Matisse with pre-schoolers?

All of the sudden I'm doing two courses at the same time at Uni and I'm swamped with work!
I don't get to blog as often as I would and find that I have to plan my blogging and that takes the fun out of it a bit. So, today I'll share what I'm working on in one of my courses.
It's called Art in school and as a final examination I have to do a art project with children in preschool or elementary school. I'm now planing to work with Matisse and some of his later works called cut-outs. He made them by cutting out shapes in different coloured papers and montaging them on even larger papers. Since he was really sick in the end of his life, it was not even himself that did the final assembling but his assistant. I find this really interesting, that this is called art and we pay a lot of money to go and see these extraordinary pieces and when children do the same thing we hang it on the wall and ask them what they are trying to depict? And since cutting out shapes in paper is a common medium to work in at preschools I think I'll first introduce the medium and let them work on their own cut-outs and after that I'll show them some pictures of Matisse and his work from a book I have. Then all I have to do is document everything we do and show it as a power point presentation at Uni. :) Do I have to add that this is still just a idea in my brain?!

This is one of the pictures I'm going to show the children.
The Snail, 1952. Gouache cut-outs, 286 x 287 cm. Tate Gallery, London

This is the book I got my idea from. Matisse: cut-outs by Gilles Néret, 2002, Taschen, Köln. Here's another book in the same theme that explains more about Matisse techniques.

This is what I had to do yesterday in class. A cut-out as a visualization of what I'm going to do together with the children. I thought that I could record the conversation and see what the children has to say about the difference in their own work and in Matisse and if there is a difference? My final purpose with this is to try defuse the concept of art in an early age. (illusions?)

If someone out there has something to add or ask or just a spontaneous thought about this, please do write me a comment. I'm not totally sure about this idea...

I would love to hear your respond!

Here are another site I found where you can create your own cut- out or with your children!