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. 

1st Grade Penguins

First grade has been learning about warm and cool colors. In our study of cool colors, we learned about penguins because there isn't anything cooler than a penguin! Students began the project by learning interesting facts about penguins. They then made a wet on wet watercolor background using only cool colors. They then drew and colored four penguins, made some mountains and ice, then glued everything together. I think they came out great!