clay

In y3, as a follow up to their pop-ups last week, we decided to sculpt some penguins (and seals) out of clay. We modelled the penguins around our thumbs! Dowels and broken lollipop sticks complete the look. We'll let them air-dry before painting.

I love the modelling and detail of these back flippers.

Greeks

 In y3 we've been creating some wax resist pieces. We used oil pastel rather than wax crayon as it was easier to work with. Next week we'll be cutting them up into 'vases'.

In y1 we continued with our growing theme and created pieces that included something extending! The children had great ideas - a car becoming a stretch limo, an elephants trunk growing longer. a giraffe's neck extending, Rapunzel's hair growing etc.

'scraper pottery'

As a change from using clay, this week we made 'Ancient Greek pottery' using black card, orange oil pastels and matchsticks! My first idea was to create handled pots but I quickly realised that this would be very difficult to do with the whole class at the same time - I would've been running round stapling and fixing like a madman!!

So we settled on plates - easier to fabricate, and even easier to display on a wall. We cut black card circles and coloured them using orange pastels (to simulate terracotta).

We then scratched/scraped patterns and designs into the layer of pastel using a matchstick.

These are a couple of the finished plates. This week we've been looking at the myth of Odysseus and the Cyclops - hence the bottom plate.

We painted our 'Greek' pots yesterday. We scratched back to the terracotta clay using a pin for extra detail. They're sitting on our 'market stall' waiting to tempt passers by.

thumb pots

We're doing the Ancient Greeks this term so in art we had a go at making some clay pots. We've started off with thumb pots (or pinch pots if you prefer) and will be going onto coil pots. Unfortunately we haven't got a kiln so are having to use air-drying clay - am sure the pots will still be reasonably serviceable though. We'll varnish them to add a bit of protection 'cos they can sometimes be quite fragile.

The children thoroughly enjoyed getting their hands dirty (literally!). I've reminded them that aprons are a very good idea!