Now that the families in our classroom have gotten their gifts, I can share....
This year, we wanted to have the students help to make something for their families - pretty standard for elementary school (In fact, Connor brought home some stuff as well, which we'll open on Christmas Eve).
We were thinking about it in October/November, when there were a lot of leaves coming down. I had seen clay leaf bowls in the past, and I thought those should be pretty good to have our kids make. Our kids can do hand-over-hand stuff, like pressing the leaf into the clay.
However, none of the staff in our room has had a lot of experience with clay. We had to pick the brain of the teacher who does that a lot. But all the supplies & the kiln were available to us, so we plowed ahead.
First thing we discovered, it's hard to knead clay for all six students. Usually when a teacher does a clay project, the LAST thing she has to worry about is the clay being kneaded. Kids love that. But our class can't do that, so we had to do it for them.
Then rolling out the clay was the next thing. One lady on our staff put the clay between two trays, and we had one of our students run over the trays in his wheelchair to flatten it :)
The kids did get their finger impressions into the clay, along with pressing leaves into them. We made a few different sizes, because we weren't sure how thick or thin the clay should even be.
Wonder of wonders, all the pieces made it through the first firing without cracking or breaking! We did more hand-over-hand to let the kids paint their leaves. The thing with glaze for ceramics tho, you really don't know what color you're going to get judging by what the glaze looks like before you fire. I mean, the one labeled "blue" is a soft pink color when it's in the jar!
So we weren't sure what we'd get once the pieces were fired. But we were all happy they turned out! There was only one piece that when you put one kind of glaze on another, the top one didn't get shiny - it's all rough. And that combo didn't work. And other glazes more or less went over the "trim" glaze, so it wound up all one color instead of three colors. But even so, it was neat.
Click on the photo to see it in a bigger window. We were happy with how these turned out, and the families were too!
This year, we wanted to have the students help to make something for their families - pretty standard for elementary school (In fact, Connor brought home some stuff as well, which we'll open on Christmas Eve).
We were thinking about it in October/November, when there were a lot of leaves coming down. I had seen clay leaf bowls in the past, and I thought those should be pretty good to have our kids make. Our kids can do hand-over-hand stuff, like pressing the leaf into the clay.
However, none of the staff in our room has had a lot of experience with clay. We had to pick the brain of the teacher who does that a lot. But all the supplies & the kiln were available to us, so we plowed ahead.
First thing we discovered, it's hard to knead clay for all six students. Usually when a teacher does a clay project, the LAST thing she has to worry about is the clay being kneaded. Kids love that. But our class can't do that, so we had to do it for them.Then rolling out the clay was the next thing. One lady on our staff put the clay between two trays, and we had one of our students run over the trays in his wheelchair to flatten it :)
The kids did get their finger impressions into the clay, along with pressing leaves into them. We made a few different sizes, because we weren't sure how thick or thin the clay should even be.
Wonder of wonders, all the pieces made it through the first firing without cracking or breaking! We did more hand-over-hand to let the kids paint their leaves. The thing with glaze for ceramics tho, you really don't know what color you're going to get judging by what the glaze looks like before you fire. I mean, the one labeled "blue" is a soft pink color when it's in the jar!
So we weren't sure what we'd get once the pieces were fired. But we were all happy they turned out! There was only one piece that when you put one kind of glaze on another, the top one didn't get shiny - it's all rough. And that combo didn't work. And other glazes more or less went over the "trim" glaze, so it wound up all one color instead of three colors. But even so, it was neat.Click on the photo to see it in a bigger window. We were happy with how these turned out, and the families were too!
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