Day of the Dead Calaveras

Day of the Dead Calaveras

It's no secret that I LOVE Day of the Dead and all of the amazing artwork and stylings that come with it!  So I'm always playing around with new lessons to give the kids a variety of materials while still honoring the traditions of Day of the Dead.  

This year, I did some foil calaveras with my fourth graders.  After talking with the kids about the traditions and history of DoD (this is mostly recap for the kiddos at this point) we started off with a sheet of paper and drew out our plans for a highly decorated calavera (aka skull).  After they showed me that they had come up with a plan for their calavera that used space well and honored the DoD styles, I gave them a sheet of tooling foil and a magazine.  They taped their drawing to the sheet of foil and placed it on a magazine (for some give).  We have wood tools for this, but I just had the 4th graders use their pencils to trace their design on their paper again, which pressed it into the foil as it rested on the magazine.  Once they had transfered the design onto the foil, they removed the paper and drew/pressed directly into the tooling foil for a more defined look.  I let them decide if they liked the raised side or recessed side and added some color using permanent markers.  I'm always a little worried about the fragility of the foil and its sharp edges with the kids, so this time around, I precut some large construction paper squares and had the kids create a border for their calavera.  After they were done with that, I hot glued their foil right onto the paper for them.  They all came out so unique and colorful, I was in love!!!!  I just wish I had taken more photos (I could have swore I took more, but these were all I could find on my iPad--maybe if I blogged more regularly, I would still have the artwork to rephotograph.  Whoops)!  And the photos I did take, don't do them justice.  They were very bright and festive!