Eric Carle Prep

I have been itching to get into my second graders class room. He doesn’t tell me much and I want to see what’s going on. I know that I have to let go. There is a reason that there are less and less opportunities to help.  I wanted to try one last way the  – I’m a former art teacher trick!! And it worked!! So I am going in to help the teacher complete their insect unit by showing the kids how to make insects-a-la-Eric Carle. I only have an hour with the second graders. My kids and I have been doing some prep work.

We are making what my book binding teacher called Paste Paper. Google image Paste Paper – there are some beautiful examples. For book binding purposes it is usually used for the cover of the book. To make paste paper start  by mixing acrylic paint and gloss medium and then painting it on to a large piece of paper. With various tools you can make all sorts of textures and patterns. Eric Carle did the same type of thing. He then cut up the paper and used the small pieces to collage together insects, animals, people, among other things in his wonderful books.

We skipped the gloss medium step, just using acrylic paint and tools I cut out of cardboard. We also used smaller paper so we could make lots of color  variety and knowing they would be cut up anyway.

Everyone participated. The three year old was excited to use the forbidden acrylic paints and it was perfect to work on identifying colors. The other two just had fun with mixing colors and trying textures. The best was letting one color dry and putting another over it and then scraping it off to see what was reviled.

The class was a success too here are some of the final insects.