One of my favorite artists to introduce to the kids is Henri Matisse. They always love the fact that he ‘painted with scissors,’ they usually want to dip the scissors to paint and do it as well 😉 and they really enjoy doing the paper collages.

This time, we decided to work together to create one collage – with colorful papers, glue, wave-making machine and some sequins. All 12 kids worked together – cutting, pasting and positioning the little squares on the big piece of paper. Needless to say they loved seeing the finished piece.

This is a really simple project but it is open-ended, it is good fine motor skills exercise, it encourages cooperation. Plus we always talk about shapes, relative size, positive and negative space and color (you have to talk about color when you talk about Matisse).

We did it last year but it is the one piece that still hangs in my classroom – and will until we replace it with a new piece this year. Can’t wait!

There is a lot of other Matisse-inspired ideas on my Pinterest board, if you are looking for more inspiration.