5th Grade Dia de los Muertos Calavera Prints

As part of a broader unit about the Dia de los Muertos ("Day of the Dead") holiday in Spanish, Music, and Art, the fifth graders created these cool and colorful prints.  One session was spent reviewing examples of different decorated calaveras (Spanish for "skull') and drawing our own designs on a simple line drawing of a skull that I provided.  In a second session, the students transferred their calavera designs to Styrofoam printing plates (by taping their designs to the foam and tracing them, pressing hard enough to impress the design into the foam).  A third and final (and messy!) session was spent rolling ink (two colors, bleeding into each other, were used on each print) onto the printing plates and transferring the colored designs paper. I was really impressed both with the students intricate and creative designs and how their prints improved with each new attempt!