3rd Grade Mondrian Unit (Part 4): Our Finished, Glazed Cubes!

Sorry about the wait in sharing these!  Here are those glazed Mondrian Cubes my 3rd graders created at the end of the school year.  They look awesome!  This is definitely a project that I will be doing again.  It's an awesome way to incorporate Common Core Math (using a ruler, 3-D objects, horizontal and vertical lines, geometric shapes, etc.!).  Again, students could choose to glaze their cubes with primary colors like Mondrian, or secondary, warm, or cool.  Love these!

If you missed my past posts on this project, check them out below!  Part 1 is the introductory lesson, part 2 is how we built them, and part 3 is glazing!

Mondrian Cubes Part 1

Mondrian Cubes Part 2

Mondrian Cubes Part 3

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 3): Glazing Our Cubes

On Friday, my last class of 3rd graders glazed their cubes.  This process took a total of two class periods to complete.  I pulled out my tubes of Spectrum Raised Accent colors in black (of which I received when I ordered the Nasco Spectrum Tile kit last year).  I instructed students to paint over their carved lines with the black glaze, and then to paint in their squares.  When one side was finished, they rotated the cube and did the next side.  

If you remember from my first post in this series, students were able to choose from four different color families to design their cube...they didn't have to do just primary colors.  I set up four stations at my tables...one for each color family (primary, secondary, warm and cool), with two different glazes for each color.

One class's glazed cubes!  These were all loaded into the kiln and fired on Friday, just in the nick of time for art show set-up on Monday of next week!!!  I can't wait to get to school Monday morning to see them!  

And of course in my haste to get them loaded in the kiln 2nd period, I forgot to load my cube!!!

Part 1: Introduction to Mondrian & Color Theory Review

Part 2: Clay Cube Tutorial

Part 4:  Finished Cubes Coming soon!

Studio Art: Coil Pots

This coil pot project was the last project in my Studio Art ceramics unit.  These have finally all been finished up and glazed fired.  For this project, students were required to make a simple vessel.  It did not have to hold liquid.  What they did have to show was movement through the vessel through the use of their coils.  Some did a really awesome job showing movement, while others didn't seem to understand.  Next year, if I repeat this project, I feel I will have to do a better job explaining movement.

Students used plain coils, spiraled coils, braids, and many other coil techniques to create these.

Love this one!  One of the best ones1

The one on the left has an awesome variety of coils!  No so much movement, but definitely creativity in the types of coils that were used.

The brown glaze with the blue specks is amazing on this piece!  I only wish this person would have coordinated the rest of their glaze choices to match that glaze a little better...

After I sit back and review these pieces, I see a need for me to better teach color choice.  As far as I can tell, these students haven't really had much training on color theory.  My current elementary curriculum teaches basic color theory in kindergarten (primary and secondary colors), reviews it in places as they move up, and touches very heavily on it in 5th grade, so hopefully my current students will have a better ability to choose colors as they move up.  As I look forward into next year, I think that I will incorporate a color theory unit early on in the school year, perhaps during my first unit of "What is Art?".

Finished Slump/Hump Mold Projects

Would you believe that we only have two more weeks in our third quarter in my district?!  Where the heck has time gone this year...with everything that has been going on in my life this year, I feel like things have been and are passing in a blur!  Either way, I finally have gotten just about all of our ceramic projects fired in from my ceramics unit in Studio Art.  I have one more firing to go, which I will do tomorrow.  Here are some of our finished slump/hump mold projects we did in Studio Art.  Students were able to choose between glazing, painting with acrylic, or using both to finish their ceramics projects.

I think this mask is my favorite!  The glaze choices were awesome and all around was an all-around excellent job!

This one came in close second...Again, the glaze job on the cards was great and it was an interesting theme choice.  The student glazed everything but the poker chips at the bottom and the money on top.  The rest was painted with acrylic.

Two masks with excellent paint jobs.  These students opted for acrylic paint instead of glaze.

An interesting take on a bowl...loved this one!

This was a very detailed bowl by a student who is very into sports...ah, one place where sports and art got along!

A bit of a creepy mask in my opinion...but interesting none the less, especially that the nose survived!

The following is the rubric I created to grade any finished ceramic project.  I did one grade for the constructed mask itself before it went into the kiln (just in case we had an unexpected explosions) and then I did a grade for the finished product, whether it was glazed, painted or both.

Finished Non-Objective Pinch Pot Spheres

I'm so sorry that I haven't been posting lately!  This year just doesn't seem to be my family's year...Over the last month, my husband and I have been dealing with a diagnosis of testicular cancer.  Currently, he will be starting a 9 week chemo regimen to get rid of this horrible disease.  I have already lost sick time from my maternity leave but still need to be there to take care of him, so unfortunately, my posts will once again become far and few, if not stop, for the next couple of months.  

In the mean time, here are some of the finished pinch pot spheres from my Studio class.  This was actually the 2nd project in their ceramic unit, however next year, I would probably do this one first, the coil project second, and the slab project last.  Currently, students are glazing their coil pots and I just need to finish photographing their glazed slump/hump projects to share.

These spheres were glazed using Amaco's Opalescent glazes.  These glazes aren't necessarily meant for red glazes only, but they tend to have a cool effect if applied correctly to red bisqueware.  I couldn't find my Artist's Choice glazes (which are meant for red clay) to use so I went with these alternative glazes, which turned out pretty cool anyways.

In the future, I feel as if this project would definitely be better served as the first project in the ceramics unit not only because it's the easier hand-building skill, but because it would also be a good way to show students how glaze application affects the final outcome of the piece.  Next time, I would probably have students section off their design somehow and glaze each section differently: one layer, two layers, three layers, and a very sparse, splotchy layer.