It’s Snowing! Contact Paper Collage

Are you looking for a fun and meaningful snowy day activity for your preschool child or student?

Make a Contact Paper Snow Scene Collage and help your child:

• Develop fine motor skills
• Practice cutting paper
• Make choices about composition
• Understand how transparency can effect a piece of art
• Play with the sticky and rewarding qualities of contact paper

This 2-D activity is fantastic for children of all ages, and it doesn’t require any drawing at all. You’ll see how we did this two different ways, making it suitable for children with various drawing abilities and fine motor skills.

{Bonus: Nine more contact paper project ideas at the end of this post!}

This post may contain affiliate links.

Materials

1. Contact Paper
2. Scissors. Fiskars are my absolute favorite for kids. They come in blunt and pointy.
3. Colorful Construction Paper. Pacon makes a beautiful fade- resistant paper.
4. Glue Stick. Elmer’s dry-clear purple glue sticks are amazing because children can see where the glue goes.
5. Markers. Crayola are washable, the colors are rich, and they last. High quality, great value.

To begin, I cut a sheet of contact paper (approximately 12″ x 12″) from a roll, peeled the backing off, and placed it sticky-side up on the table. My daughter cut shapes from the paper and stuck them to the contact paper in whatever way she wanted. Then we attached it to a window, using a long strip of contact paper to seal it in place.

Read on for more images and suggestions for a successful collage session…

Pretty! While working on this project, N talked about making people, which led to a second project that eventually turned into a winter snow scene.

Again, I set up her work space with a sheet of contact paper, sticky-side-up. We both cut shapes from the paper, and N put them in position where she thought they looked right. The nice thing about contact paper is that it’s tacky, but not super sticky, and pieces can be easily repositioned. We did a lot of that!

I cut a variety of geometric shapes (circles, rectangles, and triangles) and a bunch of organic shapes for her to choose from. She also placed requests: In the process of making this person, she asked for long, skinny pieces for the arms and legs. I liked that because it showed that she had ideas and could direct the outcome of her image.

She chose to stick most of the pieces directly to the contact paper, and others were glued in layers on top of other pieces.

Every now and then she’d lift the whole thing to see how it looked with light streaming through it.

She started making a pattern of small circles on the top of the paper, and then decided it should be a snow storm. I got busy cutting circles, circles, and more circles until she deemed that there was enough snow! The big white pieces on the right side are part of a snow bank. Ha! She knows a lot about snow for a California kid!

And we hung it in our sunny, warm, snow-free window when we were done.

Having a roll of contact paper in our art cabinet is a life-saver. In case you’re looking for a reason to buy your very own roll, here are nine more ideas:

1. Contact Paper Sun Catcher: TinkerLab
2. Sticky Autumn Collage: TinkerLab
3. Flower Mandala: The Artful Parent
4. Flower Art Box: The Artful Parent
5. Fall Leaf Garland: The Chocolate Muffin Tree
6. So Easy Kaleidoscope: The Chocolate Muffin Tree
7. Rose Window: The Chocolate Muffin Tree
8. Mess-Free Chanukah Pictures: Creative Jewish Mom