Every week this season we’re creating art inspired by the works of famous artists, and this week we explored French artist Henri Matisse and his paper cut masterpieces.
Learning from last week’s program, I adapted another amazing program idea from Little Bins for Little Hands to make it easier for my young audience (most of my group was in Kindergarten or Grade 1, and all were English language learners).
I really liked the idea of this Matisse-inspired collage project, but I wasn’t sure how my kiddos would fare with so much detailed cutting. So I printed out some templates, but also pre-cut both templates and paper shapes. That way kids who wanted to could cut out their own templates and use them to cut out their own shapes, or they could use my pre-cut templates, or they could simply glue pre-cut paper pieces onto their papers. I also put out coloring supplies and stickers, so kids could further personalize their designs.
As always, I made a book display with books about the life and works of Henri Matisse, and printed out some examples of his artwork to put up on the wall as inspiration.
Then, we got to work!
Like last week, my group was all younger kiddos, ranging from preschool to grade one, so I was glad I had different options for them to choose from. I put out construction paper and pages pulled from discarded books, which were very popular!
Peeling the backings from stickers is also great fine motor skills practice, and of course no one could resist the sparkling flower stickers I put out.
My advice to newer programmers is to always work options into your programs, so children with different abilities, personalities and comfort levels can participate in different ways. Some children might have had the manual dexterity to cut out their own templates and trace their own paper shapes, but not the visual acuity, or the patience. Others might have had patience enough to cut out every little piece, regardless of their manual dexterity, given enough time and support. Different options help make programs as welcoming and accessible as possible for as many kids as possible – obviously no program will ever be completely inclusive for every child ever, but we can certainly try and do our best!