If Eric Carle Made Cardinals

Tracers again…. But with that said, my main objective for this lesson was an introduction to tempera paint, cutting with scissors while turning the paper and not the scissors, and listening to directions and steps. After all is said and done, my objectives were met and the final product is very pleasing. 

We started out by painting three different sized pieces of paper. The large one was colored with reds and orange crayons and the painted over the top with red paint and scratched. The medium sized paper was colored purple with crayons and then painted black and scratched. The smallest piece of paper was colored yellow with crayon and colored orange with paint and scratched. Students got tracers the next class and cut out the shapes for each piece. 

The next class I handed each student a small piece of cardboard, and long narrow piece of white paper, and a paper plate with black paint. The students looked at some examples of birch trees and we discussed how to make the paper look like a birch branch. The students dragged the cardboard through some black (thin smear of paint) paint and then they started on the edges of the the narrow long white paper and dragged the paint from the outside towards the center. They repeated this process from the top to the bottom on both sides. 

The next class the students placed the beak on the birch tree and then glued the head onto the tree in accordance to the beak. We added the black and the eyes on last and the project was finished. The birds look great in the hallways of our Wisconsin school on the eve of a cold winter.