IMPACT OF COLLAGE MAKING UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVE SKILLS OF CHILDREN AT THE AGE OF 7-8

Abstract

The focus of the paper is on the collage, which as a creative mix of various forms and structures, finds broad application in modern art, especially when it comes to fields such as fine and applied arts, advertising, modern design etc. The origin of the word comes from French, coler (glue), which is also the way it has been translated in Bulgarian.Collage is normally an authentic piece of art which combines different materials glued together, for instance paper, press-cuts from newspapers and/or magazines, photos, cloth, sometimes even wood, etc. The collage not only offers a new piece of art, it also shows its author’s attitude to reality, being its specific reflection. Therefore, nowadays more and more artists, writing for children and not only, would turn to collage as a form of art.This gives us a strong ground to write about the collage and try to analyze its influence on children’s artistic skills. The paper focuses on that issue, using our in-depth research work with children at the age of 7-8, who were asked by using collage to do illustrations of a book they were not familiar with, namely Barba Family by Annette Tison and Talus Taylor.The main goal of the research has been to analyze, test and offer a comparative perspective of the way collage techniques implicate the development of creative skills of children at the above-mentioned age. The methods used include observation, comparative analysis and experimental work. The results obtained have given us a strong ground to formulate various conclusions and offer recommendations in regard to the improvement of the creative artistic skills of the children included in the researched target group. Our experiments with children using collage techniques undoubtedly show the positive effects of collage on children’s creativity, as well as on their overall attitude toward both art and reality. Our research has also shown that usage of collage techniques affects positively teachers’ work, and especially that of preschool and primary teachers in arts.