Creative Coil Pots

 

4th graders made some incredible clay projects this year.  They have conquered the art of coil pots!

 

 



We began with modeling clay.  This allowed us to gain experience with coil making and using the coils in creative ways.  Practice makes perfect!

Next came the real thing!

 Students created a sturdy, spiraled base of coils.

 Then added more coils on top to make the pot taller.  You have to slip and score the coils together to make sure they don't come apart when they dry.

Once the bottom of the pot was built, students were able to get creative! 

Each pot is unique!

When the pots were completed, they went into the kiln to fire.  We then painted them with black tempera paint and added colorful oil pastel on top.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Finished product.

Actual and Implied Texture

3rd graders discovered the difference between actual texture and implied texture.  Actual texture means that the object has real texture that you can feel with your hand.  Implied texture means that the object looks like it has texture, but really it is only an illusion.  Our projects that we created include both kinds of texture!

Students started with a texture hunt activity.  They had to draw a picture of something with an implied texture (like this soft cape!), then they had to find an object in the classroom with an actual soft texture.

Now for the fun part!  Students made some lines with Elmer's glue on a small piece of card stock.  When the glue dried, we covered the card stock with heavy duty foil, and gently rubbed with our finger to make the texture of the glue appear. 

Students used slightly dull pencils to press different patterns into each area.  These patterns had actual texture.

Finally, we glued the foil to a black construction paper background, and continued the patterns with metallic marker.  These designs had implied texture.

Finished product.

Marigolds Collage

For this collage project, 1st grade learned about warm and cool colors.  We also learned how to weave.  Wow!  We are growing up to be talented artists.

 

After a warm and cool color lesson, students traced circle shapes onto a paper, and painted them with warm colors only.  The warm colors are red, yellow, and orange!

We used all the painting techniques that we learned earlier in the year.  Look at those lovely blended colors!

Hard at work!

We also learned to weave paper strips.  This is a tricky skill, but soon we all knew the over, under, over, under technique.

Our weavings would become our flower baskets!

We cut out our painted circles, and turned them into flowers.

Some students got very creative with the cutting and overlapping of the circle shapes.

We filled our baskets with warm colored marigolds.

They turned out great!

Hot Air Balloons

Kindergarten reviewed line, shape and color for this project.  Our balloons look great in the hallway!

First we traced a balloon shape, and added a variety of interesting lines for decoration.

We painted the spaces between the lines with tempera paint.

This was great fine motor practice!  Brush control can be tricky... but we did a good job!

After the paint dried, we traced over our pencil lines with black paint.

They looked great!  But we're not done yet...

We cut the balloons out and glued them to a blue sky background.  Then we added a basket for our photos to ride in!

They turned out beautiful... and colorful!

We were EXCITED about our artworks.