Eric Carle Art

Last week, we had a blast reading many of the books written and/or illustrated by Eric Carle. He tells wonderful stories and many times explains his inspiration or gives a quick science lesson about the subject of his book. When we study Eric Carle, we can learn about everything from insects to endangered animals to telling time by the sun.  His art work is always interesting and unusual. Even the end papers in Eric Carle's books are beautiful!

  But the fun part is trying to create some art using his methods. His final product is a collage of the various paintings he has made, so using a variety of tools to give our paintings texture, we got started.

Some of the children took their ideas directly from some of Eric Carle's paintings while others just mixed and spread the paint  until they were content with their painting or until we told them they had to quit painting and let someone else have a turn. After the paintings had dried for a couple of days, we set to work cutting and gluing our very own collages.

We also made some tissue paper collages of Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar, as you can see at the top of the page. We got lots of good practice cutting and gluing during the week. But we also did other activities like hand print paintings of the lifecycle of a butterfly and planting some seeds like in The Tiny Seed.

 Another activity we did was based on on one of Eric Carle's lesser known stories, Hello Red Fox. This book is a fun interactive book that involves complementary colors and optical illusions. In the story, a frog invites his animal friends to his birthday party. Each animal is painted in its complementary color with a blank page next to it. If you stare at the picture for a few seconds you will see that object reflected on the blank page in the opposite color. 

 

We made our own optical illusions by folding a half of a white sheet of construction paper in half and gluing a green heart in the center of one side. When we stared long enough at the black dot we made in the center of the heart and shifted our gaze to the blank side we could see a faint red/pink heart. Some of the children had a hard time staring for 10 to 20 seconds but once they figured it out they were thrilled and amazed. Another fun week at preschool!

Little Scientist ~ Mighty Oak

We have a true little scientist in our preschool. He is not in my class but I have come to know him pretty well from when our classes do science experiments together,  when our visiting science teacher comes to our school several times each year and on the playground. He is always on the front row when we are conducting experiments. He asks amazingly intelligent questions and is amazingly insightful for a five year old. He is is the first to figure out a challenge, but if someone else were to figure it out first, he would cheer them on! He just loves science and discovery! On any given day on the play ground, he brings us some discovery he has found -a beautiful rock, a worm, an insect, an unusual shaped piece of mulch, and, yesterday, two tiny oak tree seedlings with the root and the acorn still attached that he had carefully dug up using a small stick.

He knew that oak trees come from acorns, therefore, these must be oak tree seedlings. He noticed that there were no oak trees right around our playground, so I asked him "How do you think the acorn got on our playground?" He thought for about a second and then said that squirrels eat acorns and also bury them to eat in the winter, so it must have been a squirrel that buried it. He was so thrilled with his discovery!

Since April is also Poetry Month, I will be sharing at least the first 3 or 4 verses of this beautiful poem by  Shane Hawk with my little scientist friend and  his classmates.

The Mighty Oak


The mighty oak started out as one lone seed.
It soaked up the water and began to feed.
Soon a seedling came sprouting high.
The sun's force helped it reach for the sky.

It weathered many storms and used all it's might
To grow into a tree that would cradle the birds at night.
The limbs were fragile and not big at all.
But with love and care they'd soon grow tall.

As each day passed the tree grew and grew
Adding new limbs with each day it went through.
Soon it was time for it's leaves to fall.
It was left bare and alone but ever so tall.

Spring brought new life back to the oak.
For each leaf that emerged became it's cloak.
It stood tall and proud for many a year
And shaded the ground below it so dear.

But as all things created by God above
Soon came the time it had thought little of.
To wither away and cease to exist
To stand weathered and worn in our midst.

The leaves we would see no more
As we had numerous times before.
The oak would still stand ever so tall
Just waiting for its time to fall.

When the day finally came to hit the ground
The loss for all was so profound.
Now there's a hole where the oak once stood
I'd happily bring it back if only I could.

© 2005 Shane Hawk 

http://poetrypoem.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?poemnumber=593803&sitename=carouselgirl&poemoffset=0&displaypoem=t&item=poetry

Thanks, Shane, for allowing me to share your beautiful poem and thanks to my little scientist friend for his passion for learning and his joy at discovery! I hope he keeps it forever! Maybe one day, our little scientist will become a mighty scientist who makes a grand discovery!

Dying Eggs ~ Baltic Style

 

This is a different blog that will consist mostly of pictures. My nephew has been working this year in Chemnitz, Germany with a mission group. He and the girls he works with made this Facebook album of dying their Easter Eggs. I think the photos are lovely and quite self-explanatory. Enjoy! I know I did and I plan to try this next year!

The Easter Hunt

When my children were small, I was looking for ways to share the Easter story with them and the 15 other young children in our neighborhood. Each year we hosted a neighborhood Easter Egg hunt using regular eggs, Resurrection Eggs and letting the children make Resurrection rolls. For some of the younger ones, the Resurrection Eggs were harder to explain because some of the related Bible verses were too difficult for them to understand and the Children's Bible that I had didn't cover all the items in the eggs. This was also about the time that I started teaching preschool. On one of my trips to the Christian bookstore to look for one more way to share the Good News with all the children in my life, I ran across this book: An Easter Hunt by Sarah Reid Chisholm.  http://www.amazon.com/Easter-Hunt-Sarah-Reid-Chisholm/dp/0806627409

The book tells the story of a Mom who plans an Easter Hunt for her children. She gathers items to tell the Easter story from Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday and hides them throughout the house for her children to find. She has appropriate Bible verses for each item while telling the story in simple language. After each clue, your child can help find the hidden item on the page. I loved the whole idea of actually having the children hunt for items themselves. I collected the same 11 items in the story from my children's own toys and hid them around the house. Then  I printed pictures from the computer and put each picture in an egg. The children pick an egg and have to find the item in that picture. As we read the story, the children put each item in a basket.

I quickly realized that this would be a great teaching tool for my preschoolers and the toddler Sunday School class I taught. However, some years I have had more than 11 students, so I had to create a few additional eggs and items to hide.

I inserted these items in the appropriate place in the story. Oh the joy of teaching in a Christian preschool! I hide the items around the sanctuary (if it is available) and have the children bring the items to the basket at the foot of the altar. We also point out any of the items that can also be found around the church. When we hunt for Easter, even the smallest children realize that Easter is about more than chocolate and an Easter bunny. They realize that Jesus is ALIVE! Hallelujah!