As fifth graders walked into my classroom and saw photos of Day of the Dead candy skulls on my ActivBoard, they were so excited to find out what we were going to do that day. Then, when I told them we would be using clay…well, “excited” doesn’t begin to describe their reaction!
After learning about the Day of the Dead and taking a look at some skull-related artwork, students made their own skulls with clay. They started out with slabs I had rolled out for them before class and cut out a skull shape. Then they wedged their extra clay, rolled out a slab themselves, and cut out the parts of the face. They used the score and slip method to attach the parts of the face to the skull.
I gave students the option of using some templates I created to cut out the shape of the skull and the parts of the face. The primary learning objective for this lesson was for students to use the score and slip method correctly, so I didn’t want them to get caught up cutting out “perfect” shapes and run out of time to attach them.
After the skulls came out of the kiln, students painted them with acrylic paint left over from the last art teacher’s purchases. Once I run out of acrylic, buying more probably won’t be an option within my supply budget, but in the past I’ve had students paint clay with tempera and then give it a coat of floor wax (an idea I found on Splats, Scraps, and Glue Blobs) once the paint dries.
Fifty Reds 