Kindergarten Eric Carle Insects

 Eric Carle is one of my all time favorite children's authors. When I was in the classroom, I used his books all the time.

I have tried a variety of different art lessons using his books as inspiration, but have never been happy with the results- until this year.

I started this project off by showing my students how Eric Carle paints his tissue paper. This slide show was basic enough for my kindergarten students to understand the concept of what they were about to do.

I place 1 tray of tempera paint on each table (8 in all) and on each tray 2-3 textured rollers. I demonstrated how to carefully walk with my tissue paper from table to table (I even demonstrated what would happen to my paper if I ran, ripping a piece, so that they would see the end result).

We reviewed how Eric Carle had used 4 colors on his paper on the website, so they had to stick with 4 colors on theirs (this was a guideline I set out so that I didn't have to go around refilling all of my paint trays every 5 minutes. There were a few students who used all of the colors and got beautiful results

and no one was the wiser!)

I demonstrated how to put the roller into the paint and roll 1 time and then place it onto the tissue paper. Then they were able to move on to another color.

When they had finished filling their tissue paper with color, they brought them to me at the drying rack and went and washed up.

This was actually less crazy and chaotic and than I had originally thought it would be! They were so involved in what they were creating, that they didn't even think about what they could have been doing!

I then took all of the painted tissue paper and cut them into 4 pieces and divided them up between my 6 kindergarten classes.

 The next week, I had a copy of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which came with an audio CD of Eric Carle reading the story- they LOVED it!!! We then brainstormed all of the different insects that we could think of, as I drew them on the board.

For this part, let me clarify- I am NOT a big pattern person. I believe in letting students use their own creativity to create an end product. However, for this project, I really wanted them to create a large image.

I create tag board shaped for each table: 2 different circles, 2 different ovals, 2 different teardrops.

I showed them how to use these shapes to trace onto the tissue paper, cut them out and then glue them onto a piece of white paper to create an insect composition.

Even using the patterns, their pictures turned out so different!

I will definitely be keeping this lesson for next year!!

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