Hermit the Crab Activity
The children had a great
deal of fun working with A House for Hermit the Crab by Eric Carle.
Material:
12"x18" white art paper, black pens, black permanent felt pens, paint
washes (I mixed tempera with enough water to make the paint transparent), red
construction paper, and pipe cleaners.
-We read the stories A
House for Hermit the Crab by Eric Carle and Is this a House for Hermit
the Crab? By Megan McDonald, as well as, many other books that are on my
must read list.
-We brainstormed for sea
plants and animals that we would like to have our own Hermit Crab decorate
his/her shell with.
-The children made a
spiral shape on a 12"x18" piece of art paper. They drew the spiral
lightly with a pencil making the lines about 5cm from each other. When their
lines were drawn satisfactorily they used a fine permanent felt pen to trace
over their pencil lines.
-Using the sentence frame
"In (month), Hermit the Crab decorated (his/her) with a (sea
animal or plant). With a black pen, the students printed sentences using the
sentence frame. They started in the middle of the page and printing in an
outward circle (see picture). Starting with January they did as many months as
they could until they reached the end of the page or ran out of time. At this
point you can also encourage students to using adjectives to describe the
decoration or different verbs to replace ‘decorate’ (e.g. Added on,
protected…).
 | Paint a wash over their spiral, using several
different colours. Let dry and cut out. |
| Using red construction paper and two pieces of
pipe cleaner draw and cut out a crab shape to glue onto the ‘shell’ |
| You can also use scrap paper or leftovers from
the shell to make the plants and animals that were written about. |
| Hints: Make sure that you use permanent pens. If
you use washable pens, they will run when you apply your wash. |
| I let them write the story with a black pen from
the beginning, otherwise they have to trace, or lose their words when the
wash is applied. |
| If they aren’t sure how to draw a crab have
the books available to them to copy their picture.
|
