Survey Says: CLAY!

I'm going to be returning to my teaching schedule soon and wanted to poll my previous after school students to see what they wanted to see more of in the coming year and the media that won was: CLAY!

This is probably no surprise to some of you, but this means I am going to make a serious effort to include some awesome clay projects with this year's classes! This does take a bit of planning since I don't have a kiln--this means air dry clay it is. I have some plans for Model Magic, Crayola Air Dry Clay, and plans to test a couple of new (to me) air dry clays on the market. Any suggestions?

Another downfall: drying space. Since I'm "art on a cart" I don't have space to store the items safely where I teach while they dry. That means I pack all the clay items up, load them in the car and bring them home to dry until the next class. This stresses me out! I worry that one of my kids will get into them or the dog will knock them over. I'm come up with some good ways to transport and store clay creations in progress, but it will be nice when I don't have to worry about moving them.

So, without further ado, I repost this lovely "Forever Sandcastle" post I did awhile back. The lesson is from Family Fun magazine and is really fun for the children to make. Make one yourself and enjoy those summertime memories all year long!

Whip up a batch of air dry sand clay
to make a forever sandcastle of your own!

Big Mouth Critters

OK, so I've seen those clay critters on the internet where students make pinch pots and use those for the mouths of a critter frog, fish, beaver, monster, etc. They are CUTE and I knew I had to make them with my home school kids. They've been working so hard these past few weeks I wanted to treat them to some clay time!

What a cute doggie!

I showed the children examples of caricatures. We discussed why an artist would use that technique and compared real photos of people to caricature drawings of them. What a great conversation we had!

I don't have a kiln, so we used air dry clay for this project. The children seemed to have a great time making these! And I could see doing a variation of this for medieval gargoyles or for a fun nature project.

Here are some of my notes from this project:

• I started by giving each child enough clay for a pinch pot only and walked them through the technique of making a pinch pot.
• Then I gave each child another ball of clay (about the same size as the first) for their critters' features and limbs. This helped to ensure that the critters did indeed have a large mouth and the students were able to create the pinch pot--an integral part of the project.
• Air dry clay works OK. I used Crayola brand with my students, but one bucket of clay was more moist than the other. I just had the kids knead the dry dough and work in a little water to make it more pliable. I used 2 five pound buckets of Crayola air dry clay for 12 critters.
• I used a bit of the clay in some water to make slip (a slurry of clay and water used to attach clay pieces together). I demonstrated to the children how to "scratch and attach" the clay pieces such as eyeballs and legs to the pinch pot form. I gave each student a cotton swab and a toothpick for this.  Using this technique allows the pieces of air dry clay to fuse together better than just squeezing them together.
• I brought in a hot glue gun the next week to attach any pieces that may have come off during drying. Most were pretty good.
• We used acrylic craft paint to finish our critters. The colors are nice. Next time I might try finishing them with a varnish or clear coat to make them shiny.

We loved this project! Try it yourself (and send me pictures!!)!

Enjoy!

A bunny.

A turtle.

A "blood thirsty" beaver
(I'm not making this up!).

A frog and its dinner (a fly).