Living in Houston, Texas, we have a wonderfully diverse community. This year I decided to teach the girls about the Mexican holiday called Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead. There are many Day of the Dead celebrations in Houston each year, and since our school is Catholic, the girls had been learning about "All Souls Day" and "All Souls Day" which is celebrated at the same time and is basically a Western-Catholic version of the same holiday.
Day of the Dead celebrates the life of those who have passed. It is a wonderfully happy and colorful holiday with parades and altars created to commemorate the lives of our loved ones. A common symbol used in the holiday is the skull or calavera. Second and fourth graders viewed many different versions of the colorful skulls, and we discussed common decorations and colors used by the Mexican people.
The second grade project was created by first looking at skulls and drawing a skull facing front. They decorated each skull with colored pencils, cut them out and glued them to black paper adding a border around each in either lime green or hot pink. Patterns were added to the frame and jewels and glitter embellished the final product.
The fourth graders looked at classroom skeletons so that they could create a three dimensional skull out of self hardening clay. When the clay dried, they painted them with tempera and embellished them with glitter. The products were amazing and many students had the opportunity to celebrate the life of a loved one lost.
