Shape Collage

Activity Overview

Geometry is fundamental to our lives. Understanding unique qualities of individual shapes helps to provide context for how things are designed and engineered to work well for us. Exploring how shapes fit together to create larger objects helps to ground an understanding of not only the concepts of part and whole, but also how the individual aspects of any object are designed separately, as well as together. These ideas also help to reinforce our spatial understanding of our environment and how things function in nature.

What You Need

• Several copies of the shapes printed from the Shape Collage document

• Scissors

• Colored pencils, crayons, or markers

• Glue stick

• Large heavy paper (construction paper or similar)

• Optional: pattern blocks

Steps

1. Print copies of the Shapes Collage organizer and cut out the shapes. Color them in ahead of time or print them directly onto colored paper (note: traditional pattern blocks used in classrooms follow this convention: triangle = green, diamond = white, rhombus = blue, square = orange, trapezoid = red, hexagon = yellow)

2. Review the shapes and spend some time moving them around to see what other forms could be created. Start with one or two shapes at first, and extend to using more shapes only when your student has mastered the previously introduced shapes.

3. Use the shapes to create a scene or an image of your choosing. Glue them down once you have organized them the way you want.

4. Prompt your student with guiding questions to engage in inquiry-based discussion. Use this as an opportunity to analyze the application of shapes as you explore the creation of the collage.

Guiding Questions

• What is a shape? (If your student answers with an example (circle, square, triangle), prompt them to elaborate on a definition (an object or form with an outline and closed sides).

• What shapes do you already know? How would you describe them? Can you draw them in the air with your finger?

• Do you have a favorite shape? Why?

• What shapes are shown here? How do you know?

• Are there ways that you can combine the shapes to make other shapes?

• How can you combine the shapes to represent objects?

• How can you combine these shapes to make an image?

Extensions

• Build on the collage over the course of many sessions to create more detailed aspects of a larger format piece of art (make a flower the first day, a bird the next, a tree the next)

• Try making another collage using only one shape. What shape did you choose? Why? How did it change the way you designed your image?