Inspired by pictures in an Eric Carle book we recently enjoyed (the author who is best known for The Very Hungry Caterpillar), my granddaughters – age eight, and twins who are four years old – and I decided to make our own collage.

Donning our aprons we first painted sheets of paper with big brushes and tempera paints. Not having a wide selection of colors, we mixed them. No brown? We tried yellow and red and black, and yellow and red and blue. To create textures – bark and animal fur, ice and leaves – we scratched the wet paint. For the birch trees we covered the paper with brown paint, letting it dry, almost, squirted white on top, smoothed it out and scratched through with a plastic knife. It looked like the real thing! That was the first session – colored papers. It was messy and joyful and not too much work to clean up.

Session two, a week later: we snipped and tore and glued. We covered a large old calendar page with sky and mountains, lakes, and hemlock trees. And there had to be a sun of course. It’s kind of a picture of where we live.

Session three, a week after that: twigs and branches, beech leaves that never fell off in the winter storms. Birches. And animals! Our four-year-old was so pleased with her big black bear, her rabbit, and her purple finch. And our other four-year-old was delighted that her cardinal bird was actually opening it’s beak to talk to the bear! And there’s even a lovely little three-legged fox, and lots of fish. Our eight-year-old made a beaver and some very bird-like birds. It was a frigid day, too cold for playing outside. The living room table got covered with Elmers glue, which wasn’t too hard to wipe off. We stayed warm and happy indoors for a good long time. We hung the picture triumphantly on Dad and Mum’s wall. We all admired it, washed our sticky hands, ate a good hot supper, cleaned up, played some games, sang a few songs, and went to bed. So ended a third satisfying Sunday.