Eric Carle Inspired Art

We have a snow day today - yay!  So I'm posting a project I do at the beginning of the school year.  I use it with the Mixed-Up Chameleon, by Eric Carle - one of the first stories in our basal.  I show students video clips from Eric Carle's Official Site where he shows how he paints his own tissue paper and creates his pictures by making collages.

I don't use tissue paper with my students, because it would be a nightmare with 2nd graders!  I have them use tempera paint on regular copy paper.  I give them three cool colors and three warm colors and we paint as shown on Eric Carle's tutorial.

I then give my students a template of a chameleon (see below) that I section off into chunks to show them where to cut.  They cut up the chameleon into pieces and then lay them on the painted paper to trace and cut out.



Students then put the pieces they traced back together and glue onto a piece of construction paper.  This gives them a chameleon created in a similar manner to how Eric Carle creates his art work!



:-) Jenny