Welcome to Lines, Dots, and Doodles. This is the place for students, parents, and teachers to find out what has been going on in my art class. I have included pictures of my student's artwork and basic explanations of the projects. I hope when you leave this blog, you feel inspired to create. Feel free to browse this blog and borrow any of my art lessons.


Thursday, April 7, 2011

Clay Pots, 4th and 5th Grade

I just finished my ceramics lesson with 4th and 5th grade. There are 11 fourth and fifth grade classes, so this was quite an undertaking. Just getting the stuff in and out of the kiln was time consuming. Originally, I was planning to have them glaze these, but I have changed my mind after discovering that firing over 300 pots takes an inordinate amount of time. I also thought about having them paint these with tempera paint, but then the beautiful red clay is not visible. In the end, I decided that I liked the pots just the way they were.For this project, we used the coil pot method. Some students chose to make the coils visible, but others decided to smooth the coils out. After this, my students decorated their pots. It is important to make sure student's score and slip when adding pieces. Otherwise those pieces will fall right off. Some students added faces to their pots, while other just did decorations.
I think these turned out WONDERFUL! I just love the creativity in these pots.

3 comments:

  1. These look great - such personalities! I agree that red clay often looks just fine w/o glaze. You could also use a clear glaze to bring out the color but you'd still have the time & effort of another firing...Great work - thanks for sharing

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  2. These pots do look great just the way they are.

    My school does not have a kiln and so my clay projects always look earthy.

    I do like the facial expressions on these pots.

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  3. i kinda have a question for anyone who wants to answer please.i do art for my two kids and their class i just started doing clay and im kinda lost what is the best way to keep the clay from getting hard and drying out also cracks what do i do?

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