Our Eric Carle inspired under the sea collages with 2nd grade last year, were such a success, I decided to take them a step further.

Eric Carle creates his collages using tissue paper he has painted and printed to create interesting patterns and textures. This was a two-part lesson. In the first lesson we created the tissue paper designs and in the following lesson made Eric Carle inspired collages.

Lesson 1

Materials

• Tissue paper
• Acrylic paint
• Paintbrushes
• Objects to print with – pine cones, corks, q-tips, toy cars, plastic duck feet, textured balls, sponges, bubble wrap.

I showed the children a slide show from the Eric Carle website showing how Eric Carle paints his tissue paper.

We looked at examples of the different patterns and textures Eric Carle uses in his books.  I showed them how to create different patterns and textures on tissue paper by using different brush strokes and printing with a variety of materials.

The children created their own. Some children were a little confused and painted pictures onto the tissue paper. Perhaps this would have been avoided if I didn’t provide paintbrushes.

Each child created at least one patterned sheet.

Lesson 2

Materials

• Painted tissue paper
• Plain tissue paper
• Glue sticks
• Drawing paper
• A pencil
• Scissors

I showed the children a slideshow of Eric Carle creating a collage of the hungry caterpillar.

Each child had a piece of plain paper. They were asked to draw a simple outline drawing big enough to fill the page. I drew some examples – a butterfly, a caterpillar and a mountain scene and an example of a picture that wouldn’t work with lots of small things and details.

The children drew their picture and used their printed tissue to fill in the picture like Eric Carle. We added plain coloured tissue paper and tissue paper squares and circles.  To finish the children drew in details with marker.

This was a wonderfully calm and focused lesson. The children really found the collage work therapeutic.

The finished products

In a play based setting I would spend a week focusing on only creating the tissue paper. The tissue paper designs would be  used the following week to explore collage and would remain as  a permanent resource to explore the techniques further.  I would  read lots of  Eric Carle books  and display examples of his pictures around the setting.

If you want to have a whole project about Eric Carle you might be interested in some of the other things we have tried.

• 10 Hungry Caterpillar inspired activities
• Juice recipes inspired by The Hungry Caterpillar