Ceramics: Tea Sets and Masks

It's taken us a while, but our first three projects in my ceramics electives have finally been finished up.  We started off the year with pinch pot tea cups, moved to coil tea pots (to make a set), and then we did slab masks.  This covered the three basic hand-building skills and of course, wedging and scoring and slipping.

I am doing my best to make my assignments as open ended as possible.  I mentioned in my previous post that I am moving towards TAB in my elementary room, and I'm also experimenting with it a bit in the high school room.  Now, the electives are a bit harder to leave open ended in terms of choice of material, so I am doing my best to make the assignments as open ended as possible.  In the beginning, it was sort of hard to think up assignments that are open-ended, but it's getting easier and easier as we go.

To make our slab masks, I gave students a variety of mask forms to choose from to slump their slabs over.  They were required to give their mask a theme, and to think about texture.  The lion mask above?  That right there is the first 100 I've ever given on an assignment!  The pictures literally give it no justice.  I'm loving that my students are thinking outside the box, too, with their surface decoration.  Our district's mascot is a cougar, so one of my volleyball players made a cougar mask and meticulously glued in fishing twine to the whisker holes she made.  It literally took her 2 1/2 class periods to hot glue those babies into the holes.  So awesome!

\

The tea cups and tea pots were two separate assignments but they had to go together.  Students were required to make four identical shaped tea cups (though surface decoration could vary a bit based on the theme).

I've got more to come after this!  Our current two projects that are being finished up are ceramic shoes (life size!) and chia pets. :)

6th Grade: Finished Greek Columns

As if you didn't have enough Greek art jammed down your throat...here's a little more!  These are the Greek columns my 6th graders completed this year.  We did these at the same time that they learned about the Greeks in Social Studies (which was shortly after they finished reading Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief in ELA as per a Common Core unit).

Previously, I wrote about how I was a little worried about the quality of these compared to the ones I did two years ago when I saw the students twice in a cycle.  For this project, I did the demonstration of how to build the columns at the end of the first class.  The second class they built them, and then the third class they smoothed them out and carved into them.  When they were fired, students took a fourth class to glaze them.

Previously, I allowed two days for construction, a day for refinement, and two days for glazing, which unfortunately would have taken FOREVER with the schedule I had this year.  Despite the time setback, I was pretty impressed with the columns they built!  Most students went for the Ionic column, but there were a few Corinthian types in there too!

3rd Grade: Mondrian Unit (Part 2): Clay Cube Tutorial

So here is the clay cube tutorial.  Once again, I have resorted to using my slab roller to pre-roll the clay out for students.  In this case, we had to assemble our cubes in one class period because I wasn't sure that I would be able to keep the clay wet enough over a 8 day time-span in between classes.  In reality, I was able to keep the clay moist enough that we could have done this in two days, but I didn't want the students to drag it out either.

1. First, students had to cut out 6 squares from their clay slab.

2. Next, I had students bevel their edges.  That is, cut the edges (all 4) of each square at a 45 degree angle.  (This makes it easier to connect all of the pieces together.)

3. After the edges were beveled, students then had to score all four edges of each square.

4.  Next, students rubbed some slip onto the edges that they were connecting and pressed them together.  During this process, I went around and showed students how to use their fingers to simply press the clay together to get rid of the cracks from where they were connected.

5.  Lastly, the final piece was laid into place.  Students used whatever time they had left to start smoothing out their cube.

6.  Don't forget to add your initials AND poke a hole through at least one wall of clay to create an escape hatch for the air trapped inside during firing!

7.  This final step came during the second class period.  First, students smoothed out their surface and made sure their cube was shaped into as much of a cube as possible.  I showed the students how to gently drop their cube onto the table on each flat edge to help shape it back into a cube.

8.  Next, students simply laid their ruler parallel to the edges of their cube and drew in vertical and horizontal lines.  

9.  Students then made sure everything was still smooth, they picked off the "clay boogers" they made from carving their lines into their cubes, re-carved their initials and re-poked their hole on their cube for safe measures.

Part 1: Introduction to Mondrian & Color Theory Review

Part 3:  Glazing the Mondrian Cubes Coming soon!

Part 4:  Finished Cubes Coming soon!

Phoenecian Tablets

Students in my 3rd-6th grade 12:1:1 class learned about the Phoenicians a while back.  When they were in Social Studies, one of the students had no clue what a clay tablet was, so their teachers asked if I could do something with them about clay tablets.

This project was simple and took two days to complete.  On the first day, I taught students how to roll out clay on the slab roller. Each student got to roll out their own slab.  They took it back to their tables and then rolled the edges to give their clay tablets an old scroll look.  I know that's not how real clay tablets were, but I wanted to make them a little more interesting to look at. 

I know, I know, using the slab roller is kind of cheating, but since I only see the kids once every six days, the slab roller has become very beneficial to time management.  I at least taught them how to use it!

 

After everyone had their slabs rolled out, I gave students an enlarged copy of the Phoenician alphabet from their Social Studies textbook.  Students had to write their name using this alphabet on their clay tablet.

On the second day of the project, after they were fired, I had students paint the clay tablets with tempera paint.  I used powdered black tempera mixed with water, just like the clay fossils I did last year with my 1st graders.  Students dabbed up any extra watery paint using a tissue, which also gave it an old, weathered look.

Studio Art: Ceramic Unit Part 2: Pinch

In hindsight, I supposed I probably should have done this project before the slab project...next year.  For this project, I was first looking for perfection.  I know, I know...perfection in art class?  For this, it was doable and every single student succeeded in my opinion!  For this two-part sphere challenge, students were asked to create the most perfect sphere out of two pinch pots.

The first step was to make two pinch pots of about the same size and score and slip them together.

Next, students used a ruler to slap and shape their hollow ball of clay.

Some rolled their spheres on the table to help smooth the surface, others used a wooden rib tool to scrape and smooth the edge.  I did not encourage the use of an elephant ear sponge and water to smooth the spheres.  The only students who used that as an option were students whose clay started to crack towards the end.

 Once everyone completed their spheres...we invited the administrators into the classroom to judge them.  This is the challenge part.  I offered, to the winner, the choice of being able to opt out of a quiz, a homework assignment or for me to buy them a king size candy bar.  Amazingly, I think both winners opted for the candy bar!  Since all of the students did such an awesome job, I did buy some bags of candy and planned on giving them a free day before February break (of which we ended up having a snow day...go figure!).

Students lined up their spheres on a number so the administrators could pick the winner from each class.

The "part-two" of this project is this: students had to carve a non-objective line design into the surface of their sphere.  We will glaze these using the glazes I have specifically for red clay. ***It's also really important to note that before these were set out to dry, students had to poke at least one hole with a needle tool through the surface of the sphere.  This way, the air inside as a route to escape so the spheres don't all blow up in the kiln!***

Part three of the ceramic unit has not been started yet...upon return from February break, students will glaze these projects for firing and then we will work on the last project of the ceramics unit, coils!

Studio Art: Ceramics Unit Part 1: Slab

The current unit my Studio Art students are working on is a ceramics unit.  Ceramics is my ALL TIME FAVORITE!  It's actually what my concentration was in in college, so I always love to do clay units.  Here is the basic break down of this unit in three parts.  Students are creating a project using each of the three hand-building skills.

The first project they completed was a slab, slump or hump mold project.  Quite a few students wanted to do masks, something they did in 7th grade with the previous art teacher.  I didn't want to hinder that since they were SO into it, but other students didn't want to make masks again, so I decided to call it a slump/hump mold project.  I brought down my slump/hump molds from the elementary room and got out the mask forms. First, I showed students how to wedge and stretch the clay, roll it out, and drape it in or on their mold. Then they received the project guidelines.  The project had to (1)have a theme, (2)have multiple types of texture, and (3)have at least 10 scored and slipped pieces attached to the project.

I supplied students with texture rollers, texture stamps, and all of the other clay tools they might need to add interesting texture to their project.

Here are their projects during the last few days of construction.  Currently, they have all made it through the bisque firing and are in the process of being painted and/or glazed.

This one is meant to be Skittles and M&Ms...

Of course, this one is mine!

1st Grade Day of the Dead Skeletons

Have I mentioned that my 1st graders are a VERY difficult group this year?  That being said, I had meant for this project to be completed last week so they could be hanging before November 1st and 2nd, however that didn't happen.  We spent the majority of two class periods before this with our heads down, practicing being quiet.  I have 24 seats in my classroom and one first grade class with 24, and one with 25 students!  

Either way, the first class has finished the project and the second will finish theirs on Monday this up-coming week.  This project came directly from Pinterest.  What is great is that the timing of Dia de los Muertos lined up perfectly with the 1st grade NYS Common Core Listening and Learning Strand about the human body.  In that strand, the students learn about the muscular system, the nervous system, and the skeletal system.

I brought down this model skeleton from the health room, which the students loved!  He was, however, covered up with a sheet most of the time (which sort of made him more creepy...but otherwise he was too much of a distraction to all of the other classes!).  

I had intended that this project would only take us 1 1/2 days to complete...but it actually ended up taking 2 1/2 days due to student behavior.  After we finished up our pumpkin patch drawings, we took 10 minutes at the end of class to view a power point about the Day of the Dead (that was the half day).  On the second day, I had intended that the students would quickly review the primary and secondary colors (since I had covered them so extensively in kindergarten), and take 10 minutes to paint their cardboard.  I was planning on going over the skeletal system with them and then building the skeletons on the cardboard that day.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen.  It took us an ENTIRE period to paint a little 5"x7" piece of cardboard and to clean up.  

So, I ended up having to take one day to paint the background and one day to make the skeletons.  Since I'm getting so close to my maternity leave, I wanted to make sure these got done so they could be graded by our 10 week marking period next week.  I had intended to take one more day to make the flowers but either way, we were able to make the skeletons and flowers in one class period.

We also didn't get a chance to mod podge these like in the original post from Pinterest, so I'll probably just spray them with some glossy fixative spray before I hang them. 

These are the seven elements on my rubric for this project:

1.       Skeleton Bones (shows all major bones: skull, spine, ribs, pelvis, collar bone, arms, legs & joints)

2.       Background (painted background one secondary color using two primaries)

3.       Marigolds (built marigolds to fill in the negative space around skeleton)

4.       Used Creativity (positioned skeleton in an interesting way)

5.       Used Good Craftsmanship (Neatly glued all pieces to cardboard.)

6.       Has a Good Composition (Used entire piece of cardboard.)

7.       Used Time Wisely (Didn’t rush artwork; didn’t waste time)