Today is our third day of our adventures in Mexico and we've found out a lot. Today, we learned more about the culture and art. We looked at books about art and crafts, and we watched some videos about Mexican dances.
An area of art assosciated with Dia De Los Muertos are calacas though they are made year round. Calaca is a Mexican Spanish term for skeleton and is a figure of a skull or skeleton. Their origins are traced to Aztec imagery, and are frequently shown with marigold leaves and foliage (marigolds are the flowers of the dead). As with other aspects of this festival, they are generally depicted as joyous rather than mournful figures. They are often shown wearing festive clothing, dancing, and playing musical instruments indicating a happy afterlife. This illustrates the Mexican belief that no dead soul likes to be thought of sadly, and that death is a joyous occasion.
However, a twist on that is the Guatamalan culture where "calaca" is understood as "death." The figure of a bare skeleton represents death as with any culture. However, it implies fear of death thus, it is not depicted as a joyful image as in Mexico. Calacas aren't just depicted in art through clay, carvings, paper mache, drawings, etc. They are also in the movies. If you're ever seen The Nightmare Before Christmas or The Corpse Bride (both are done by Tim Burton), you're looking at calaca type figures. These can also be found in games such as the Grim Fandango (lots of fun, a mystery game that I used to enjoy when I still had the time to do so).
Todays craft is string paintings. As we explored Mexican art, we discovered beautiful artwork done by the Huichol Indians of Mexico. These are actually gorgeous and extremely intricate works of art. The artist spreads wax on the surface and then pushes yarn into it. It doesn't sound like it would be that great but they're exquisite. That got me thinking it would be a fun craft for my little guys. However, I didn't feel like pulling out the wax I have set aside for the lip balm and salves I'm supposed to be making. So, instead, I got the idea to pull out the glue instead.
All you need are books or pictures of Mexican art, cardboard or heavy paper, glue, yarn in various colors, and scissors. Look at examples of art and then have the student draw out their picture. Spread glue over it and lay on your yarn. Alternatively, you could use calaver and calaca pictures as templates and use them as a guidline. There are also coloring pages in the teaching packets I posted yesterday. I hauled out my copy of Art Activities from Around the World by Paula Corbett (this is OOP but you can find used copies at Amazon and Alibris). This book is full of reproducibles with one and sometimes more from several different countires. I did a post on this a couple of years ago and you can see that here.
There are three crafts for Mexico: a picture frame with flowers that could work for the Ofrenda if the flowers are colored red, orange, and yellow; a skeleton puppet wearing a hat and holding a guitar; and a string art frame with a thunder bird in the middle. I printed (or rather drew) the skeleton puppet out. Because of the way it was drawn, there were several areas for the kids to lay on the yarn. The whole idea behind calacas is that though the body may be gone, the essential personality remains which is why the skeletons are depicted enjoying so many things as they did in life. That's why the skeleton puppet was a perfect choice to blend these two art forms together. I'll get pics of their art posted as soon as I remember where I stashed the battery charger for our camera.
A few examples of string paintings, some lesson plans and templates you might use:
~ Videos ~
~ More Books ~
  
  
~ Other Sites ~
Calaca Gallery
Line Art Skull (pdf) ~ Skull cut & fold template for older kids. Really cool.
Skeleton Cut Out Decoration from Sewing Stars
Quick Skull plushie to sew
Day of the Dead Crafts
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