The 2nd graders’ work is jazzing up the Maury hallways as we speak

Students spent a great deal of effort creating layered creations in the style of artist, Henri Matisse. As our bulletin board explains, Matisse was known for many different artistic styles throughout his long career. We focused on his paper cut-out phase and added a touch of color theory to the exercise to make them unique to our 2nd grade learning standards.

The second graders have really come together to create a wonderful classroom community. Many examples of collaboration are present in the studio everyday. These students were helping each other find warm colors in National Geographic magazines. Students were asked to create either a warm colored collage, or a cool colored collage. Warm colors are reds, yellows, and oranges. Cool colors are blues, greens, and violets.

Once the first layer of collaging was complete, students were asked to select scrap pieces of fabric in the opposite color scheme to create Matisse cut-outs on top. Warm collages got cool colored fabrics and cool collages got warm colored fabric cut-outs.

Cutting organic shapes out of sturdy fabric

A dynamic finished product!

Do you notice how the display shifts from warm colors to cool colors? Warm colors make us feel energized, while cool colors calm us down.

A vivid closeup of our warm collages with cool overlays

Cool to warm