Fifth graders began the trimester learning about Henri Matisse’s paper cutouts. After analyzing the composition and patterns in some of Mattise’s paintings, students made collages of rooms with floors, walls, ceilings, and furniture. Repetitive patterns inspired by Mattise were a unifying aspect of the rooms. Next, fifth graders embarked on a movie making adventure. Students used their Matisse rooms as backgrounds for stop frame animation movies. Each student created characters out of construction paper and filmed their characters completing different actions. Each movement by the characters was captured with a digital camera, making sure to keep the camera steady on a tripod so that the characters’ action remained the focus. We imported the digital pictures into our Mac computers and used iMovie to animate the stills into movies. Less