Ellen Stavitsky's Fourth Grade students studied the work of aboriginal artists, particularly their use of pattern and color. Each student drew an animal. fish or bird that is indigenous to Australia.  Inventing a background of stripes, shapes, spirals, and dots, they created a unified design. Some students enhanced their painting with a patterned frame. They learned about color mixing, composition, and the elements of a good design.

Ms. Hanauer's students studied the work of the Gee's Bend quilters. Several generations of African American women in Gee's Bend, Alabama, who created quilts to keep their families warm and to brighten their homes. They pieced fabric remnants to invent many imaginative patterns.  People admire Gee's Bend beautifully composed quilts, because the artists used inventive, irregular patterns that are  different from traditional quilts.

Ms. Lewis' and Ms Hanauer's classes followed the work of Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), one of the most important 20th-century collage artists, who used found papers from the street for his beautifully composed collages. His small but bold collages combine beautiful papers and text into perfectly composed and balanced designs. Working with bus tickets, stamps, tobacco labels, newspapers and candy wrappers, Schwitters created subtle yet powerful works of art. Schwitters chose worn and tattered papers that have a sense of the past. He also incorporated letters because of their strong graphic quality.

For this project, students reviewed principles of collage such as overlap, opacity, transparency, warm colors, cool colors, edges, and lines. They learned to repeat colors or a design element in different areas of the collage to unify the composition. They learned that artists limit themselves to a certain color scheme, element or palette to make an effective design. In the next class, after they have composed the large and medium shapes of their collages, they can add smaller shapes,
accents of tape or sew into the collage to unify it with line.