Colorful Collages of the World’s Natural Wonders

Venezuela’s Angel Falls, the world’s highest uninterrupted waterfall.

My daughters and I spent a quiet Saturday morning making these lovely landscape collages of several wonders of the world. Using a computer (to view the images), paper, glue, and some magazines we created our colorful masterpieces.Landscape collages are nothing new, in fact if you google them (see here) you will find literally millions of examples. We tried to give our art project a global twist by learning about and then choosing our favorite “natural wonder,” and then transforming it into art.

A creative commons image of Salto del Ángel, Canaima, Venezuela, by user Poco a Poco.

My oldest daughter was first, and wanted to choose a waterfall. We looked at google images of “beautiful waterfalls” and she choose this one, because it looked so tall. In fact, it is the world’s highest and longest uninterrupted waterfall at 2,640 feet (807 meters). It wasn’t discovered until the 1930′s, when a pilot named James Angel (hence the name “Angel Falls” flew over it and consequently landed on it, getting his airplane stuck in the marshy conditions. He and his wife walked for 12 days in the jungle before they reached help!

After looking at many pictures, Vivi chose her favorite and sketched just the outline onto her paper. She marked which colors she would need to create her collage:

Next, we ripped out pages from our wonderful National Geographic magazines, and sorted the colors into piles on the table. This project was quite long and if my sons had been here I would have broken it up into 2 days. My daughters, however, were happy to listen to Sound of Music soundtrack (over and over) and spend hours in art-mode.

Maya decided she wanted a mountain, and found a picture of Mt. Kilimanjaro. She is truly connected to me- it has always been my dream to hike to the top of this majestic mountain… but I think the real reason she chose the mountain was because there was a picture of giraffes in front of the mountain! Mt. Kilimanjaro is the highest peak on the African continent, standing at an elevation of 5,895 meters (19,336 feet). What makes it so impressive is that it is the tallest free-standing mountain in the world, isolated from other mountains, and surrounded by flat plains in northeastern Tanzania bordering Kenya.

Once we had collected piles of torn magazine “colors,” we began to glue. It was easiest to work on one color at a time, filling in each section.

Here’s their final products! They were so proud, and couldn’t believe that they had turned out so well. Vivi kept saying “Maya, yours looks like a bigger girl did it!” (Maya is 4!!!!) Ripping and gluing are great fine motor skills, and learning a little about our Earth’s precious landscapes only enhances an already fun project.

We also did a collaborative “Ayers Rock” landscape collage. Since we had just studied Australia, and this particular landscape is clean-cut and easier to sketch, we worked on it together. Ayers Rock, also known as Uluru (/uːluːˈruː/) is a very large and isolated sandstone rock formation in central Australia. We wanted to capture the distinctive reddish- orangish color in the afternoon sun that makes this one of Australia’s most famous landmarks. Aborigines have lived in the area for at least 10,000 years, and still live at the base of Uluru, which they consider to be mystical and sacred.
If you make a landscape collage, have your kids do a little research first on a favorite landform, or famous “Wonder of the World.” If they are part of a class, they could present 5 facts about their chosen place and teach the class what they’ve learned. Also, please send us a picture at kidworldcitizen (at) gmail (dot) com and we will post it on our gallery page!