Art Activity Presentation/lesson plan:

Description: This lesson allows students to explore the work of Frida Kahlo, a Mexican artist who painted many portraits, self-portraits and works inspired by Mexican nature and popular culture. This exploration will help guide students as they learn about how realistic elements like portraits have been mixed with magical, cultural or natural elements to create exciting and unique representations of identity. They will also experiment with this genre and create their own self-portraits using small make-up mirrors to see themselves as they recreate their features on the paper. Lastly, magical elements will be added to help depict aspects of their identity that they would like to display.

Age: 3rd grade ages 8-9

Goal: SWBAT produce self-portraits with magical, cultural, natural, or realistic and explain how these self-portraits reflect their identity.

Objectives:

· Speak audibly and express thoughts, feelings, and ideas clearly.

· Create and analyze artistic work.

· Interpret intent and meaning in artistic work.

· Organize and develop artistic ideas and work.

Materials/ Equipment:

Pencils

Drawing Paper

Make-up mirrors

Self Portraits of Frida

Vocabulary Anchor Chart

Vocabulary:

Portrait - a painting, drawing, photograph, or engraving of a person, especially one depicting only the face or head and shoulders.

Self-Portrait – a portrait of an artist produced or created by that artist.

Magical – relating to or using magic or fantasy elements.

Realistic – representing familiar things in a way that is true to life.

Magical Realism – art that has a realistic view of the world with additional magical elements.

Procedure:

Introduction:

Hello 3rd graders. Today we are going to explore a Mexican artist named Frida Kahlo. Who here has heard of Frida? Well Frida painted many portraits which are realistic paintings, drawings, or photographs of a person. She was well known for her self-portraits. Who thinks they can tell us what a self-portrait is?

Exactly! A Self portrait is a portrait of yourself!

Today we are going to create our own self-portraits inspired by Frida Kahlo, who incorporated different magical elements in her paintings. So let’s start by thinking about magic elements that we might have seen before.

Motivation/ Engagement Questions:

Which parts of Frida’s artwork would you describe as realistic? Why?

Which parts of Frida’s artwork would you describe as magical? Why?

What do you think the magical aspects represent?

Which aspects of Frida’s artwork represent her Mexican culture? Why?

How would you describe your physical features using words?

What are some ways that we can represent our own culture using pictures?

Demo:

Carousel Activity

Printouts of Frida Kahlo’s work are placed on each table. Students move around the room in groups and discuss each painting as they note the realistic, magical, cultural and natural elements they see. Discussion and note-taking are done in intervals of three minutes at each station.

Practice

Students then return to their desks with their notes and take a moment to think about what they will use to reflect themselves. Then they will use a make-up mirror to draw a self-portrait focused on the realistic aspects of themselves. Afterwards, students will add a magical element to their self-portraits.

Art References:

Trip to the Museum: Frida Kahlo