1. Kindergarten 30-40 min. Very Hungry Caterpillar Art Lesson

3. The students will repeat Eric Carle’s process to create individual tissue paper collage caterpillars (SD Standard #2)

5. Motivation Motivation: Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” Today, we are going to be reading the book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” by Eric Carle. “Many of you may have read or heard this book before or some of Eric Carle’s other books.” As you read the book, tell the students to closely observe the illustrations. After reading the story, have the students return to their desks to have a discussion over the story. Tell the students that we are going to be looking at the illustrations in the book. “Illustrationsare the pictures or decorations that go along with the writing of the book. Illustrations give us pictures of what is happening in the story. In most books and stories, the illustrations are generally drawn or painted as in this book. (Show an illustration from Mercer Mayer Story) However, Eric Carle’s illustrations are special and unique because he creates his illustrations by making collages of tissue paper and paint. Collages are pictures made up of sticking several pieces of paper or photos together. He makes his collages with tissue paper. Tissue paper is very thin, soft paper. First, Eric Carle cuts or tears the colored tissue paper into shapes as needed and then glues the shapes onto white illustration board. To make neat colors, Eric Carle glues different colors of tissue paper on top of each other to make new colors. Some parts or areas of his designs, however, are painted directly on the board before the bits of tissue paper are applied to make the collage illustrations. Some of these parts are things like these small hairs on the caterpillars back (show cover of the story). After creating his collage pictures, Eric Carle is able to create different textures by using various brushes to splash, spatter, and finger-paint paints onto the thin tissue papers. Textures are the look and feel of a surface such as smooth, pointy, rough, and bumpy. So by using paint, Eric Carle makes textures on the tissue paper. Once he is done, these colored tissue paper collages are used to make the lively, colorful illustrations seen in Eric Carle’s books. So, today we are going to make our very own tissue paper hungry caterpillars illustrations.”

6. Procedure Have the students pick out colors of tissue paper that they want to use to create their caterpillars and one piece of construction paper. Encourage them to pick several colors so that they can play around with mixing colors by layering the tissue paper. Then, show the students examples of shapes they may use to make their caterpillar bodies to give them an idea of what kind of shapes to be cutting out. However, the shapes do not have to follow the model. The students can use circles, ovals, squares, triangles or whatever they wish to create the body segments of their caterpillars. Have the students cut out body segments, a head, antennae, feet, eyes, or whatever else they want to make up their caterpillar body. Show the students how to line up and overlap the tissue paper shapes to form a body for the caterpillar. Then, have the students arrange their shapes in the form of a caterpillar body on their construction paper. Once the students have their caterpillars arranged, have the students glue their caterpillar pieces onto their construction paper. Remind the students that tissue paper is very soft and rips easily, so be gentle with your shapes when gluing and moving them around so that they don’t rip. Next, have the students pick out a couple colors of paint. Put a tiny bit of paint on a small paper plate for each student. Give each student a random paintbrush and have the students paint a very small bit on the tissue paper to create various textures on their caterpillars. They may smear, brush, splatter, etc. paint onto their caterpillars to make interesting textures. Finally, once the students are done, have the students set their caterpillars in the back of the room to dry. Tell them to put away their materials and throw away any scraps or trash.

8. Collage- any picture made by sticking together several pieces of paper or photographs, especially in unusual or surprising ways to create one new large image

9. Tissue Paper- very thin, soft paper

12. http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3234