Free Eric Carle Insect Unit Study

*Eric Carle, Picture writer. Summary: Eric invites you into his own studio where he reads from three of his most popular books and shows how, step by step, he prepares his colorful tissue papers and creates brilliant collage pictures.

*Cricket in Times Square
*MicroCosmos-- It follows the insect world through up-close and time lapse photography throughout a day and night. Some of the caterpillar shots are so cool! There are also some great ladybug segments plus lots of other insects and a few frogs. There are a couple of shots that might disturb sensitive younger ones such as a spider wrapping a cricket in her web.
*The Magic School Bus Bugs, Bugs, Bugs

Go-Along Books

*Eric Carle’s autobiography – Flora and Tiger
*Usborne Big Bug Search (goes along with almost all the titles!) Look for whatever insect you are studying

*Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method by Sally Kneidel
*Animals, Animals by Eric Carle (a book of poetry) *this is mentioned in many of the units with corresponding page numbers Maybe at the end of the unit, after your student has been exposed to lots of poetry about insects, he would like to write some of his own.
*The Art of Eric Carle
*Dragonfly, Beetle, Butterfly, Bee- gorgeous drawings, really helpful for nature study and sketching
*Insects, Bugs, and Art Activities

Art idea for any book: Collage Painting --idea adapted from Eric Carle website
Discuss the technique of collage with your student. Try to make some collage type paintings like Eric Carle. Give your student a large piece of white paper. Use bright color tempera paint and cover the paper in the color of choice leaving texture (making the brush strokes noticeable) in the paint. Let your student do this with a few different colors using one color per piece of paper. Set aside paintings to dry. After the painting is dry, let your student choose another color of paint and create a pattern on top of the first color. In the afternoon each student chose a different color of paint and create a pattern on top of their first color (do this for each separate paper). The next day review the parts of an insect (or flower or whatever you would like) and let your student create one by cutting pieces from the paper. Your student can create a butterfly, beetle, dragonfly, caterpillar, or ??. Glue down the cut pieces on white paper.

Links
On-line game
Eric Carle's Website
Insect Classification Cards
Make a mini bug house
Bug-o Bingo
scroll to the bottom of the page for a BUGGY salad!
Insect Dominoes
Bug Nature Journal Page

Credits:
The idea for this huge Eric Carle unit was born at http://4real.thenetsmith.com/
You can see the original thread here http://4real.thenetsmith.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=439&PN=1

The ladies at the website graciously allowed me to compile their ideas into one massive Eric Carle unit, and I just want to say thanks to all of the home schooling moms at Liz Foss' website!

Materials and information on this website belong to the original composers.
It may be used for your own personal and school use. Material may not be used for resale. © 2005-07 HSS