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!

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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.

6th Grade: Ceramic Greek Columns

Here is this year's Ancient Greek projects for my 6th graders.  I did this project two years ago and it was a huge success.  Unfortunately, this year they aren't turning out as great as the first time I did them...and it's through no fault of the students!  It really stinks only having elementary students once every six days!  There is no possible way to keep clay projects wet enough in that 8 day period in between classes (because the weekends add even more time) to allow students two days to work with wet clay. 

All things considering, they did a great job constructing these in a short amount of time, especially since I gave the demo all in the same class!  I tried to cut down on time for them by having slabs pre-rolled using my slab roller instead of having the students roll their own slabs.  Elementary students tend to take a longer time to roll out their own slabs.  Most students also chose to do Ionic and Doric columns...very few Corinthian. 

When I look at the quality of work I was able to get done in the last three years and then compare it to artwork from this year, it makes me a little sad!  If I had my way, I would be 5th-12th grade art so I could really enjoy those students...those are really my favorite grade levels (well, sometimes minus the 7th graders).  My 6th grade curriculum is BY FAR my favorite curriculum...anything that combines art and history makes me giddy with excitement!

I am currently in the process of firing the columns from this year's 6th graders, but I figured that I would share some of the columns from this project when I did it two years ago.  Students had two days to work in wet clay to score and slip, and then a third day to fine tune and smooth out their project.  We then glazed them with clear glaze, and some opted to add a little bit of a green to give it a mossy look.  I will share this years' projects once they are completed!

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.

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!