What's Going On in the Classroom: Clay!

Yay for clay! During 4th quarter, my room is completely transformed into a clay studio! Okay, that's only my wishful thinking. It's still the same old room, just with lots of clay dust and lots of enthusiasm for making things with clay! Students are starting out with a pinch pot and then one other small vessel either built with slabs or coils. Here is where we're at so far:

Cupcake Containers- Kindergarten

In Kindergarten, our curriculum calls for teaching the students how pinch and roll clay to make a piece of artwork. We decided to make clay cupcake containers! The kinders were so excited!
First we had a day where we just got comfortable with the clay. Students smushed and smashed and made all sorts of things, but at the end of the day, they had to give the clay back.

During the next class, we talked about how air bubbles can form in the clay and how we need to get rid of those so our pieces don't explode in the kiln. We all wedged our clay and then rolled into a ball. Using thumbs and then pinching, students made a hole and then enlarged it. This created a small pinch pot. I showed everyone how to use their fingers to smooth the top edge. Then using a small wooden tool, students created a cupcake holder texture on the outside of their pinch pot by lightly etching vertical lines into the clay.

For our third class, students rolled out a looooong 'snake' of clay. A lot of students had trouble doing this at first, but after a kick start from the teacher, they got along just fine. Then the clay was laid on the edge of the cupcake bottom (which is by now dry so it's more sturdy!) and coiled around until it came to a point. I did a quick demo on how to lightly smudge the clay together so that the coiled 'snake' would stick. ( I also went back after the kids had left and made sure they were all secure, mostly on the inside of the coil so as not to ruin the frosting effect.) The kids then rolled out small balls of clay to attach to the top as cherries!

Out last class was painting/glazing the cupcakes. Since I have a limited amount of glaze, the students got to select a glaze for the icing and then we painted the cherries red. We're still waiting to do the last step, which is to paint the cupcake holder or the bottom of our cupcake container. We will be using tempera paint for this so that the kids have a wider variety of colors to choose from. They are so cute and charming. For the record, I borrowed the idea from a picture I saw on Artsonia, found here. I modified it a bit for kinders and I simply used this project to teach clay techniques, we didn't talk about Wayne T. It was so fun to do this project, the littles love clay!

Using Clay with Kindergarten and Figure Drawing with Kindergarten!

This post will be about all things kindergarten today! They have been busy little bees and have been working on two very exciting and fun projects. The first of which deals with clay. We are using Model Magic because it lessens the mess and is easy to work with, but also allows students to get an idea of what clay feels like and to learn the basic techniques. Their project was to make a pinch pot owl. And although they don't quite look like owls, they turned out so cute!

On the first day we talked on the rug for a bit about what we knew about owls. Then students went back to their table to work on their pinch pots. I did a demo on how to make a pinch pot, but then of course went around and helped students to make it correctly. There were a lot of pinch plates on the first try :)

On the second day we painted our, now dry, pinch pots using watercolors. Students had to make sure to give them several coats so that the color was nice and dark.

On the third day I had students do an owl coloring sheet, while I called students back to a separate table where I hot glued eyes and three feathers of their choice onto their owl. They're so adorable and the students loved their experience with clay.

Now students are working on figure drawing. What's fun about this unit is that I really wanted to students to be drawing from observation. So to achieve that we have students take turns standing on the table (yikes!) and modeling for their classmates. They have to be so still and careful or else they could lose their balance and fall! Or at least that's what I tell them.

I usually only pick students that I know can handle standing still for that long. Which trust me, isn't many of them in kindergarten! We usually do this for two class periods. Students use markers so that there's no erasing.

They just work on doing their best and if they mess up the move onto another open area of their paper and try again. This is great practice in observational drawing and looking at and drawing a figure. I don't do much instruction during this time, just give them the freedom to try it and see where it goes. We get much more detailed in later grades.