my blog too.

  7. Wonderful! I’m sure you’ve been asked before, but I was wondering – how do you display/keep all of the girls’ artwork?

  8. That is such a fun little project! My kiddos love playing with stickers! Thanks for linking into It’s PLaytime!

  11. I can’t wait to get felt stickers and felt. All 3 kids I nanny will enjoy making a college or whatever they chose.

  12. After seeing this post quite some time back, I have done this activity a number of times with my little guy and he loves it. He definitely prefers sticking stickers onto felt over paper. I have linked back to this post in my latest one.

    Take care,
    Georgia