Parenting Picks: Collage with Carle

 Brown Bear

Fortunately we have a good collection of the works of Eric Carle, in addition to his most famous The Hungry Caterpillar.

I found a fabulous idea book at the library called Storybook Art http://www.brightring.com/storybook_art.html (now on my book list!) that connects fantastic children's lit with an accompanying activity.

'Brown Bear, Brown Bear' was given to us already previously loved by friends in Shanghai, so it is busting at the seams with all the attention it gets!

 

Splitting the Page

We decided to split our pages into four, so we could paint separate colours in each rectangle. 

I folded my page into quarters. O painted in her parameters.

Not that I encourage working inside the box, but occasionally, it's a good art tool that still permits creativity!

 

 Animals for Baby C

O decided on the four colours and corresponding animals we would work with.

I painted up some cards for Baby C, while O got to work on her own pieces, which included a lot of Chinese characters and some serious concentration!

 Hard at Play

You can expand this activity by actually creating a collage and cutting out shapes to form animals, as Eric Carle himself demonstrates. We simply painted a straight colour and added crayon and pencil crayon etchings afterwards, in addition to the strong outline of the animals.

You can also work on story-sequencing with these cards and use additional manipulative's for number recognition.

Baby C was content to point and make animal sounds!

EXPAND ON STORYBOOK ACTIVITIES

Literacy Connection. Combining your favourite stories with arts, crafts, science, math, geography etc is a great way to enhance literacy, both language and cultural. Pinterest is teeming with activities to combine with your well-loved stories or you can get creative by taking cues from the stories themselves.

Storybook Art Author. MaryAnn Kohl has a blog where you can find various activities linked to literacy http://maryannfkohl.typepad.com/blog/. She also has the option of signing up for her newsletter, so idea's rush right to your inbox!