How to Make a Moving Paper Skeleton
Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is an important holiday for many families.
In some communities, people create skeleton figures called calacas. These paper figures show active skeletons and are not spooky.
This art project lets you build your own dancing paper skeleton!
Materials Needed:
- 1 cardstock skeleton pattern drawn by an adult (one head and torso piece, two arms, two legs)
- Bright crayons
- Child-safe scissors
- 4 metal split pins
Directions:
-
Color the skeleton pieces. Use crayons to decorate the bones with bright colors and designs.
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Cut out the parts. Carefully cut out the body, two arms, and two legs. Ask an adult for help if you need it.
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Get the holes punched. Take your cutout pieces to an adult helper. The adult will use a tool to make small holes at the four joints: two shoulders and two hips.
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Attach the arms and legs. Push a split pin through the hole in one arm and into a shoulder hole. Do the same for the other arm and both legs.
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Fasten the pins. Turn the skeleton over. Ask an adult to help you open and flatten the pin ends on the back.
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Make it dance! Gently move the arms and legs into a fun dancing pose.
- holiday:
- A special day of celebration.
- pattern:
- A guide that shows the shapes to draw or cut.
- joints:
- The places where two body parts meet and bend.
- attach:
- To connect or join one thing to another.
- pose:
- A position or shape made with the body.
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Preview questions from this passageShowHide
- 1What special holiday is mentioned at the beginning of the passage?
- 2What are the paper skeleton figures called in some communities?
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About this how-to / procedural passage for Lower Elementary
“How to Make a Moving Paper Skeleton” is a how-to / procedural reading passage about Paper Craft, written for Lower Elementary. It takes about 1 minute to read (219 words) and comes with an interactive quiz and a printable worksheet with comprehension questions and an answer key.