Eric Carle Inspired Flowers

Materials:

• Tempra Paint
• Thick Tissue Paper
• Paint Brush
• Variety of objects to paint with
• Scissors
• Glue
• Construction paper
• “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle

This week we are doing an author study on Eric Carle. We read “The Tiny Seed” by Eric Carle and talked about what we observe about the pictures in the book. We also took a look at other Eric Carle books and talked about the colors and shapes we see. After we talked about our own observations, we learned about the process Eric Carle uses to make his artwork.

Carle begins with plain white tissue paper and paints it with different colors. He uses many different tools to create prints and design onto the tissue paper. Then, he cuts the paper into his desired shapes and creates pictures by collaging the tissue paper together.

We were inspired by this method and used similar steps to create our own flower.

First, we painted our tissue paper with tempra paint. We used paint brushes, sponges, and duplo blocks to create designs and textures on the tissue paper. We had to be slow and gentle to make sure the tissue paper didn’t rip.

Once the paint was dry, we cut the tissue paper into squares. Some children needed help with this step. Before we began gluing, we drew a flower on to the white paper. This was done to help the kids see the shapes they needed to collage the tissue paper into.

Next was the fun part. The kids began to glue the tissue paper onto their flowers. Once it was covered, the teacher cut their flowers out and glued them onto a piece of different colored construction paper.