School-Age: Henri Matisse

I have been joking to my library assistant that I feel like a glorified (and slightly hare-brained) art teacher at times in my new position. I am fully embracing that role with our topic about Henri Matisse this week!

1. Coloring
Since our topic is art, I wanted to ease my attendees into the topic of abstract art with abstract art coloring sheets. Kids Activity Blog has a set of abstract coloring pages already created. I printed them out and had tables with crayons for the kids to park it at as soon as they arrived.

Here are the examples my LA and I made before the program:

2. Reading
After giving the kids about 10 minutes to color their abstract coloring sheets, we read "Henri's Scissors" by Jeanette Winter. It was a perfect book to talk about Henri Matisse to a group of school-agers. It talks about Matisse as an older, ill, man, and how he began to paint using scissors instead of a paint brush.

3. Discussion
We talked about what abstract art is. I gave them the basic definition that it was simplistic and was the artists interpretation of the world around them. We talked about how many of the abstract artists used shapes and bright colors. 

I also printed pictures of abstract art from various artists. I asked them what their interpretation was of each artwork. The kids loved giving me their ideas of what they saw (their responses were hilarious and make me want to take them all on a field trip to the art museum just so I can hear what they have to say about the art pieces!).

4. Craft
Since the book we read, "Henri's Scissors", was about Matisse in his older age and how he began 'painting' with scissors, we finished up our program with collage art. I told the kids that it was their turn to make their own abstract art interpretations of the world around them. They could create whatever they wanted out of the scraps of paper we had, or cutting with scissors, and gluing down the paper to make their art.

Here were a couple examples my teen helpers made beforehand as examples:

Notes:

It was a fun topic and I enjoyed sharing information about abstract art with the kids. I especially enjoyed their thoughts on what different pieces of abstract art represented. And their abstract art pieces were so different and so fun! 

The only issue I ran into this week was behavioral of specific attendees rather than any issues with the topic or how things were presented. And those sorts of issues have to be dealt with by reminding parents about expectations. 

Personally, I try everything I can to make sure parents do NOT drop their kids off and leave for this very reason. I cannot be responsible if anything happens to a child in a public facility when I do not have a classroom to keep them contained. And I appreciate having parents nearby if they need to address behavioral issues as well. 

But, otherwise, I feel like I got a lot out of this program topic and so did my kids this week!