crumple paper Ehlert mice

My kinder students are doing a study of Lois Ehlert with me. 

We have read a few of her books and they watched the video 

"Color World" which shows how she gets her ideas and makes her art. The kids love it. 

It's pretty non-existent at this point but you can buy a used VHS cheap on Amazon. 

This year I put brown craft paper on my tables (and plastic/vinyl tablecloths over them for wet/gluey stuff). I was about to recycle the paper when another art teacher said to me that she saves them because the paint stains look cool. I'm surprised this did not occur to me a long time ago to be honest. 

So- I have been saving them. I cut the paper up into roughly 6 x 8 pieces for this lesson. 

(I usually recycle grocery bags for crumpled brown paper projects but this was also a great way to recycle and the kids felt really invested in it being their paper to begin with that they were reusing.)

The students traced the outlines of the mouse shape and ovals for the ears on one side. 

Then all together I told them to CRUMPLE up the paper- they couldn't believe it. 

They flattened it out and on the OTHER side they did a rubbing with orange, yellow, brown crayons.

Then we crumpled AGAIN -especially so they could feel the difference in the softness of the paper.  

They flattened them out and did rubbings with black crayons to emphasize the texture. 

 They thought crumpling up our papers was the funniest thing ever:

Today we reviewed what collage is how Ehlert makes her work.

The kids cut out their teardrop shape and two oval ears. 

They glued them on 6 x 6 backgrounds, and we added eyes, tails, and some cheese. 

They look just like the little mouse hiding in "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert. 

So simple but they LOVE them! (I love them...)