Today was our first day of our summer art camp.Just like “we begin with A, B C….we’ll start off with some alphabet art.
Every summer we do some sort of art book at the end of the summer showcasing the art the children have done the whole summer. One summer we did a lot of scrapbooking for kids  and another summer we  did a different kind of art books.
This summer we are going to be concentrating on  the art in  children’s books. Basically reading the books and using the techniques that the  illustrators of the books used as much as we can.
We started today by making the covers for the books. The activity was to collage their first initial. I realized that this activity really falls under the banner of alphabet art. Even though our goal was not to teach the kids their abc’s through some kind of abc art, it can definitely be used like that.
We prepared the first initial of each child in a  large block letter on a white tag board. They were then instructed to fill the entire letter with snippets of paper, ribbon, sequins and whatever else we found to give them to collage with.
The only rule I had for this activity was that they could not paste out of the lines. Now this may be reminiscent of those adults that admonish kids not to color out of the lines (which turns my stomach) but, it really is not like that.
As you may have heard me say before I like kids to think when they do art.
They really do have to think in an activity like this. There are large papers, odd shaped papers ribbon and they have to figure out how to fit the papers into that space and how to keep them from spilling out over the sides. By telling them to keep their art work inside the lines, this  gives them guidelines and a challenge that keeps them thinking.
Some children like the one doing the M work very methodically and carefully.
An E is a pretty easy one to keep in the lines.
As well as a Z.
Here is a completed E
And a completed T. (The child that did the T is actually a child in a special ed class and if you can see there is spilling out over the lines since she had a hard time keeping them in.)
The C is also a hard one to do since there would have to be lots of cutting to fit the materials into the curves. The child that did this C happens to be a bit immature and I would be curious to see how the child that did the M would handle a C.
I guess if you would be giving all of the children many more letters to do than only their first initial, you would be able to see.
If you are doing this alphabet art in a preschool or kindergarten classroom or at home with child that age, you may want to surround them with more ABC paraphernalia to familiarize them with the letters.
There are so many ways to do this. There are Alphabet Peg Puzzle
Do you teach your children the ABC’s? And if you do, what are your best methods for getting them to really remember their alphabet?
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I like that you want the children to think.
I would assume its a good goal? no?