Cool Clay for Cool Days

Hi Art Spotters! I'm doing a little Blogging Catch-up today, and thought I'd take you back to chilly December when it was time for the 3rd and 4th graders to start their clay projects.  I chose snowmen for the 3rd grade classes and igloos for the 4th grade classes.  The students were SO excited to begin....and so was I!

We decided to just focus on the face and top-hat for the 3rd graders snowmen.  Students rolled out their clay using rolling pins until it was about a quarter of an inch thick.  They then laid a template onto the clay and traced around it, removing the extra clay as they went. To make the face of the snowmen, students rolled clay spheres to look like pieces of coal for the eyes and mouth.  They made a clay slab and cut out a triangle shape for the carrot nose.  I demonstrated how to use the score and slip technique to attach the eyes, nose, and mouth onto the face of the snowman.

Here's what the snowmen looked like before they were loaded into the kiln to be fired.

 Once the snowmen were fired, students glazed them using white, black, and orange glaze purchased with a grant from the Grandville Education Foundation.  The final touch was adding a festive ribbon sash across the top-hats.  The results were fantastic!

4th graders were also really successful with their igloo clay projects.  We started by creating the snowy ground for our igloos to sit on by flattening out a piece of clay like a pancake. To make the igloo, students created a pinch pot and then attached it upside-down onto the ground piece.  The front entrance of the igloo was made by cutting a long rectangle from a slab of clay and then curving it into a "U" shape and attaching it to the front of the dome.  Student carved lines into the dome and front entrance of the igloo to look like bricks of ice.  If students had time after constructing the igloo, they could use any remaining clay to make snow balls, snowmen, and penguins!

Here are some pictures of the igloos after the first firing and before the glaze firing. 

I still have to work on getting some pics of the finished igloos after the glaze firing, so stay tuned for a later post of those!

Thanks for stopping by here at The Art Spot!

-Miss O'Donnell