Snail Mail No. 1: Mathematical Matisse

What if a maths lesson arrived through the letterbox?

Introducing the very first edition of TAG Snail Mail: a collectible series of creative learning adventures designed to bring curiosity, artistry and intellectual expansion into the home.

In Mathematical Matisse, young thinkers step inside the story of Henri Matisse’s extraordinary cut-out, The Snail. It took Matisse an entire year to create his original, sitting in bed and directing his assistants as they moved enormous pieces of painted paper around the walls. By learning the mathematics of coordinates and transformations, your child will make their own version in an afternoon.

First, they will plot a collection of colourful shapes onto a coordinate plane. Then, using translation, reflection and rotation, they will move each piece into position and watch their artwork emerge.

Inside your Snail Mail:

• A beautifully illustrated Mathematical Matisse lesson zine
• A large coordinate-grid activity
• A collection of patterned paper shapes to plot, transform and arrange
• Clear, child-friendly guidance for translation, reflection and rotation
• Questions for artistic analysis, discussion and independent thinking
• An open-ended creative challenge

Children will practise:

• Reading and plotting coordinates
• Translation, reflection and rotation
• Spatial reasoning and mathematical vocabulary
• Following multi-step instructions
• Artistic analysis and visual interpretation
• Creative decision-making and independent thought

Designed for curious children aged approximately 7–11. Younger children may enjoy completing the adventure alongside an adult, while older children can work independently and take the artistic and mathematical challenges further.

Thoughtfully written in the TAG classroom and illustrated by a real artist, Mathematical Matisse is tactile, screen-free and entirely open-ended. It is not simply something to complete. It is something to enter, question, rearrange and make your own.

PRE-ORDER INFORMATION

This product is currently available to pre-order and will be dispatched on September 15th 2026.

The first 400 pre-ordered copies will form a special individually numbered first edition, marked by hand and from our original reconstruction of The Snail in our classroom.

Price includes UK postage.