Eric Carle inspired Collage Evergreen Tree

I love looking at Eric Carle with kinder.  I think it's a great lesson, talking about author, illustrator, and artist as one.  I usually show the short Mr. Rodgers episode where he visits Eric Carle in his studio and kinders then have the opportunity to make papers in the same manner as Mr. Carle.  

It's a great follow up on exploration of color and children love just playing and experimenting with paint and tolls to make texture.  After the paper is made is where I always fell short ... what to do with all of the fabulous handmade paper.  In my opinion and experience kindergarten was just too young to plan their character and cut and glue it together.  

I found success after being inspired (once again) by the blog, les petites de l'art .  I think this blogger does such a nice job of teaching art concepts and history while letting each child explore those concepts in their own way.  I used the green papers made by kinder and had them cut them into lots of triangles and punched circles of all the other colors.  Children glued their triangles together to build a tree and were given the option of using the colored circles as well.  We modge-podged as we went and they really turned out beautiful.  The kids liked that they were shiny.

The following week I have students the option of stamping as well.  Children used alphabet stampers to stamp MY TREE in whatever language they chose.  I had printed out the words, MY TREE in a variety of languages so the kids could look at them while they stamped. The document is available as a free download if it helps save you some time.  What sorts of Eric Carle projects have you done?