Abstraction is, in effect, a simplification and reduction of shapes with an absence of detail designed to comprise the essence of the more naturalistic images being depicted. Without even intending to, young children consistently create interesting, and sometimes beautiful, abstract compositions. A child's creations, moreover, will always seem to capture the "essence" of the image, be it the emotion or a striking physical characteristic of a person, or the mood of the scene depicted. Details, except for those that are the most significant to the child, seem to be ignored. It is this innate developmental detail-filtering system that sparked the idea for the author's lesson on creating abstract collages based on photos of animals which she describes in this article.