This is a project I’ve been trying to get to for a while. I had started it with our group of kids that we have in the summer for art camp but, never finished it. When my daughter had a baby and I went to help her, I went with a bag full of art projects (I looked like Mary Poppins with my big bag). It was with her bigger children that I finally got to do this project.

I don’t remember where I saw it but, its a lot of fun. You need to rip out faces from magazines and then cut out the face parts to use for face collages. Make sure you get large faces because smaller faces are much harder to cut and manipulate for small fingers.

 After you have the magazine papers ripped out, the children  have to cut out the face parts. Eyes, mouths, noses and of course, some of them will want to do ears. Above are the plates we used with my grandchildren to separate the parts.

When I began this project with a larger group of children, I used bowls and made a drawing at the bottom of the bowl so they could see where to put the various body parts.

I had a large number of face parts already collected from the ones the kids from camp cut out but, of course, I couldn’t find them when I went to my grandchildren so we started anew.

 Below is some of the stuff I gave them to add to their face collages. It’s not so organized looking and I would give more stuff next time but, the yarn and ribbon seems to suggest hair and you should look for items that suggest certain parts you want them to add. You can always  suggest a few different ideas without telling them what to do. If you tell them only one thing to do then they have no choice. If you tell them 4 or 5 then they have choice and they can build on your ideas.

My grandson who is almost 6 didn’t have that much patience to work on it and finished pretty quickly.

My granddaughter on the other hand who is 41/2 spent more time embellishing

 and filling in extra stuff.

The reason this is such a great activity is also because there are a few parts to it and it takes up a long time. I always love activities that help the kids be more engrossed and keeps them working. They rip out pictures (or you do that), cut out, divide the parts and make a face.