Reflecting with a Collage Project after studying the scripture and watching an inspiring music video

You Will Be Found from the Dear Evan Hansen musical is beautiful and this video is an inspiring version of it with the kids from the One Voice Children's Choir. https://youtu.be/P7VLUI1Kdnk

The lyrics, music, and images in this video are definitely kid-friendly, but it deals with the very serious subject that most young people face --feeling alone, outcast, lost, abandoned --at some point in their life, including now.

After some Parable of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin parable study, watch the video and then have students make a "WHERE AM I IN MY DRAWING?"  --a drawing, or collage, or painting project briefly described below.  (Where am I in my life? Am I lost? Wandering? In need of...?)

Life can be overwhelming and confusing to children as well as the rest of us, especially these days. Schedules, commitments, health and family issues and problems can crowd out what we want to do, what we enjoy, and even who we really are or want to become. Expectations, bad characters, and other people's demands can threaten to cover us up and keep us from be the best version of ourselves --the person God created us to be. We can feel "lost" living a life we do not enjoy, leading a life of sin, finding ourselves with the wrong crowd, struggling with pain, divorce, or separation. Most kids will initially think of "lost" in terms of being lost in a "place" like a grocery story, but help them understand that "lost" can be a condition of the soul, a feeling about one's life, a loss of safety or happiness, a loss of purpose or value.

Collaging with magazine and newspapers allows students to express themselves and produce a shareable piece of art about themselves. It can share a message about themselves and Jesus.

Collaging takes time and can be quite introspective. Its a great art medium to converse with kids AS they are creating --asking them what it means to them, and helping them express certain important ideas through their choices of images and their arrangement.

Collage Ideas for "You Will Be Found"

Draw yourself, or compose your "real" self using images cut from magazines, then impose a bunch of other images, expectations, roles, demands, and morals over the top of YOU --so that you're like "Where's Waldo" in your own collage. (Alternately, you can paint yourself on the page and then overlay it with images of the things that make you feel lost or alone. or confused, or angry, or sad.)

if you're gluing images over the top of YOU, don't glue the part of the collaged pieces that go directly over your image. Instead, make it so you can pull back the edges of those "other" images to create a collage that has YOU breaking through to be YOU, ...you not being lost, you being found.

If you are painting these images, paint them on a separate sheet of paper and lay them over the first sheet that has your painted image of YOU on it. Then tear or make flaps so that the second sheet of "problems, expectations, things that people get lost in" can be peeled back a bit to again --make it appear as if you are breaking through all the other messages.  Lastly, to your image/pictures add the power of God helping you break through. Add what helps you do that.... a Bible, a cross, a prayer, a line from the Lost Sheep such as, "When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices."   You could also add a few "lost and found coins" to the collage (any image cut in the shape of a circle).

You can also use collage techniques to create your own "Where's LOST SHEEP" Word Search (of sorts) in the collage of letters you've torn and pasted from magazines and newspapers. The point of this is it creates an interactive piece of scripture art that can be shared and explained.

Play the music video in the background a few times during the creative process. Add other music videos such as "Reckless Love of God" by Cory Asbury.

Have you found the words "Lost" and "Sheep" on the diagonals yet?