1st grade Eric Carle collages

Everyone's favorite children's author and illustrator, Eric Carle, was the inspiration for our colorful animal shape collages.  We begin this lesson by watching the artist himself in action from the video  

The video is quite long, so we just watch the segment that shows him in his studio, preparing papers and atually creating  a caterpillar collage.  This really gets the students in the mood for some collaging!  We also practice in our sketchbooks, drawing animals using combinations of shapes, since the lesson requires building with cut shapes.  Each table paints a different color paper, which are later cut into smaller pieces and shared.