I’ve always enjoyed using Eric Carle as inspiration for this lesson, not only because the kids are familiar with him, but his illustration style makes it so easy to build from drawing shapes to creating larger objects (in this case, animals) with them.
Students practiced identifying, tracing, drawing, coloring and cutting basic geometric shapes. Then, we looked at several works by Eric Carle (like the one below) and tried to figure out what shapes Eric Carle used to create it.
Click here to see the bats and horses that we made in the style of Eric Carle! Here is Mason’s horse:
Here are the steps we followed:
1. Paint paper with a variety of painting tools.
2. As a class, vote on the animal we will each create.
3. Draw the shape needed on the back of the painted paper.
4. Carefully cut out the shape.
5. Carefully glue the shape in its place.
6. Repeat drawing, cutting and gluing until animal is complete.
7. Add minimal detail with crayon.
