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!

Day of the Dead Alter

Dia de los Muertos

Every year we set up a Day of the Dead alter as a school and make our ofrenda ("offering") for someone we have lost or a Mexican artist.  This year, we made our ofrenda for our school secretary, Jill, who lost her battle with cancer recently.  The kids made her paper symbols of the things that she loved (i.e. Nebraska Cornhuskers) and/or things they thought of when they thought of Jill and wrote her a note on the back of that symbol.  It was a great way for the kids to find closure in their sadness and to celebrate her life and the things that Jill loved.

This is a K-8 school and we (myself and Sara--the K-3 art teacher) try to get all of the grade levels involved.  This year the Kindergarten made papel picado and paper calavera masks, First Grade made candles from toilet paper rolls and tissue paper, Second Grade painted rocks as calavera, 4th-8th Grades made symbols for Jill as well as papel picado from patterns and Eighth Grade also made 3D calavera-paper sculls from a template found here on skulladay.blogspot.com.  The milk jug skeletons were actually created last year with my seventh graders but they were too great not to reuse!  Pictures of last year's display are on my blog here

Close Up of 8th Grade Calavera from Skulladay's Template:

Art Club Made and Decorated Sugar Skulls!

Day of the Dead Dioramas

I started introducing the lesson showing a slideshow of various Day of the Dead dioramas and we talked about what we saw.  We discussed what an assemblage piece can look like but I stressed that the possibilities were endless.  I explained what our process would be and left it very open ended.  Students were allowed to partner up into groups or work alone.  Each student (regardless if they worked alone or in a group) needed to create at least one skeleton from clay, everyone needed a theme and to include various details (requirements varied based on how many students worked on each diorama) keeping in with the Day of the Dead theme.  All words were supposed to be in Spanish and there were to be various three-dimensional elements from mixed media.

We started making our skeletons out of air dry clay (I would use model magic in the future) so they would have time to dry before we painted them and we could work on our boxes while we had to wait that out.  The 7th graders are a bit big to gather around one small table for a demonstration, so I've started making these demo videos to play for them...it's so much easier for them to see this on the projector.  This video is simply about forming a skeleton shape from clay and how to give them facial expressions

Last but not least, as I promised in my previous post here, these are a few of the photos from our 7th Grade Day of the Dead Dioramas.    The photos don't do them justice!  The students did a great job transforming their boxes into dioramas!

Percy Jackson Scene

View of the skeletons in the Percy Jackson scene

Wedding

Love Beach

The Proposal (with fountain that actually holds water and drips down from each tier)

Mariachi Band

'Mi Taco Es Su Taco' Taco Truck

The Civil War with Abraham Lincoln

Evel Knievel

Dancers

Cardinals Game

Zoo

Leisurely Reading with Owl in the Tree 

Dia de los Muertos

Day of the Dead Ofrenda

It's that time of year again, time for the skeletons to dance and skulls to be adorned!  Day of the Dead (actually two days) is on November 1st and 2nd, so Mrs. Grabau (K-3 Art) and I have teamed up with Mrs. Buckmiller, our Spanish teacher to create a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda with our students!

An ofrenda is simply an offering table where you can create a colorful display to honor and celebrate the life of dead loved ones.  Traditional decorations include skeletons (known as calacas), skulls (the kids beg to do sugar skulls but I am not ready to take that on), decorative paper flags (papel picado) as well as photos of who the ofrenda is for and some of their favorite foods and/or objects.  Each grade level contributed to the ofrenda and it looks outstanding! 

With my fourth grade students, I created skull prints using scratch foam.  They started by sketching out their skulls in simple shapes and then filling them with decorative lines and shapes as well as addressing the background.  We traced over our sketch with a sheet of foam underneath it to transfer the idea.  Then removed the sheet of paper and traced over it directly on the foam to really make sure the various shapes and lines were indented.  The students got to choose what color of ink they wanted to print with and on what color of paper.  As you can see, they are beautiful and so creative!

My fifth graders created papel picado.  We talked about symmetry and how to cut our symmetrical shapes from paper.  For this particular activity, I gave my students four templates to choose from.  Three of which I drew up based on other ideas I had seen before and one of them was found here but later I also found these ones too.  I divided up the templates into three categories--easy, medium and hard.  I let my students select their own ability level, though when the students who chose 'easy' finished early, I asked them to try a 'medium.'  They simply folded a sheet of paper (their color choice) inside of the template and cut along the lines.  They were all pretty pleased with their work and were surprised at how challenging it was to cut out some of the pieces.  I love how they look all together!

My seventh graders did a couple of things for the ofrenda.  For the entire month of October (and even at the end of September I think), whenever they finished an assignment early, I asked them to paint on some bones.  Though they aren't ordinary bones, they are milk jug bones!  I have seen milk jug skeletons around for quite awhile but had never made one myself.  So I decided that as students finished up early, they would paint on a part of the skeleton in honor of Day of the Dead.  I simply reminded them of the holiday, it's purpose and how it is a bright and colorful holiday.  I encouraged them to layer paints and designs (yes, you are actually supposed to paint on top of someone else's painting this time!) and to play with color.  I couldn't be happier with how they turned out!  Once we finished assembling the first one, he was dubbed Senior Huesos (Mr. Bones) and he graced our presence in the art room until the ofrenda was assembled.   We have a few others in the works, but so far Senior Huesos is repping the ofrenda alone.  But I gotta say, Day of the Dead milk jug skeletons are the way to go!

My seventh graders also took on an assignment which satisfied a personal obsession.  They made Day of the Dead dioramas!  My absolute favorite booths at every art festival I attend, are Day of the Dead themed artwork with the boxes filled with elaborate scenes and details!  I just adore the tiny scenes and all of the colors melding together!  I shared this obsession with my students and some of them even agreed with me about how impressively cool they are.  I showed them a PowerPoint I created about them and we discussed their various qualities of each diorama.  We also discussed assemblage art and how they could use any number of items I had in the classroom as part of their scenes or bring in objects of their own.  The students then chose to work either alone or with a group (no more than 4 per group); however, I reminded them that with a group, I expected more detail and more elaborate scenes than those working alone.  We used air dry clay for our skeletons (in the future I will use model magic, as the air dry clay is brittle--it IS clay--and we keep losing limbs and will need lots of epoxy!) and a random assortment of materials for everything else!  I can't help but smile every time I think about this project.  While they aren't quite finished yet, they are simply amazing!  I will be sure to post photos as soon as they finish!