Easy Fine Art: Matisse

Matisse inspired Valentine art.

I subscribed to a few inspiring and informative home-educating blogs. The various blogs are a great resource to free printables, activities and ideas for all sortts of subjects. Recently one suggested a Valentined theme fine art unit. Easy peasy!

The art piece was using the style of Matisse's cut out art. Using water coor markers, the first grader drew geometric shapes (squares) and colored them in, later going over them with a brush and water to create a little water color effect. He cut out heart shapes from construction paper and glued those on top. Voila!

I found printable versions of Henry Matisse's art work for him to color. Youtube has become my new BFF as well. I am amazed at how many great educational videos can be found. I chose a few different but short videos about Matisse and his work. The first grader watched those and then wrote a few biographical sentences about what he learned.

We paste all these pieces into a spiral bound notebook (my attempt at organization) to keep them all in one place. This is working well when we have a Learning Record meeting, as I can show our Educational Specialist our portfolio (book) and tear out a page to give her as a sample.