Clay redo

Another lesson repeat was these clay fish by first graders. I've seen them on a few sites where they made them with pinch pots. For ours, we used a clay slab or pancake wrapped around newspaper.

The students added texture to the fish and painted the clay with watercolor after firing.

Kindergarteners tend to flatten their clay no matter what you are making with them. I just go for the flattening instinct and have students make clay masks. This student didn't add a lot of clay, but kept nice details through drawing and, again, painting with watercolor.

Clay cupcakes

I've seen this lesson on probably half a dozen blogs this year.  I loved the idea and decided to do the same lesson this semester with my third graders. We had a few bottoms get a little squished during storage, so some of them don't fit as nicely together. I will definitely do this lesson again, but do a few more teacher checks on them. I don't have glaze at my school this semester, so we painted these with acrylic paint. Some of the paint has a nice sheen, so they were really using that to make them sparkle! The students were so proud of their work, and so was I!

Firing Hazard

This is my current room set up. My kiln is in a corner of my classroom, rather than in a closet or another room. While I know that I am fortunate to have a kiln, it still seems a bit scary. Would this make anyone else nervous? 

Clay Storyteller

Clay Storyteller, originally uploaded by ashmom.

I unloaded the kiln Friday. I've never experienced anything like this, so I wondered if any of you had any experience with this. There are bubbly places on the ends of the feet. Do you see what I'm talking about? Two storytellers had these darker bubbled places. They were placed next to each other on the top shelf of the kiln. If you have any suggestions or insight, please let me know.

Wedging table

Photos, originally uploaded by ashmom.

I can't seem to get this mobile blogging down! Picture for the last post.

Wedging

The previous art teacher at one of my schools bought a lot of clay, LOTS of clay. There were boxes stacked everywhere in the closet, including 26 boxes of clay that was not usable, which leaves me to soak and wedge the clay back to a workable consistency. Luckily, a teacher at another school in my district has a wedging table. The plaster bat makes a HUGE difference. It just soaks up the water from the clay. Fortunately, I have a small school. Two boxes down...

Clay

I start at my new school tomorrow. I'm actually fairly excited about it. I still have quite a bit of organizing to do, but I'm ready for the first day at least.

I have quite a few projects that I had planned to share. First up-clay. The last art teacher left me well stocked with clay AND glaze, which was quite nice.

Fourth grade created clay busts

First graders created clay fish. These were really so fun!

Second graders studied Appalacian face jugs, which are just hilarious.

These were all fairly successful, though some of the kids got a little messy with the glazes.

Pre-K and Kindergarten looked at masks from around the world and created their own.