Kindergarten Butterflies inspired by Eric Carle's Collages

Kindergartners are quite familiar with Eric Carle's book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."  It is a favorite moment in this story when the caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly.  Inspired by this transformation and the colorful collage art in Carle's books, Kindergarten artists used tissue paper collage to create their own beautiful butterflies.  These pieces will be used for our Original Works PTO fundraiser.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle (360p) from Nasim Bobat on Vimeo.

My visit to the Eric Carle Museum of Children's Book Art

Over the long weekend, I went to check out the Eric Carle Museum of Children's Book Art on the Hampshire College campus.  I've wanted to visit this special place for a long time, so I was very excited to finally make it there.

In addition to having displays showing Eric Carle's work, the museum also featured another favorite artist, Mo Willems, of "Knufflebunny" and "Don't let the Pigeon Drive the Bus" fame.  

The entry hall of the museum is decorated with his painted murals by Eric Carle. 

Kids love to explore the giant Very Hungry Caterpillar.  That's my niece, Samantha, on the left.

The art studio is filled with materials and project to inspire young artists.  The sun was perfect during our visit to show off these beautiful texture pieces. 

Art inspired by The Very Hungry Caterpillar 

Mark and Willis get CREATIVE! 

Great advice and inspiration for all artists

Colorful artwork everywhere! 

Eric Carle Animals

First and second graders went to see a performance inspired by Eric Carle at the Flynn Theater in Burlington. We read several Eric Carle books in preparation for this project. Artists painted paper and used it to collage and animal of their choice.

Kindergarten Spiderwebs

Kindergarten Artists read "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle.  Then we made spiderwebs using white glue.  When the glue dries, we will color the webs with chalk pastels.

Here are the Kindergartners drawing their webs with the glue.  (Yes, it was messy!)

We also made Very Busy Spiders to live in our webs. 

When the glue dried, we used chalk pastels to add color to our webs.  We used our fingers as paint brushes spread the color around the paper.