K & 1 Eric Carle Inspired Ocean Collages (2015)

While 2nd grade was learning about Wyland and his artwork was up in my room, I took advantage of it and created these collages with my Kindergarteners and First Graders. The octopus was my own idea and the seahorse idea came from here via Pinterest.

I Can Statements: I Can talk about what happens when paint mixes. I Can create painted paper. I Can look at artwork to learn about the Ocean. I Can create an Octopus/Seahorse in the ocean from painted paper.

Day 1: Eric Carle Illustrations, and Painted Paper

To kick off the project we "read" via watching on Youtube Mister Seahorse by Eric Carle. I don't always do books this way but I couldn't get it from the library in time and this was a really nice version.

*

*This book is all about sea dads and it's hilarious to see K and 1st's confusion about the dad being the "pregnant" one. It is against everything they've ever known, but a great science connection!

Then we looked at a variety of Eric Carle books and talked about how he makes his artwork. I'm thinking next year to make this more in depth and have them actually sit around the books and really look and explore, maybe even find clips of Carle working to show them.

Then we spent the rest of class making really large pieces of painted paper. 18x24 white pieces of paper were used and each day in the rotation a different color paper was created. We made Yellow, Orangish, Purple, and Green using tempera paint pre-mixed into different shades and tints. We used big stiff brushes, paint scrapers, and my personal favorite Roylco Funny Floppy Foam brushes. When dry, I cut each piece into 9x12 pieces.

Day 2: Creating Sea Creature.

Kindergarten created Octopi (is that right?) this day and I had them do it by drawing the legs and body separate to ease in cutting. They traced a circle lid for the body and drew worms for the legs. Then they glued it together on a 12x18 white paper. 

First grade was a little different this day. They created their seahorse with me through a draw along and then spent time cutting the seahorse, seaweed, and coral. They did not do any gluing and I gave them a large envelope to keep all their pieces in with their seahorse.

 

Day 3: Cutting, gluing, and painting.

Both groups spent time cutting and gluing seaweed and other creatures. When they finished I had two stations set up for painting water and bubbles. Water was one station, bubbles was at another. Water was regular watercolors and bubbles were glitter tempera paint stamped with a marker cap. When they did their bubbles, I was there to glue on googley eyes with tacky glue.

Day 4: Finishing up!

Quite a few kiddos at both levels needed more time so the last day was spent on finishing up and drawing underwater artwork on big 18x24 paper that they could take with that day. THEY LOVED IT.