Week 24 & 25: Eric Carle Butterflies

It feels like its been a while since I posted, and that's because we did a 2-week project that was inspired by Eric Carle, the famous children's book author/illustrator of many beooks including the "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"




Week 1 involved making the paper to collage the next week. Carle used colored tissue paper to paint, but I had the kids work with large sheets of white construction paper.  They were given just the primary colors and told to mix and play with it on the paper and not in their pallete.  They also had toothbrushes for stippling and spatterings and forks for scraping. No rules, except that if they wanted more than one color to collage they needed to be mindful of making areas of distinct color combos and not overmixing to mud.  They achieved some very rich layered looks!

Week 2,  I gave each student their dried paper back and showed them samples of Carle's work again and then some simple digrams of how to make butterflies, bees and dragonflies from mostly just circles.



Some kids made big bold insects and many made flowers, while some made tiny little insects that seems to be swallowed by the page.  Most had little trouble figuring out what to do.



This turned out to be one of the best projects of the year. The color play with paint during the first step was very abstract and sensual, while they had to do some planning for their collage in step two. During the collage faze, they had to work with abstract shapes to make specific objects and also plan color, shape and size.  The end results are amazingly professional looking and really adhere to the spirit of Eric Carle. Good job kids!