Frida Kahlo - Lesson 2: Self-Portrait

With detailed lesson plans, colourful slideshows for each lesson, differentiated activity ideas and a range of printable worksheets and resources, this KS2 Frida Kahlo Art lesson pack provides all you need to teach your class about this inspiring artist and will soon have your class creating some fabulous artwork of their own.

In the first lesson of this series, your KS2 class will find out about the life of Frida Kahlo and explore many Frida Kahlo paintings for themselves. The included slideshow presentation for the teaching input introduces your class to this famous artist as they learn about her life and career. They will then explore many of Frida Kahlo's paintings, being encouraged to ask and answer questions as they do so and analyse the paintings presented to them.

By the end of the lesson, your Year 5 or Year 6 class will have a good understanding of who Frida Kahlo was and be able to analyse, describe and comment upon a variety of Frida Kahlo paintings.

Use this inspiring Frida Kahlo self-portrait lesson plan for Year 5 or Year 6 to help your class discover the powerful and often passionate self-portraits that Frida Kahlo is famous for, as well as giving them the chance to create self-portaits of their own.

Looking through some examples of Frida Kahlo's self-portaits, your children will discover the subtle differences between each one and why Kahlo painted so many pictures of herself.

Your class will then learn about the proportions of the face before trying their hand at their own proportional self-portraits.

Invite your class to look more closely at Kahlo’s self-portraits and how she used them to express not only her emotions, but her identity as a Mexican woman. Encourage your class to reflect on their own identities and use backgrounds and objects in their self-portrait to express these identities.

Enter the Frida Kahlo Surrealism debate with your class as they consider whether or not Kahlo was a Surrealist artist. In this ready-to-teach lesson, your KS2 class will use the works of Dalí and Adnams to compare to Kahlo’s work, using what they find out to decide for themselves whether they consider Frida Kahlo to be a Surrealist painter.

The children can then use this understanding of Surrealism to inspire their own Surrealist work based on dreams or animals.

Present the idea that art can be used to tell stories of emotions and autobiographical moments in an artist’s life. Look into Kahlo’s paintings and discover how she painted pictures of important moments in her life and use these to encourage your class to create an autobiographical piece of their own.