One of my favorite books as a child was The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear. I can still hear my mother reading this to me as a young girl. It has also been a favorite of my girls and after many nights reading this over the years, I decided to do something fun with it.

We cleared out a little bit of our cardboard stash to make some GIANT COLLAGE STRAWBERRIES. Working on a large scale was a perfect mix of gross and fine motor skills. The large size required my girls to use some big movements when painting and the collage step used their fine motor skills to cut, glue, and arrange the materials.

See the materials we used and simple steps below.

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Materials:

• The book, The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry, and The Big Hungry Bear
• Large sheets of cardboard
• Utility knife
• White acrylic or gesso
• Red, pink, and white tempera paint
• Collage materials in shades of red and pink: tissue paper, painted papers, fabric scraps, yarn, Pom poms, buttons
• Collage materials in shades of green: see above, produce mesh is a favorite for this
• Glue
• A stick

Step 1-

Draw a large strawberry shape on your cardboard. I drew them kind of like an acorn. Cut out your strawberry with a utility knife. (Use caution! Adults only or adult supervision!)

Step 2-

If your cardboard is brown, give it a quick coat with white acrylic paint or gesso. Some of ours were already white so we proceeded to the next step.

Paint the strawberry with red, pink, and white tempera. Let dry.

Step 3-

Glue your collage materials to your strawberry.

Willa’s finished collage:

Pin for later!

We LOVE collage projects! They are perfect for a variety of ages. See a few of our past collage projects: Paper Plate Nature Collages, Monochromatic Collage: Green Study, and Puzzle Piece Collage.

Want another large scale project idea? See our GIANT CARDBOARD FEATHERS!