As we kick off a new school year, we’re excited to have new friends and lots of fun learning ahead of us! A favorite beginning of year activity is to share “All About Me.” This kind of activity allows children to express just what makes them unique and learn more about their classmates’ families, interests, and individual qualities.
This year, we’re involving our families with a little bit of help from home. This all about me self-portrait collage is a great way to connect the classroom to home with some pictures of family members, pets, and favorite things. Try the activity after reading some of our favorite All About Me Books.
All About Me Self-Portrait Collage
FIND ALL OF OUR ALL ABOUT ME ACTIVITIES IN OUR PRINTABLE LESSON PLANS
FOR HOME PRESCHOOL AND PRESCHOOL CLASSROOMS.
Materials
- Construction paper or cardstock-You’ll need a variety of colors so kids can choose their favorite color for their shirt, and we recommend grabbing a set of multicultural construction paper to use for the arms.
- Small paper plates
- Yarn in assorted hair colors
- Crayons-Grab some multicultural crayons for the faces.
- Glue
- Stapler
- Personal photos or cut outs from magazines
- Googly eyes (optional)
- Hand held mirror (optional)
Getting Started
To prepare for this all about me self-portrait collage, you will need to plan for a couple of days in small groups and possibly with some in classroom assistance. First, create a template for the shirt. We used a standard sized piece of colored construction paper and simply cut a triangle for the neck line. Each student got to choose their favorite color to represent their t-shirt.
You will also need to pre-cut long rectangles to represent the arms. We cut two inch strips ahead of time.
In small groups, trace student’s hands. To save time, we traced the one hand print and reused it by flipping it over.
Follow up by taking some time to ask children questions about themselves. For example, What color is your hair, eyes, etc.? For younger children you may ask them to name how many eyes, hands, or fingers they have. We took the opportunity to look closely at our unique features by using a hand-held mirror.
Creating Your All About Me Self-Portrait Collage
Once students have had the chance to examine their physical features, they may get started with decorating their paper plate face. Using crayons, they can add their eyes, eyelashes, nose, and mouth.
You may enlist some help, or allow older students to glue the arms to the back of the shirt. We adjusted ours so the color would show through the t-shirt neck line.
Remind students to think of their eye color they saw when using the hand held mirrors and encourage them to use the correct color crayon to represent their eyes. Googly eyes can also be glued on. We found that stapling the paper plate face onto the collage provided a secure way to affix it to the t-shirt as opposed to glue.
One of the final steps in assembling your all about me collage, students will add yarn to represent their hair color. Depending on the age of the students you are working with, allow them to cut the length or do it ahead of time. We used about six pieces of yarn, all cut the same length.
As favorite photos or magazine pictures are returned, each student will then glue them on in class. Some of ours included family and pet photos, favorite foods, and even mythical creatures!
This all about me activity makes for a great display of what makes our classroom unique. They are hung proudly across our classroom for children to reference and continue to get to know their new classroom “family.” Remember to take a photo and add to each child’s end of year self-portrait journal. It will go great with the First Day self portrait drawing!
GET A FULL WEEK OF ALL ABOUT ME THEME LEARNING AND PLAY
Save time and get right to the playful learning with our printable lesson plan sets. Each set includes over 30 playful learning activities related to the theme, and we’ve provided different versions for home preschool families and classroom teachers so all activities are geared directly toward your needs.
Help preschoolers learn more about themselves and each other with this preschool All About Me lesson plan theme. Topics covered include body parts, facial features, family, and more.
Watch this short video to see just a few examples of the types of activities and printables included in this set:
This set includes active hands-on learning ideas and the following printables:
1) All About Me Emergent Reader
2) All About Me Number Cards
3) Body Part Sorting Cards
4) All About Me Shared Writing Template
5) Body Parts Activity Cube
6) Facial Features Activity Cube
7) Boy and Girl All About Me Roll and Color Game Boards
8) Boy and Girl Make a Face Activity Templates
GET YOUR LESSON PLANS
Home Preschool All About Me Theme Lesson Plans
Preschool Classroom All About Me Theme Lesson Plans
All of our products are also available on Teachers Pay Teachers if you prefer to shop there.
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