Eric Carle

Today we did the "Multi Paint Picture" from Storybook Art by MaryAnn Kohl, based on "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," said the Slothby Eric Carle. Any of his books would do; I picked this one because none of my students had heard it before and because of the double-page spread in the back showing all the animals included in the book. My students were thrilled to start this new unit on picture book illustrating, and it follows nicely from the conclusion of our Poetry unit, the final project of which is to write and illustrate a picture book! Here are my notes from the activity.

It was new to me to work with tempera paint after all that work with wet-on-wet watercolor painting and it's much messier than I expected. I usually store paint in jelly jars with two-part lids but I'm afraid the thick tempera paint will stick in these, so I think yogurt containers are the way to go. You can always paint a swatch on the top of the lid so that you know what color is inside. With Reggio Emilia, the students are encouraged to mix as many colors as they wish of tempera and the teacher saves them all. So that would be another case where you'd want all the yogurt containers you can find. The clear kind that hold fresh mozzarella balls would be nice, so you can see the colors inside, but they don't fit as well on an easel tray. Maybe peanut butter jars?




Either lay out newspaper on your tabletops or another, larger piece of paper to go under the paper your child is painting. They will want to go all the way to the border with their textures.

Label the paper on the back with the child's name or initials BEFORE they begin to paint! (I should know this one but it's been a while since we have painted, so I forgot.)

Have available a tray for the paint-dipped texture materials. My students know to put their brushes back in the brushes jar after they have been rinsed, but they didn't know what to do with the other paint-y things. I gave them (for texture making) popsicle sticks, scraps of ribbon and lace, pieces of string, little wooden cubes, pompoms in a variety of sizes, and corks. Once the children had dipped these in the paint they didn't where to put them, so they just set them on the table (which I had NOT covered with newspaper in advance). Not their fault, my fault! With wet-on-wet we always use painting trays underneath our work and so this problem has never come up before.

Still, very fun!!!!