Our Year Three Innovator is Frida Kahlo!
Every year our teachers and students name their classroom after a favourite innovator. It is a fun strategy Kingsgate uses to inspire learning and innovation in our classrooms!
Considered one of the Mexico’s greatest artist, Frida Kahlo was born on July 6, 1907 in Coyocoan, Mexico City, Mexico. She grew up in the family’s home where was later referred as the Blue House or Casa Azul. He father is a German descendant and photographer. He immigrated to Mexico where he met and married her mother Matilde. Her mother is half Amerindian and half Spanish. Frida Kahlo has two older sisters and one younger sister.
Frida Kahlo had poor health in her childhood. She contracted polio at age of 6 and had to be bedridden for nine months. This disease caused her right leg and food grow much thinner than her left one. She limped after she recovered from the polio. She has been wearing long skirts to cover that for the rest of her life. Her father encouraged her to do lots of sports to help her recover. She played soccer, went swimming, and even did wrestle, which is very unusual at that time for a girl. (Glad things have changed)
Kahlo was involved in a traumatic bus accident at the age of 18, leaving her badly injured and confined to a bed for months. During her slow recovery, she took up painting from her bed, and subsequently abandoned her academic pursuits.
Kahlo painted prolifically and was the subject exhibitions in both the United States and Europe, despite chronic pain and destabilizing health problems. She died in Mexico City, Mexico on July 13, 1954 at the age of 47. In 1958, her home the La Casa Azul (The Blue House) in which she was born and died, was converted into the Museo Frida Kahlo. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and the National Museum of Women in the Art in Washington, D.C., among others.
Innovators innovate — that is, they create new ideas or ways of doing things.Anyone who blazes a trail into new territory can be an innovator — athletes, artists, business people, and chefs, to name just a few. We know that Kingsgate students are destined to be innovators in the future because our classroom practices guide and inspire innovation!
Frida Kahlo certainly inspired and entertained people. She was an artist who made a difference despite obstacles.
Our Year Three Classroom was named “Frida Kahlo” in her honour!
Ms Liv Hoar and the children are very inspired by her!
Would you like to learn more about Frida Kahlo?