This has been by far one of my favorite activities that we have done in this class. It definitely has taken a lot of time... but it was worth it. Diane showed us some awesome tips and things that we need to know when working with clay. One thing that fascinated me was throwing it on the ground. The continual motion was somthing that took a bit of getting used to, but with a little help I finally got the hang of it. I thought that it was so cool that you don't have to worry about getting hair and dirt in the clay as you are throwing it because it burns out in the kiln!!
Once you have thrown out the clay on the ground you can roll it out with a rolling pin. To keep it even you can put the rolling pin on top of two pieces of wood.
Diane was showing me how to score the edge of the clay so that you can make a seamless circular shape. She made the edges rough and then using a little bit of water she was able to put the sides together.
The wooden tool is called a wooden rib and is super useful for smoothing out the clay. To make a cup I made a long piece for the side and a circular piece for the bottom. To attach the bottom you do the same scoring method and then use a bit of water. Then you smooth everything out with the wooden rib. There was also a metal rib which I liked even better than the wooden rib.
The final clay product.. Now we just have to let it dry out until it is "bone dry" and not pliable.
We put on 3 layers of the color of glaze that we wanted. Cheri and I decided to do stripes. It was really cool, but some of the colors dried really fast and made it difficult.
Once you have thrown out the clay on the ground you can roll it out with a rolling pin. To keep it even you can put the rolling pin on top of two pieces of wood.
The wooden tool is called a wooden rib and is super useful for smoothing out the clay. To make a cup I made a long piece for the side and a circular piece for the bottom. To attach the bottom you do the same scoring method and then use a bit of water. Then you smooth everything out with the wooden rib. There was also a metal rib which I liked even better than the wooden rib.
A couple of weeks later, once our pieces were bone dry, we began the glazing process.
Cheri Barrett always kept me smiling!
Here are some awesome resources I found that give a lot more information about teaching potter on an elementary level!
I also really liked this website which has tips for teaching elementary ceramics without a kiln.
Here is a cool lesson plan for making clay whistles:
Ceramics can be so instrumental when teaching about social studies! It can be used to study Native Americans, or Egyptians. Or people all over the world. So much of what we know about people who lived many years ago is from pottery shards.
This sight has a lot of awesome lesson plans for incorporating ceramics into social studies.
Look what other students in my class did:
No comments:
Post a Comment