I decided at the beginning of the 2014-2015 school year that I wanted to have an art class theme.
It seemed like that would help me in gathering ideas and spur on my own creativity.
It also helped keep a focus on the purpose of each art lesson.
In working with 1st grade through 8th grade I wanted to keep the focus the same,
but vary the actual lesson to fit the grade level.
The theme I chose was "Art Careers".
For this art career lesson I chose Book Illustrator.
Choosing Illustrators to learn about was easy for me.
I love children's books and have often wished I could author and illustrate my own books for kids. I've started the writing part of it a few times. ;)
One of my favorite author/illustrators is Eric Carle, best know for
"Brown Bear, Brown Bear" and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".
I decided to have my 3rd graders (17 students) work on "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and the 1st and 2nd graders (a combined class of about 20 students) do "Brown Bear..."
I talked a little bit about Eric Carle and showed the children the actual books.
I had them take note of Carle's particular style of artistry. None of his colors are just "flat".
There's a lot of layering in the pieces of painted paper he uses and the illustrations appear to have texture. For the cover page, I had the students make a multi-toned caterpillar, using a variety of markers. On the leaf page (pictured above) we used over-lapping tissue paper in two shades of green. Then the students glued on a tiny, white pom pom for the egg.
This was fun too... I was able to recreate the way that Eric Carle had the fruit pages cut to display the quantity of each piece of fruit that the caterpillar ate through.
Monday-1 apple.
Tuesday-2 pears.
Wednesday-3 plums.
Thursday-4 strawberries.
Friday-5 oranges.
Then he ate a bunch of junk.
The kids enjoyed talking about this page...
and about what a belly ache they would have after eating all of this. =)
I used a black Sharpie to create these illustrations and printed the text from my computer.
It took a couple of tries to get it just how I wanted it.
Once I had everything perfected, I made enough copies for my classes.
Someone asked why I didn't just find something on-line. I would've if I could've... trust me.
But, really it wasn't that hard. And I enjoy that sort of thing.
For the cocoon, I had the kids rip up pieces of brown paper
and glue them on however they wanted.
Luckily, we had different tones of brown construction paper available in our art closet.
I also used this same technique for our "Brown Bear, Brown Bear" books.
Finally the caterpillar emerges as a beautiful, colorful butterfly. I left some metallic confetti sitting on the table, thinking the students would put them on piece by piece. I turned my back for only a minute (or two). When I came back to the group that was working on this page, they had spread glue all over the wings of the butterfly and were sprinkling the confetti on like glitter. Oh my! Well, I hadn't exactly explained what I wanted them to do with it, so... (naughty art teacher).
It took 5 or 6 weeks to complete our books. As a first year art teacher, I'm learning along the way. I discovered very quickly that students work at different paces (sometimes the difference is extreme). You may have one student who completes 3 pages in one class period and another student who doesn't even complete one page in the same amount of time.
You begin to pick up on their personalities and what you can expect from them.
Overall, I give this project an A+.
It was fun, the kids were able to personalize their books and be creative.
I'm sure they were excited to read them to their parents.
When I showed this project to the kindergarten teacher at our school, she suggested that I have the kids come to her classroom and read their books to her students. We did just that.
The 3rd graders read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" to her class and the 1st and 2nd graders read
"Brown Bear, Brown Bear" to the preschool classes.
The story time was a big hit!
Hear Eric Carle read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar".
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