Calavera Puppets for Day of the Dead

I first learned about Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) and the calavera icon when I moved to the United States.  In Puerto Rico, we celebrate All Saints Day, and All Souls’ Day. This happens to coincide with the popular Día de Muertos celebrated in the United States, Mexico, and many other countries across the world.

Calavera puppets introduce children to Day of the Dead | Multicultural Kid Blogs

I wasn’t sure how to introduce my child to this beautiful tradition of honoring deceased loved ones. After all, skulls can be pretty scary and are associated with goblins, ghouls, and Halloween.

Luckily for me, there is a lovely animated children’s movie The Book of Life, that the little one and I could watch together. It was a perfect way to introduce my child to Day of the Dead, and let him know that the calaveras really weren’t so scary to look at.

Making calavera puppets

We watched the movie with the little one and his friends, and made calavera puppets afterward! I used a simple skull template that I found here.  I made a few copies of the template and used brown paper bags, glue stick, and markers.

A template for a calavera makes an easy craft.

To give the kids an idea of how to decorate their calavera I printed some colorful calaveras for them to use as a guide. Then I let them create and decorate to their hearts’ content.

Kids make colored calaveras for Día de los muertos.

They played with their Day of the Dead calavera puppets for hours on end!

 

Day of the Dead series | Multicultural Kid Blogs

This post is part of our annual Day of the Dead series.  Visit our main page for the full schedule of articles! You can also find more great resources in our Hispanic Heritage Series.

 

You might also enjoy

Celebrating Our Ancestors – Dia de los Muertos

Day of the Dead Crafts and Activities

Day of the Dead Around the World

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Frances Díaz Evans is a Latina Author, Educator, Multicultural and Language Advocate. She holds a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of the East in Puerto Rico and a master's degree in Spanish education from the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina. She is the founder and writer of the multicultural, bilingual parenting website, Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes and Discovering Español (Discovering Spanish), a business dedicated to teaching Spanish online. She can be found musing on her blog, Facebook and her favorite social media platform Instagram.

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