sugar skull masks

My class on mask making is my first attempt at teaching a mask class. Since it was my first week with this group and first time teaching masks, I wanted to do a simpler project. I also wanted to try and teach masks that can have a little bit of an educational aspect to them, so I talked with the kiddos about Day of the Dead and Calaveras for a bit before we got started. 

This was my demo skull, which Xena felt like photo bombing as usual...

Overall I think it went very well. I used this post as inspiration for these masks, with a couple tweaks. I simplified the instructions of sketching out the skull on the plate a bit.  Instead I drew it gigantic on the white board and had the kids sketch it step by step with me. I left it up to them how big they wanted to make the cheeks of their skulls, and how large of jaws they wanted too.

Then for decorating we used oil pastels (markers would have been better but I love oil pastels) and crepe/tissue paper to give them a bit of 3D. And we taped big popsicle sticks to the back instead of using string to tie them on. 

Then when the kiddos were all done, I had some mini paper plates to make baby sugar skull masks! A lot of the girls decided these would be for their dolls at home.