Matisse-terpieces

A couple of weeks ago I pulled down a pretty suspect box that wasn't labeled. Gah! It was filled to the max with scrap papers! This was VERY unlike me, I normally have everything labeled and sorted.

I was teaching my second graders about geometric and organic shape anyway, so we whipped out the book "When Pigasso Met Mootisse" (side note: if you have NEVER read this book, I highly recommend it. It is VERY funny and has some great artistic puns in it. It is by Nina Laden and I think I ordered it on Amazon.com) Who better of an artist to work on than Henri Matisse and his colorful organic-shaped works of art?!

I had students use up those colorful scrap papers by letting their "scissors do the walking"...no, there was no drawing involved in this project at all!
I thought some of my second graders were going to have heart attacks when I told them we wouldn't be using pencils. The thought of actually doing something without reservation is pretty tough for them!

What you need:
Tons of scrap paper
9x12 black paper (or white paper, it doesn't matter)
glue sticks (trust me---you don't want all that white glue squishing out everywhere!)
scissors

Procedure:
Read the book "When Pigasso Met Mootisse" and discuss how Mootisse uses large blocks and shapes of color to create images that jump off the page. Discuss the actual artist Matisse and how the book is loosely based on his life and art.

Show students how to use scissors to create organic shapes. I also showed them how sometimes the negative portion of a paper (aka- the SCRAP) is just as cool as the shape they cut out! They were pretty excited about that and started glueing those on too, just like Matisse!

The end products were amazing. The kids did a great job. It was really important to me that the kids just created without worrying about making things look "perfect". This is also a good project if you need to get rid of some scraps or you need a one-day lesson.

Happy Creating!