9/27/17
Día de los Muertos Sugar Skull Project!
Lesson:
We talked about the Mexican holiday Día De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Every November 1st-2nd families and friends honor and mourn their dead loved ones by celebrating the life they had with happiness and joy. One tradition is to decorate sugar skulls to place on their graves.
Materials:
- paper one smaller, one larger
- pencils
- watercolor paint & brushes
- crayons
- feathers
- tissue paper
- glue
- And dia de los Muertos tape (optional)
Step by step the students drew a skull with pencil on the smaller paper:
- First draw a U for the chin to fit half-way on the page.
- Connect the two points of the U with a half circle for the top part of the skull.
- Draw circles as eyes, a triangle as a nose, and a rectangular shape with teeth for the mouth.
- Once they had their skull drawn we showed examples of the real sugar skulls with lacing, ribboning, hearts, and flowers decorated onto them so they could get some inspiration.
- We had them decorate their skulls using crayons and watercolor.
- Then we mounted their artwork onto the bigger paper and bordered it with Día de los Muertos tape.
- For final additions students adorned their sugar skulls with feathers and tissue paper flowers, specifically marigolds because it is the flower of the dead.
