Clay, Rainbows, and Robots

A Look at the Process of Glazing Claywork:

1. Students glaze their coil pots with 3 coats of glaze

2.  Loading them in the kiln; I let the 5th grade students load their own pieces today.  This was a wonderful opportunity for them to learn how to the kiln works.  They had to be sure to put prong stilts under their pieces so that they don't stick to the shelf and make sure the clay pieces weren't touching.  Tonight I will turn on the kiln, and then after reaching around 1700 degrees and cooling down, I can open the kiln back up.

3. The finished clay pieces will be shiny and change colors like these.
Great job to the fifth graders who worked hard to make them.

Here are the second graders finished clay boats:

                                           These are the 4th graders finished clay dragons:

 The kindergarteners are creating artwork related to weather.  We've been making rainbow collages.  Originally I had just planned to make the rainbows, but then I found lots and lots of extra mats taking up closet space.  So we glued the rainbows down to fresh paper, matted the artwork, and then added a background.  I love how differently they all turned out.  The bright colors are so beautiful that they have brought much cheer to my day.

The first graders have been doing a unit on imaginary creatures.  They've been creating robots out of all sorts of interesting junk that has been lying around the art room.  I even found some cassette tapes for them to use and had to explain to them what a cassette tape was!  We've also been putting all those old floppy disks to use: