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When I first introduced Frida Kahlo art to my primary school kids art classes, they just couldn’t get enough of her weird and interesting surrealist paintings and her eclectic fashion style full of colour.
Frida Kahlo is such an inspiration considering how devoted she was to her artwork despite a life full of tragic circumstances.
Getting to know Frida Kahlo
Who is Frida Kahlo?
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican self-taught artist born in 1907, and is considered to be one of the most important artists of modern times. Her paintings depicted the strength of a woman, which is why she is still such a celebrated artist today.
What is Frida Kahlo best known for?
Kahlo was best known for her surrealist self-portraits that deal with themes of the human body, identity and mortality. Her paintings are even more impressive when you realise she painted many of her portraits from her bed as she recovered from a severe back injury.
Kahlo’s infamous unibrow and fashion sense
Not only is Frida Kahlo most famous her surreal paintings, but she had an incredible sense of self and style, and used her image and ‘ahead its time’ fashion choices to keep people talking even to this day. Well known for her prominent unibrow and occasional mustache, she used these components of her personal self image to comment on male and female beauty standards.
Frida Kahlo kids self-portrait art lesson
I started this art lesson on Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits by showing this video (2 minutes), to give them a few more visuals and let her story sink in. However, some of my classes were on days when the school had no internet! So luckily my lesson pack came in handy as it includes a full set of slides picturing and describing her and her work, no internet needed!
The Lesson Pack is an introduction to Frida Kahlo, it’s great for children around 9 years old. I used it for Years 4, 5, and 6. It includes 25 slides on Frida’s life and work, set up almost like a storybook with images of her most famous portrait paintings and surreal art. Perfect Art History starter lesson, and Women’s Month celebration project.
What’s inside the Frida Kahlo Art Lesson Pack:
- 25 Slide Intro to Frida Kahlo Presentation
- Drawing Practice Sheet
- 2 pre-written Lesson Plans & a Blank one for you
- Frida Kahlo Colour by Numbers Activity Sheet
- After Project Art Evaluation Sheet
What You’ll Need:
- Frida Kahlo Lesson Pack
- Pencils
- Colouring materials
- Black Marker
- Card stock paper
What To Do:
- Use the Lesson Pack to learn about Frida Kahlo.
- Sketch 4 different versions of a Frida inspired portrait on the Drawing Practice sheet in the Lesson Pack, and choose the best one for the good copy
- Draw the portrait on a larger scale on the card stock paper
- Colour the portrait in your choice of oil pastels, paint, crayons, pencil crayon.
- Once dry, outline the portrait and details with black marker
- Have fun finishing up the unit or lesson with a Frida Kahlo portrait colour by numbers activity sheet!
After watching the video, I set up the SmartBoard to show the slide with all her portraits so they had a reference while they created their own self-portraits. When they were finished creating their pieces, those who were finished got to colour in the Frida Kahlo colour theory printable from the Lesson Pack for some extra class time fun.