Middleton Musings: Sugar Skull masks

     Since it's almost Halloween, I really wanted to do something that was both Halloween-related and yet not, since so many districts have moved towards "Harvest" themes. I settled on the idea of making some kind of sugar skull mask, and after many iterations, I eventually elected this one. We talked in class about Dia de los Muertos ("Hey, that's Spanish!") and that it is a holiday celebrated in Mexico after Halloween to celebrate family members who have died. I mentioned that the skulls were made out of sugar because it wasn't about being scary. I forgot to mention (and I read this somewhere, it is not original to me) that sugar skulls are sweet like life, but skulls to reflect death. I think that comparison may well have gone right over this groups' heads! But since so many kids in this school have Mexican friends or family, it seemed appropriate.

     I took a sugar skull stencil and oversprayed it with yellow glimmer mist. Then I cut each of them out into a 6" circle. I enlisted my husband and his drill in order to get the eye holes just right. (I don't recommend this exactly... turns out the regular drill you have at home isn't quite delicate enough to cut perfect circles through an inch of paper and paper plates.) Fortunately, the kids didn't care about that.

     I also sprayed glow in the dark fabric paint onto each of the paper plates, in the hopes that the outer edges would give off a glow. I also added some glitter glue in yellow, pink, and green to give them a little more "sugar" effect and dimension. Finally, I prepped the paper plates by using poster glue dots to adhere the popsicle sticks to the back of the paper plates.

     Each table was given a set of colored pencils ("extreme colors"), two packs of neon crayons, and two sets of flourescent highlighters. We talked about how we were using bright colors ("happy colors", two of my buddies called them), because the purpose was not to make scary skulls, but spectacular, vivid skulls. Naturally, one of the kindergarteners asked where the brown was, just seconds later.

     The trickiest part of this project (yes, it came as a surprise to me as well) was applying a glue stick to the back of the mask and adhering it to the paper plate. We had discussed how we wanted to match up the eye holes, so that wasn't the issue. It was the actual use of the highly technical glue stick. Here is a partial listing of some the issues I faced today:

twisting off the cap
twisting up the glue
applying the glue to paper
twisting the glue down so that the cap fits on
finding the cap
putting the cap onto the top of the stick
not gluing your friend's arm

     Evidently, the Common Core State Standards missed this one. I always figured it was pretty obvious how to use these things, but I have now learned that whenever I have a classroom again, I will explicitly teach the use of the glue stick. I will also teach the students how to dispose of a glue stick that no longer contains any "stick" or "glue".

     Once we finished the masks, I gave them some printed out sugar skull coloring pages (thanks to various sites on the internet and an e-book I bought: Thaneeya McArdle's Sugar Skulls) and I traded out the various neon colors for regular colored pencils, so that we would have all colors to work with.

     As you will see from the following pictures, the kids did an amazing job of coloring their masks. I am not even posting my own model (which I did late last night, and I have to admit, it was pretty lame) because they outperformed me so impressively. Overall, I am thrilled at their work today.

     Next week, I think we will be making squirrels out of egg cartons. Or maybe I will go with something easier. Something, I suspect, that does not involve glue sticks.