Matisse Artist Study & Cross-Curricular Tie-In's

The boys have been studying about French artist, Henri Matisse.

Here are some photos of their Matisse-inspired art work:

Source: amazon.com via Colleen on Pinterest

We used several resources for this artist study:

Matisse Art Activity Pack 
This lovely pack by Mila Boutan provides templates, papers, and a nice, simple overview of Matisse and his work.
We have several of Mila Boutan's Artist Activity Packs and find them to work very well within the scope of homeschooling.

Kinder Art has a nice Matisse lesson plan pack.
It includes three lessons from Eileen Urbanski at the Avon Village School.
Thanks Eileen! We really enjoyed doing the lessons you created!
Similar to what Ms. Eileen did with her students, we read some biographies about Henri Matisse.

We explored his use of positive and negative space, and his use of color.

We did an extension activity to highlight the notion of positive and negative space by using our Montessori inspired land form cards.

We went out and did a shape, color, and pattern walk at the park and talked about what Matisse may have seen while he went out and explored his surroundings.

We looked at and created Fauvres. We also created art similar to his later style of using simple organic shapes by cutting them and adding them to show movement and form. 
However, instead of using white paper and painting it to get the perfect color we wanted, we used foam pieces that were pre-glued on the back sides.

The reason for this is that I wanted the boys to focus on cutting the shapes and using them to show movement and form as one lesson. We will do more with color mixing on white paper next week. Just wanted to start with the forms and the concepts of showing movement first.

Confessions of a Homeschooler has an excellent, free lesson pack called the World's Greatest Artists Unit Study. Thanks so much to Erica, as her lessons are wonderful and they tie in with the series of art books that we own by Mike Venezia. Worked out so well!
We have started to prep the Matisse section for a lapbook that we plan to complete throughout the year about the World's Greatest Artists. Was fun to work on the first artist for our lapbook. 

We even added in some technology with this artist study: an interactive study on Henri Matisse called Matisse for Kids! This interactive website is part of the Baltimore Museum of Art's Cone Kids Program. Gives a nice overview of Matisse's art. Also allows children to create their own Matisse inspired art at the end of the program.The boys just loved this!!!

Incredible @rt Department - incredibleart.org has an excellent collection of art lessons on Henri Matisse.
Love that these lessons focus on Essential Questions and have so much variety and depth to them! Cannot wait to do some of these wonderful lessons next week with the boys as we continue our study of Matisse.

In addition to making Matisse inspired art, we have done a variety of integrated, cross-curricular activities:

Geography: Study of Land Forms and France
Math: Study of Patterns, Open and Closed Figures, and Positive and Negative Numbers
Sensorial: Positive and Negative Space, Color Tablets (complimentary colors)
P.E.: Movement
Science: Patterns, Shapes, and Colors in Nature.
Language Arts: Reappearing Themes, Feelings (how the notions of feeling happy and relaxed come through on paper, both in print and in pictures / art).

I have created a Matisse Board on Pinterest in case any of you would like to see more about our Matisse Study. Will add links to the cross-curricular activities, along with whatever we do related to Matisse next week to this board as well.

Has been super fun and interesting to learn about Henri Matisse!

Have you studied Henri Matisse? If you have, please be sure to leave a link to your blog or website in the comments section of this post so that others can see your neat ideas and so that I can pin your ideas to the Matisse Board on Pinterest.

On a side note, if you have not checked out our family's DIY Crash Me Please! entry, please do! 

Here is a link to our entry. We are hoping to win to have our yard made over into an outdoor classroom and play area. Please leave a comment about our entry, especially if you love outdoor learning too...

This post is linked up with Sunday Showcase hosted by Bern from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas and Aimee from Classified Mom. Aimee informed me that I will be featured this Sunday for the Sunday Showcase. Thanks to both Aimee and to Bern for their lovely blogs and for this neat blog linky party each week! Always look forward to seeing and reading what everyone links, as there are always fabulous ideas on Sunday Showcase!