Eric Carle Inspired Story Collage

This particular project was inspired by the work of Eric Carle. He uses many cutouts of painted paper to create characters, scenes, and pictures for children's books to create a story. For my own project, I was to first paint several large sheets of paper using any colors, textures, and designs I wanted to without any story or certain character in mind. Then, once they all had dried, I drew out the scene (resembling a page in a book) of two tucans, a palm tree, the sunset, sand, and the ocean. Next, I used an Exacto knife to cut out different shapes that made up each part of my drawing on all the colorful pages I had painted earlier. Lastly, I glued them down on brown construction paper and added the text for the "page" of the story: "The lonely tucan realized that tucan doesn't have near as much fun as "two-can!"

I enjoyed this project for several reasons. It was challenging enough that it made me have to plan out how I wanted it to look and all come together with the saying. I LOVE how coloful these pictures become and can easily see why kids love Eric Carle's books for that aspect. I am also extremely pleased with how mine turned out; it's fun, colorful, and was done in the similar fashion that Eric Carle completes his pages.

As an extension activity, I would have students think of the character they want to do, the scene, and colors needed beforehand. This would make it much easier and prepare students better to complete their project because I had only a few colors that I needed for my page since I didn't know what I was going to create when I started painting. I didn't have the dark blue for the ocean, no browns for the sand or tree trunk, and had to use scrap pieces from past students that luckily worked with my project. I would also have students create a little book instead of one page. I would be fun to see the actual story they could come up with like Eric Carle and also work on a smaller scale.