A small group of first graders for our school's Arts Day made a Diego Rivera-inspired mural several years ago.
I started the special activity by showing my collection of paintings by Diego Rivera, the Mexican painter and muralist. (I acquired large ones from several sources over the years, including from places online like
The children described the paintings to me. The large pictures showed flowers and parrots and people (mostly children). They each chose one that they liked best. Then in a close circle, I read them Diego by Jonah Winter, a bilingual book with excellent, child-appealing illustrations. The narration tells of his childhood and his subsequent artwork. I then announced that we would be making our own Diego-inspired "mural" to hang in the school. (Please be aware that, in reality, most of the material appearing in his muralS are very adult-oriented.)
I used one extra-large and extra-long sheet of brown butcher paper (but it doesn't have to be brown); it must have been about 10 feet by 4 feet laid out on the floor. I measured my bulletin board first. I arranged the dozen children around the entire perimeter (top, bottom, and sides) of the paper and gave each pair of children a small bucket of CRAY-PAS
which are oil pastels perfect for children to use as they are between thick crayon and chalk size and are not messy. They really got into drawing flowers and people and and signing their artwork. We ended the session by describing what had been drawn by a particular first grader and shouting, "¡Bravo, ________!"
To finish the mural, I brought it outside on a sunny day and laid it on a grassy area. I then used very dilute tempera paint in different primary colors and painted over the CRAY-PAS. (First, you need to experiment with a small piece of butcher paper with CRAY-PAS drawings on it to get the right proportions of water to paint.) The tempera highlighted the background and really made the CRAY-PAS figures stand out. It dried in nothing flat in the bright sun, and I rolled it up and hung it in the hallway on the Spanish bulletin board on the same day. Digital photos of the children at work on Arts Day appeared around the display. His bio, a short description of the activity, some original Rivera paintings, and Diego Rivera's self portrait appeared there, too. The first grade classes were invited to the hallway for a special unveiling. The next time I would have the children draw lines around "his/her" part of the mural so I could cut it up and return the individual student's contribution. I'm still eager to acquire more paintings for my Rivera collection so they children will see more of the tremendous variety of his work. For simplicity, drama, and use of color there is no one better. Lastly, the Goodwin School art teacher, Karen Anger, provided invaluable suggestions for this activity. Don't hesistate to ask your school's art teacher as well.
More interesting biographical information and a curriculum unit about Diego Rivera are found here:
There is also a Diego Rivera finger puppet available at
