Sea Horse Craft

This week is Eric Carle's birthday, the beloved author and illustrator of many modern classics, including, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?", "The Very Hungry Caterpillar", and "Papa, Please get the Moon for me".

We love his books in our household. In celebration of Mr. Carle turning 83, I decided to read his book "Mister Seahorse" and do a colorful textured craft with my son reminiscent of the paintings in his book. "Mister Seahorse" is about a male seahorse who is going to have babies! Mrs. Seahorse deposited the eggs in his pouch and he goes about meeting other male sea animals who also care for their unborns in unusual ways. As he meets each creature, many are hidden at first, and it was fun to have my son try to spot them. When the pages were turned, the creatures became unobscured. This provided a good opportunity to discuss the word "camouflage" with him. This was a sweet book, and my son enjoyed it thoroughly.

Now onward to our craft!

First we gathered up the materials:

• 3 colors of tempera paint (I had my son choose his favorites, yellow, orange, blue)
• 3 textured materials to apply the paint: a sponge, bubble wrap, and an egg carton. 
• 3 containers/surfaces to hold paint that will accommodate size of textured materials (for sponge I used a simple little bowl, for bubble wrap I used a meat tray, and for egg carton I used a cafeteria food tray. 
• Paper cut out in shape of a sea horse (I used this image as a guide to hand-draw the outline)
• A googly eye

 

First my son used a sponge and stamped yellow paint over the entire surface of seahorse shape.

Then my son pressed the bubble wrap onto 2nd paint color (spread out on meat tray) and then stamped it on paper.

Then he pressed the egg carton into the 3rd color of paint and stamped it down onto the paper, covering the entire surface. 

As the last step he glued on the eye.

Voila! How do you like it?

Thanks for coming by and checking this out. Remember to "like" me on my Facebook Page if you want to stay informed of more kid craft ideas I post or find around the blogosphere! Have a wonderful day!