Window Collage

Here's a confession. We wanted to make a sun catcher but gosh, I bought the wrong contact paper! Turns out that this matte contact paper blocks out most of the light and we don't get the beautiful colours on the floor when the afternoon sun shines through our balcony window. What a blooper. Still, I must give this awesome activity a fanciful name like window collage art so that we can all forget about the sun catcher. We have been doing lots of pasting and sticking at home these days and just changing things up a little gets Xue excited about the activity every time. Give children different materials like paper, cardboard, tissue paper, feathers, cellophane paper etc to work with, or use a different medium like stick glue, white glue, glue dots, double side tape etc or simply changing the environment like on the balcony window, on the floor or working outdoors etc.

Here's how we carried out the activity. I first attached the contact paper, sticky side facing out on the balcony window, by carefully peeling off the backing of the edges of the contact paper and then use a sticky tape to tape the paper down on the window. Then I remove the rest of the backing. I cut out random shapes of cellophane paper and coloured tissue papers the night before. If your kid is older, I think he/she can do this cutting step together. Once we are all done, I pasted another sheet of contact paper (approximately the same size) onto each collage, this time sticky side facing inwards and sealed off the edges with washi tapes.

Look at how delighted Xue is checking out the cellophane paper and sticking them on the balcony window. Verdict: Xue loved this activity and I might just go look for the right contact paper and make a real sun catcher the next time round.