Things You'll Need
- Art erasers
- Cutting tool
- Ballpoint pen
- Small pictures of animal tracks
- Stamp pad
Learning about nature and animals is interesting and important. One thing that children will find fascinating is learning about animals and their tracks. If studying this is a planned activity, consider creating animal track stamps as one of your classroom projects.
Lay the eraser onto the paper and trace around the edges with the pen.
Draw the animal track in the center of the print stamp area drawn in Step 1. Find pictures of simple animal tracks and use them as guides for how to draw animal tracks. Some suggestions of good animal tracks to use are bear tracks, moose tracks, bobcat tracks and wolf tracks. Color in the outlines of the tracks with the pen.
Turn the paper with the drawn animal track over and position it over the eraser so that the outline of the eraser lines up with the eraser. Press the paper down firmly onto the eraser. Move your fingers carefully over the paper to transfer the drawing to the eraser. Remove the paper. The animal track transfer won't be perfect, but it should be dark enough to be seen. Fill in the rest of the animal track directly onto the eraser with the pen to make the animal track easy to see.
Designate in the areas you want to cut away by filling these areas in with the pen. This should be the background areas to allow the animal track to stand out.
Cut away the background areas with the cutting tool. It is necessary to remove approximately 1/8-inch of the surface of the eraser on the background areas to create the eraser print. Work slowly and carefully and chip the eraser away a little at a time until the animal track has been made.
To check your progress as you cut away the eraser, stamp the eraser onto a stamp pad and then stamp it onto white paper. This will allow you to see what parts of the eraser still need to be cut away.
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