This art inspired activity uses a selection of self portraits by Frida Kahlo to explore more advanced Emotion Word learning.

The practitioner introduced Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, to pupils using a short story from “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls”. They learned that Kahlo turned to painting whilst recovering from a bus accident, aged 18 and that Kahlo’s early paintings were largely portraits of herself and close friends, where she explored emotion and expression. Although she was a happy person, her paintings often depicted negative and complex emotions.

A selection of Kahlo’s self portraits was shared with pupils, along with the Emotion Words word bank. The learning intention was to identify complex emotion words from the facial expressions in Kahlo’s artwork. Pupils studied the pictures, then highlighted all the emotion words they felt were represented in Kahlo’s artwork, before selecting the most appropriate word to add to their worksheet. Pupils worked in pairs to give feedback on word selection, referring to the word bank to up level any simpler word choices. The words were then collated on a large orange cog, for display.

As a follow up activity, pupils chose another complex emotion word to illustrate themselves.