Ideas for ARTS & CRAFTS...

Aztec jewellery, Great Missenden CE Combined School

Use these Mexicolore activity sheets (designed by Deb Tyler) with your class to make your own Aztec sacrifice knives...!
Download the Activity Sheets below. They form a 2-part set.
(Top picture: Proud Year 5 pupil, Great Missenden CE Combined School, Buckinghamshire, with home-made double-headed Aztec serpent)

There is no country in the world quite as rich as Mexico in craft traditions. (If you need inspiration via books, search anywhere you can for books by Chloe Sayer - not only is she a world expert, her books are always beautifully illustrated and accessible to the general public [contact us if you want more details/help])... You could start simply by imitating traditional Huichol yarn/wool paintings: to see a glorious Mexican example, follow the link below to our Story of Corn. The Huichol culture was ‘related’ to the Aztecs, albeit not that closely.

And to try your own, why not follow the example of Shelley Primary School near Horsham, West Sussex, where we gave a presentation on the Aztecs (to all KS2) in June 2009: Claire Davis, the school’s Art & Literacy Coordinator, took inspiration from the wonderful book for children The Shawl (learn more below) and in no time the Years 4-6 children were producing easy-to-make string paintings (and shawls!). The school digitised simple Aztec designs based on those in the book, used them to encourage the pupils to learn how to invert, flip, re-size and duplicate the images on the computer, printed out the results and invited the children to colour them in. Here we show you some of the results, snapped during our visit...