3rd Grade Terra Cotta Warriors

I was lucky enough to post a student teacher again this year. It was my fourth time in the last five years and it went extremely well. Based simply when student teachers are placed in my building, I often will have them work with students on a couple of projects that will wind up in the art show. 

Miss Christie Paul, who was from The Ohio State University, worked with my students for a total of seven weeks. She had written this clay lesson previous to working with my students and I told her it was too cool not to use. 

Miss Paul led discussions about the Terra Cotta warriors found in China. Students learned that each one is different and the sculptures represented many different types of people, not just warriors. Each student first drew his or her own warrior before building it out of clay. The clay went together piece by piece over the course of about three classes and was put together using scoring and a few drops of water. Some details were carved in after the sculpture was finished. 

The warriors were bisque fired, then they needed some paint. We used a two step process that works very well for aging sculptures. Students first painted the entire piece with a mix of acrylic paints that gave it the basic warm light brown color. After that layer was dry, students went over the whole sculpture again with a wash of darker brown paint. This was almost immediately wiped off. The cool part of this technique is that the wash will fill into details and cracks which really brings out the smaller, more intricate elements of the sculpture. 

Overall, this lesson turned out very well. I'm very seriously considering using it again next year! 

First Grade Clay Penguins

I think Instagram has surpassed Pinterest in usefulness for me. Since Pinterest keeps adding pins of things THEY think will be interesting to me and things that THEY think I'll want to buy, half my feed is essentially junk. Conversely, there are a lot of art teachers who post relevant, real life lessons, ideas, and observations on Instagram daily. I've gotten a good amount of new lesson ideas this year from Instagram and I've had great success with them. If you want frequent updates from my classroom, follow me on Instagram @thomas_elementary_art

One Instagram post by another teacher (@mrsallainart) inspired this new first grade clay lesson. I always base my first grade ceramics project on the pinch pot. This project included a wide, shallow pinch pot as well as a simple penguin. Penguin details (wings & beak) were added by simply smoothing clay together. The penguins were scored to attach to the base. The sculpture portion was pretty fun and not too difficult for my first graders, but the killer part of the lesson was the ice. 

I bisque fired the penguins after they had been sculpted. I then added several blue decorative glass marble type things to the base of each penguin. I got the glass from the dollar store. They're not perfectly round, but I would imagine real marbles or even small pieces of other types of glass would work just fine. I re-fired at cone 05 and achieved this sweet ice effect. The glass melted very nicely. I just recommend that you put plenty of glass in. I wound up adding more glass and re-firing the first set that I tried because they needed more glass to cover the bottom. 

This project was a big hit with the first graders and everyone up through 5th grade was super jealous that they didn't get to make one. I guess that's one way of knowing a lesson was successful. 

I hate it when that happens...

Clay projects are always the most exciting for many students. At Thomas, each grade level gets one clay lesson during the school year. 2nd grade classes had been making clay dinosaurs for the last couple of years. I saw that Ted over at Art with Mr. E did dinosaurs hatching out of eggs a year or so ago, so I thought that would be a fun way to change up the lesson. 

4th graders have always done clay castles. It's the only lesson I wrote during my student teaching that I still use. It's a project that kids look forward to from 1st grade all the way up until they're actually rolling out the slabs in order to make their castles in 4th grade. It's a super fun and engaging lesson. 

A funny thing happened this year, though. I nearly completely forgot to take pictures of the artwork for both of these projects. They were both completed right before the art show this spring and I passed them out having never photographed the work. I hate it when that happens. 

Well, here they are. Three images of the elusive bigfoot 2nd and 4th grade clay projects. 

1st Grade Pinch Pot Faces

I had my third ever student teacher earlier this year. This is the first of several of his projects I'll post examples of. Student teachers through Ohio State have to write lesson plans that are typically 12+ pages long. I'm not going to post his whole lesson. I'm literally going to spare you the details. 

On to the art! I've tried many variations of the basic pinch pot project with my 1st graders. I like for them to be able to work with the clay and make something that at least teaches a simple hand building technique. 

My student teacher, Mr. D, wrote a lesson that took the pinch pot form, turned it on its side, and made it into a face. I liked the creativity that this lesson generated. No two faces looked the same. I got a lot of monsters, animals, and many other unique creations. After being bisque fired, the clay was painted with tempera paints. Fun was had by all. 

1st Grade Clay Owls

I think I've done three different first grade clay projects in three years. I hadn't found one that I was super thrilled about, so I tried another one this year. This particular project was borrowed directly from another great blog, "artsmudge." 

I usually like to explain how I made everything, but I'm going to refer everyone to the original link I found. Full step by step instructions can be found on the artsmudge page here.

The owls are another take on a simple pinch pot project. It was a simple project that we got done in one day. My students absolutely loved working in clay for the first time. I really like all of the texture in the clay. 

I'm still looking for a first grade clay project that I really love. Please leave a comment if you have a great one!

5th Grade Clay Tiki Mugs

Tiki Cat!

Without having a student teacher this year, I actually was able to fit in a 5th grade clay project! It had been a couple of years since I had done clay with 5th grade simply because I ran out of days in the school year.  

For this project, I went back to a lesson I wrote several years back about tiki mugs. They were easy to construct since 5th grade students had done slab construction in 4th grade. The big educational addition to this project was the idea of both additive and subtractive sculpture with a slab form. 

Students all designed their own tiki faces and used a variety of clay tools to create the finished mug. Students who were most successful used loop tools to carve away details for their mugs. The loop tools just make wider and deeper lines than our other clay tools. They wind up being more visible after glaze has been applied. 

Download my lesson plan!

Clay Castles and Coat of Arms by 4th Grade

This student had just moved from Japan.
What an amazing example of a Japanese castle!!!

 I love clay. I like how it feels. I like how it smells. I like how many things can be done with it. The custodian does NOT like how, even after a thorough cleaning, it still gets tracked out of my room and down the hall. 99.9% of kids tend to agree with my assessment of clay. It's just plain fun.

Castles are an ever popular project at Thomas. It's a lesson I wrote while I was student teaching many moons ago and is the only lesson from that time that I've held onto. By 4th grade, students at Thomas have had experience with basic forms, attaching with scoring, wedging, and basic sculpture. This combines some of those skills and adds the concept of slab construction. 

I really like to use square dowels from the hardware store in order to get the thickness for the slab. There are other products out there, but the dowels have always worked perfectly for my students. 

The variety of artwork is pretty awesome with this project. No two castles are ever the same. Some students get more advanced and wind up with time to make a removable roof (lid) for their castles. The coat of arms winds up being a fancy way of making a name label. It adds some class to the whole project. 

Click here to download my lesson plan!