I normally don’t do Day of the Dead projects, but I decided to give it a shot this year.  We started by reading a cute book, The Dead Family Diaz.  It was light and humorous with great illustrations.  We started out by drawing our skulls on black paper with white oil pastel.  We painted the skulls with tempera paint and let them dry.  The marigolds were painted with tempera paint on white paper.  The next class, we cut out the marigolds, added shading and details to the skulls with both chalk and oil pastels and decorated them with the marigolds (and a hat for the boy skeletons).  I love how these turned out.  They were able to make them both cute and a little scary at the same time.  Each one has its own personality.