Homemade Scratch Art – Draw me a Star by Eric Carle
It’s time for another Virtual Book Club for Kids and this months author is my all time favourite children’s author Eric Carle – we love all the books that we have read by him and this month chose Draw Me a Star as our book to feature. J (almost 5 and about to finish the UK equivalent of Kindergarten) loved reading this book sounding out and blending the words to read along with my help and T loved looking at the pictures and seeing how the stars and the other characters within the book were drawn. It’s a great earlier reader book as well suitable for both kindergarten and preschool aged children. As our activity we decided to draw some stars and I remembered a great way to do this from my own childhood where we used to create our own scratch art paper and draw stars, fireworks and even a fair ground with the effect as it’s so colourful and bright.
Materials needed for making DIY Scratch Art Paper
Strong WHITE Paper Wax crayons of colours of your choice Black Ready Mix Paint (Tempera/Poster Paints) Splash of Washing up Liquid Toothpick or old ball point pen
How to make DIY Scratch Art Paper
Star off with the blank piece and scribble all over it filling every available space with wax crayons – we did this together. Mine was really organised and T was a jumble of the vibrant wax crayon colours she could find. The scribbling everywhere that T did on the final produced the most amazing colours when scratched so I recommend just going for it and scribbling away covering the paper completely with vibrant colours.
Once the paper is covered the mix together your black (navy would work for a night sky as well) with a small dash of washing up liquid – we use fairy but any will do and mix together well. Then paint all over the wax crayons – you don’t want too thick a layer as then it becomes difficult to scratch through for younger children. Cover to the edges of the paper and then leave to dry.
We then set about drawing our stars – loving the way that T scribbles the stars as bursts with points was really effective but you could easily draw straws copying the method of drawing stars from the Draw me a star Book by Eric Carle.
As the picture at the end of the book shows a night sky full of stars that is what we tried to do.
Virtual Book Club for Kids
If you want to find out more about the Virtual Book Club for Kids – Creating and Connecting with books then check out our information page about what it’s about and how you can join in. If you love following along and would like to help your kids stop the summer slide for 3 weeks this summer there is still time to sign up for the Virtual Book Club for Kids Summer Camp where myself, Kristina from Toddler Approved and Kim from The Educators’ Spin On It are your camp directors for 3 weeks of crafts, activities and other cool stuff for 2 to 5 year olds. If you are a blogger and would like to join us this month or have an Eric Carle post with craft or activity please come and link up below or share your Eric Carle posts all week on our Virtual Book Club for Kids Facebook Page.
Thanks for the idea, Cerys. I’ve never tried this before but it looks like a fun end-of-the-school-year activity!