Limitation

This activity is sure to get the creative juices flowing! Students are given a theme and ask to use what is available on the tables to create. This is a good activity for the beginning of the year to assess students' likes and dislikes and skill level but can be done anytime to assess students'

high order thinking.

Mandalas

This week we worked on mandalas. Mandalas are all the craze right now with adult coloring books so I set out to explain the history behind them.  Mandala in Sanskrit means "circle".Mandalas are used in the country of India for spiritual rituals. They can also be used to calm the mind and help with focus.  We also mentioned how this is an example in art and design of radial symmetry.

We substituted the original shapes used for geometric shapes and used grid lines to help keep track of what belonged in each section.

Wire Contour

Contour drawings are essentially outlines of shapes. To learn about contour we used wire instead of a pencil or paintbrush.

Throwing

Throwing on the pottery wheel is exciting as well as a very demanding event for an artist. In my class, I showed the students the steps to throw a basic cylinder on the wheel.

Hand Building Clay

Everyone or at least everyone should be familiar with hand building. Two common techniques often taught are coil pot and pinch pot building. Here are a few examples.

Paper Mache

Paper Mache translates in french to mean "chewed paper". In the past linen and papyrus was used to build layers. Nowadays we use newspaper. The mix I use is regular school white glue and water. We had an assignment to construct a bowl with paper mache. We used balloons as our mold. He are the results.