Art and Literature Integration: Exploring the work of Eric Carle

This year my librarian at our elementary school and I are working hand in hand to put both art and literature together for our students. We are using sketchbooks that students take from my class to her class to take notes, complete activities, and to critique art and illustrations. It has been a huge success and the students are making amazing connections. We are only doing this with our upper level elementary students grades 4-6.

Right now I am finishing up my Eric Carle units with my K-2nd graders. They have made some really awesome stuff and collage and paper making has been a super success! Can you guess which famous Eric Carle books these artworks are inspired by?

 We use hole punchers to make the leaf appear as if the hungry caterpillar was very hungry! Kinder's and 1st grade students loved punching away the holes. It was a great added detail to tell a story.

 Students created their own papers for this lesson and they had to use a ruler to design their webs. We discussed octagons and put a little bit of math into this one!

 Kinder's loved making these stars! We looked at the illustrations and read the story Draw Me A Star. We discussed texture, tints, and shades and used that for our backgrounds. We used a cake icing scrapper to do the background, these are cheap and you can find these at the Christmas Tree Shop's or cheap in the baking isle :)

Mister Seahorse was done by 2nd graders and we used tissue paper, tempera paint and watercolor paints for the background. The papers used to make up the seahorse were created by 2nd graders before we started the collage. We discussed and watched videos of Eric Carle making his amazing textured papers.

I hope you can be inspired and enjoy these fun lessons. For more ideas visit my teachers-pay-teachers shop or my Pinterest boards! Happy Creating Artistic minds and Creative Souls!

Creative Wishes,
Ashley