Clay Fish, 1st Grade

I teach on a cart at one of my schools.  This is a simple clay lesson that I did with first graders, and it worked very well on a cart.  I found the idea for this lesson on Cassie Stephen's blog.  I made a few changes to the original lesson though, since I teach from a cart. 

 I brought small pieces of cardboard to the classroom, for students to work on .  This helped keep the clay from sticking to their desks.  Students created the texture by stepping on the clay with their shoes. One hint: make sure the clay is not too wet.  If the clay is really wet, it gets stuck to their shoes.  Details were added and everything was scored and slipped. 

After the clay was dry and fired in the kiln, students added color using oil pastels.  Then we brushed over everything with watered down India Ink.  This created a resist.