Clay Tips

I love to teach clay! It is my favorite medium, and the students really enjoy it. In the past, I have always had such a hard time with writing names on the clay. I usually have the students so this, but the writing is sometimes illegible or gets rubbed off. I have found a great solution to this problem from Arts and Activities, and it works really well. I bought alphabet pasta and dumped some in bowls at every table. When students are finished working for the day, they find the letters in their name and spell it out on the bottom of their clay piece. I also have them spell their teacher's name, so I can keep the classes together. The pasta goes in the kiln, and burns away, leaving the imprint of the name. Keep in mind, this only works if it is a one day project. It will be fine if the same group of kids are coming back the next day, but the pasta molds after a few days (I found this out the hard way). This has eased the stress of trying to read crazy handwriting on pottery.

Art Mural

I really cannot believe that summer is over, but here I am at the end of the first week of school. I meant to share this at the end of the school year, but I am just getting to it. I had a group of college students from Middle Tennessee State University do a community art class at my school. They were AWESOME! The professor, Dr. Sickler-Voigt, came out every day and worked with the college students as well as my students, and we had a great time. My students made puppets from socks, wooden spoons, marionettes, and various other materials. Students took turns painting on the mural, and everyone made a puppet and performed in a puppet show. You would think that students in 5th grade might be too old for puppet shows, but they loved it. I think it is something that they do not get to do much, so it was exciting. We focused on story telling, and our mural depicts the story of our town and county. We also had a guest speaker talk to use about wire sculpting. More on that later.

The Color Wheel

I do this project every year with 5th grade. I have tons of old scrap paper donated from an invitation supply company. While the paper may be funky colors, it is good quality paper. We fold the paper so that there are 12 squares, all the same size. I give students the primary colors, and we mix the secondary colors. We use the primaries and secondaries to mix intermediate colors. That typically takes one whole class time of about 55 minutes. When they come back, we make a design template. Students have to trace the design on all 12 squares, then cut each one out. Students have to arrange the designs in the order of the color wheel, and label everything. This step usually takes about 55 minutes as well, making for 2 55 minute periods.

Klimt Printmaking 2nd grade

Well, I have lost my camera, so no posts for a while, but I have some new things to share with a borrowed camera. These are second grade, I gave them 3 5x7 inch pieces of watercolor paper, and let them color the paper with Crayola markers. We chose colors that touched on the color wheel, to avoid making brown. Students used water and a paint brush to mix the colors, then we practice drawing the Tree of Life, from Klimt. Students used the foam blocks (4x6in) from DickBlick. We used pencils to draw the design, then we printed our trees on our watercolor paper. Straight out of Arts and Activities magazine, but very nice.

5th Grade Profile Views

Fifth grade completed these wonderful profile pictures. While I do not know that I would do these again, as they took weeks to complete, the results are very nice. I began by tracing each student's profile on a sheet of white paper. I helped students draw grids inside the profile. I gave them a sheet with nine squares and asked for nine designs. I chose four and students filled in the grid with the designs. Students then chose five colors and filled the designs with colors.

Ceramic Leaves

This is one of those projects you see everywhere....so not sure exactly who to give credit to, but I have been wanting to try them for so very long. I did these with 5th grade, though they are easy enough that just about any grade level could do them. We talked about about organic/geometric shapes and about the different ways to work with clay. Fifth graders rolled out a slab, and selected a leaf from a nature walk outside. (I think all of the leaves came from the same few trees). We pressed the leaves into the clay and traced them. After the leaves were bisque fired, students glazed them with the glaze of their choice. They are the Mayco Crystallite glazes and the colors are fantastic!

Ice Cream Treats

Third Grade has studied Wayne Thiebaud and all of his glorious sugar. We viewed slides of his paintings and drew ice cream. I think some of them would have eaten the paper, that is how excited they were to draw ice cream!