This Valentine’s Day, have your children create a collage in the style of Eric Carle!
A Valentine’s Day Caterpillar
This activity, inspired by Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar, is the perfect Valentine’s Day craft for young children.
How to Prepare Painted Tissue Papers:
- Squeeze paint (acrylic, water or poster paint) into a dish, add water and stir.
- Place a single sheet of tissue paper on a clean surface.
- Paint bold strokes onto the tissue paper. (Hint: Lift up tissue paper briefly, so it doesn’t stick to the surface.) Let it dry on newspapers while working on other tissue papers.
- Apply a second color. Perhaps in wavy blue brush strokes. Again, lift tissue paper and let it dry on newspapers.
- Apply a third color. Yellow dots might look nice.
- Apply a fourth color. Perhaps black painted onto a piece of carpet which can be used to make textured prints on top of the red, blue, and yellow design.
How to Make an Eric Carle Collage:
- Draw a caterpillar (or any creature you like) onto tracing paper or other transparent paper. Valentine’s Day Twist: Have your children try to draw a caterpillar made with hearts.
- Place the drawing on top of a red tissue paper and with kid-safe scissors cut through both tracing and tissue papers. Be careful!
- Cut out each section at a time: First the face, then each segment of the caterpillar.
- Turn the face over and apply a thin layer of glue or wallpaper paste.
- Paste it onto a white illustration board or similar material.
- Cut out the first green segment of the caterpillar’s body.
- Place the tracing paper, with head and body segment removed, as a guide for pasting down the green segment.
- Repeat steps 6 & 8, selecting different shades of green for each segment until the body is finished.
- Carefully cut out the eyes: Moisten the area around the eyes; wait a second, lift and remove the eyes.
- Cut out yellow, green, and brown parts for eyes, nose, and feet, and glue them into their places.
- Use crayons or colored pencils for the final touch.
Hi, Everyone. You know that I am a “process art” person, and why this particular craft fits process art is that, first, every caterpillar can be different. But more important, the children do not have to make caterpillars! They can make any animals, person, alien,fish, or abstract design they choose. The caterpillar is one idea. Encourage the children to think up what else they might enjoy creating with pre-painted hearts and shapes. Eric Carle’s technique of pre-painting paper and letting it dry, and then cutting it for collage is the main part of this activity. the caterpillar is but one possible outcome. Enjoy unique imagination and creative art; encourage a process art approach to Eric Carle’s technique.
What a fun and interesting idea. I want to try this with my preschool class.
If you don’t have time to paint the paper the day before, you can use wrapping paper scraps instead, or other printed paper, even newsprint. Makes very fancy heart art!