More art!

This week in my Art Education lab, we started another project that I am very interested in. Today we were told we were going to start clay pots. I have never worked with clay before and have always wanted to. I always thought it was interesting how people would use spinners to make clay pots, but we only used our hands today. We were given clay, smoothing tools/shaping tools, water. The teacher showed us a few simple steps on how to make the pot. We started off by making a coin shape about a 1/4 of an inch thick so the bottom of the pot wouldn't fall out. We then made several long snake shapes to go around the bottom to make it taller and wider. As we made our pots, we got to make them however thick and tall we wanted. After we shaped out pots, we also got to decorate them. The teacher brought screws and other very different types of tools for us to draw patterns, make indentions, and write whatever we wanted to on our pots to make them our own.

I believe clay is a great tool for kids because they can be very creative and make anything they want to. It can also be used to give kids a visual element to whatever lesson you, as an elementary school teacher, choose to do.