Materials
Variety of books by Eric Carle
paint
variety of art materials to make textures
assorted brushes, such as kitchen, bottle, large, small, roller, scrubber, and so on
recyclable material, such as bubble wrap or other packing material, corrugated cardboard, egg cartons (cut into small sections)
flowers (real or artificial)
sponges, koosh ball, plastic fork or spoon, and so on
paper
diecut machine, optional
Instructions
1. Start by reading a variety of books by Eric Carle.
2. After reading the books, look back over the pages and point out how Eric
Carle uses collage art with many different textures.
3. Talk about texture and experiment with it in your Art Station before getting
started.
4. Let the children pick a theme for your tribute to Eric Carle.
5. Put out art materials and paint in various colors. If possible, try to have each
child pick a different item to paint with so you have many different textures.
6. Ask each child to paint an entire page with texture. Show them how they can
stamp with the item to get the best prints, but let them experiment. When
they have covered the entire page, let the paintings dry completely.
7. Take all the sheets to the die-cut machine (if available) and die cut each page
with something that relates to the chosen theme. For example, if the theme is
Zoo Animals, die cut all kinds of zoo animals.
8. Make sure to put the child's name on each texture page and on one shape
and set it aside (you will be able to get many shapes from each page) so each
child will have at least one textured shape on the completed project.
9. After all the pages have been die cut, let the children pick from the selection
of shapes and glue them onto a blank piece of paper. Then encourage them
to add scenes to the paper such as cages for the zoo animals.
10. If you do not have access to a die-cut machine, help the children cut out or
tear the sheets into different shapes. This is more true to Mr. Carle's technique.
