Extended Day Summer Program Begins!

This past Monday was the start of our extended day summer program.  Our school was one of four in the area who received a grant from the state to do activities after school.  We are required to give homework time and also to provide fun, interesting and educational activities for the students to do.  The grant also allows us to do four hours each day in the summer for four weeks.  The grant is the reason I've been able to get a lot of the more expensive supplies for my art room, including two electric pottery wheels and the glass kiln.

Here is what we did on days 1 and 2!

On Monday and Tuesday, I decided to do ceramic tiles with the students.  This year is the first time I'm going to do some ceramic projects with the kids during the summer.  Once the kiln is as full as I can get it with projects, I'll fire it and return everything to the kiddos.  I purchased a bunch of bisque projects from Blick that only need to be glazed, and I purchased some new glaze materials that I learned about from the NYSATA conference back in November!

My tile from the Mayco booth at the NYSATA conference!

These Mayco Stroke & Coat Accents were what I used at the NSYATA conference.  They create a raised area of glaze on the tile.

I purchased the Mayco Bowls for a Cause Classroom Kit, which came with these small bottles of Mayco Stroke & Coat glazes.  I plan to use these for a majority of the summer program glazing projects, as well as some of my already opened glazes for use in class.

These are Spectrum glaze writers   The bottles with the red labels are supposed to create a raised area of glaze when fired, and the rainbow labels are basically just glaze in a bottle with a thin applicator tip.

These are some of the finished tiles!  I can't wait to fire them to see how they turn out!

Here are the steps we took for the tiles:

1.  Paint a base coat of a crystalex glaze on the entire tile to give the speckled-effect.

2. While the base coat dried, students drew out a design and drew it lightly on the dried tile.

3.  Using a foam roller and one color of Stroke and Coat glaze, students rolled some glaze around the edges of their tile and design.

4.  Next, we used the Mayco Accent glazes to outline and create raised areas where we wanted them.

5.  Using paint brushes and the colored glaze writers, we added the colored details!

6.  For the last step, students went in with the Spectrum raised effects writers to outline details if they needed it.

I also purchased some tile setters for firing the tiles in the kiln.  We shall see how they work!

***I am not a promoter for Mayco or Spectrum.  These are simply new products I have decided to try!  I do not receive any monies for promoting or talking about these products on my blog.