An Adorable Book & Eraser Drawing!
After reading “When Pencil Met Eraser” by Karen Kilpatrick and Luis O. Ramos, Jr. we decided to give eraser drawing a try. We had a lot of fun and really love the results! Can’t wait to show you, let’s get started…
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Summary of “When Pencil Met Eraser”
“When Pencil Met Eraser” by Karen Kilpatrick and Luis O. Ramos, Jr. and illustrated by Germán Blanco is a fun book about a pencil who prefers to work alone, and an eraser who was persistent, to say the least. Each time pencil draws; eraser changes things up by erasing. But instead of taking away from the drawing as you might imagine; it actually adds to it.
Pencil tries everything to challenge eraser so he’ll give up. Instead, eraser impresses pencil and inevitably they become not only friends, but best friends! This book is wonderfully illustrated and a great story, I would definitely recommend it. 🙂
How We Made a Eraser Drawing…
We tend to keep the activities as simple as possible around here. We’re not interested in complicated or costly. We are also all about fostering independence. For this activity we decided to start by shading in our entire paper with pencil. It took some practice figuring out exactly how to hold the pencil, what angle worked best and how much pressure we wanted to apply for the darkness we desired.
My daughter had a sweet idea, that we would both shade the paper in, then switch papers for the erasing part. Once the papers had completely changed from white to grey, we swapped papers and began making our eraser drawings. While my daughter was immediately on task, inspired by the space scene depicted in the book, I was at a loss.
I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to draw with my eraser. Its interesting how sometimes creativity alludes you, particularly when you have a blank grey canvas and only one tool to work with. I think I gravitate so much to colorful art, I found it surprising how challenging it was.
I finally decided to just choose something I love and go with it. That something was a sunflower. I wondered how a grey sunflower was going to look, when obviously what I love most about sunflowers is their bright yellow vibrant color. It was interesting drawing with an eraser, it felt so different on the paper. I was impressed with how easy it was to draw with. I guess I assumed it would be similar to how it is when you try to erase a mistake; and you usually have to go over the same spot a few times. However, it wasn’t like that at all, it was smooth and effortless.
I’m so happy how it turned out. We realized after placing our eraser drawings side by side that it appears that her unicorn jumping over the moon, might just be headed to my sunflower planet next, how cool is that?!?
Wait?!? Am I Supposed To Be Making One Too?
I highly recommend getting hands on and doing art projects with your child. If you’d rather not, thats okay too, but please do not correct anything they do. If you want the art to look a certain way – make your own.
Especially if your child is little, its okay if it doesn’t turn out the way you imagined. Maybe its what they imagined. Also, its a process. They are learning. They will learn more through trial and error than if you correct them or do it for them. All they will learn if you “help” is that they didn’t do a good enough job on their own or they can’t do it; not exactly the message you want to give your kid. Am I right?!?
Believe me, I know it can be really challenging to let them make “mistakes”. Try doing the project along side them. It will allow you to focus on your own work, give them appropriate modeling of how to use the materials, and show them that you like art too! A lot of what I talk about in “What about the Sensory Mess?” applies to Art projects as well, you might wanna check it out! I love how each artwork has its own identity. I would suggest Eraser Drawing if you’re looking for a unique and creative art activity to connect with your child.
Materials We Used
- “When Pencil Met Eraser” by Karen Kilpatrick and Luis O. Ramos, Jr. (from the library or buy it here)
- A pencil with a good eraser
- Paper
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How to Make an Eraser Drawing?
- Use your pencil to shade in the paper, until the entire paper is shaded grey.
- Use the eraser on your pencil to draw something.
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Wait, There’s More…
I believe you can easily strengthen communication skills and foster independence all while playing and connecting with your child. To help you do this; I’ve created a FREE printable for each activity called, “Communicating & Connecting”.
It will give you a list of suggestions I’ve found very helpful as a Mom & as a special education teacher; to help you build lifelong skills. Please don’t feel obligated to do everything on the list (but if you do, you’re a rockstar 😉 ).
As a Thank You for subscribing; this is a special FREEBIE for our Email Subscribers Only. 🙂 Click here if you’ve already subscribed. Otherwise, Sign Up below to get the password & access to our entire FREE Printables Library today! 😉
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