June 29-July 3: Animal World, ages 6-9, half day

Day 1
Animals and habitats- Students learned about habitats, then made their chosen habitat by first rolling out slabs on the slab roller. They learned scratch and attach and pinch building to create their animals and details for their environments. At the end of the day, students were underglazing their habitats.


Day 2
Animal Banks- Students selected an animal, then made pinch pots. They enveloped a newspaper armature with their pinch pots and formed their animals, adding details and a hole for the cork. These were underglazed at the end of the day.


Day 4
Students spent the day glazing work made up to this point.
Animal tiles- Students learned about making relief sculptures on tiles (made from pre-rolled slabs) and created images of an animal using relief sculpture.

Day 5
Students finished glazing any leftover work.
India ink scratch off- Students colored a paper with crayon. Then painted over the entire sheet with a solution of India ink and soap. After sketching and image, they scratched out the image through the India ink.
Puppets- Using paper bags, students made animal puppets with paper, pipe cleaners, yarn, and markers.
Geometric animals- Students created images of animals in habitats using geometric shapes cut from construction paper. They used stencils I cut out earlier in the day to trace and cut their shapes.

June 22-26: Ancient Civilizations, ages 10-12 and 6-9

Day 1

Assyrian tablets- Students made up an encrypted language, like Assyrian story telling tablets. The project began with students rolling out their own slabs, cutting the shape, then writing a secret message in their imagined language. Once the slabs dried, students underglazed their tablets and scratched back into the letters.
African masks- Students began by rolling out their own slabs. Then the learned how to scratch and attach as they added facial features. More decoration was carved in and stamped onto the masks with bisque stamps.

Press bowls- Students created ancient pottery using bisques bowls for molds. They practiced compressing the clay and scratching and attaching.

Day 2

South American hollow animals- Students learned to build on an armature made from newspaper balls using slabs and pinched forms. They made animal sculptures based off of South American animal sculptures and vessels.

Egyptian canopic jars- Using slabs, students created a jar and lid. Then the students created animal heads of their choice, which was scratch and attached to the lid.

Sarcophagus and stories- Students cut slabs using paper patterns and created boxes, or miniature sarcophagi, which they then underglazed or carved designs about themselves onto the sides. Then they wrote a story about some one discovering their sarcophagi in the future.

Day 4

Students worked on underglazing and glazing their work this day. They made a set Egyptian senet pieces from clay, which required them to think about repetition of form, and underglazed them. They also underglazed and glazed Egyptian cat and Chinese dragon sculptures made the previous day.

Combo animals- Students created a hybrid of two animals and learned how to build hollow using newspaper to hold the form.

Greek paper vessels- Using a balloon as an armature, students covered the balloon with paper mache and painted it in bright colors.

Day 5

Japanese Bamboo pens- Using ink and actual bamboo pens, students practiced their mark making skills
Egyptian senet- Students made game boards and wrote down the rules for the game.

Unpaid Intern and so much more...

This past summer I interned at Baltimore Clayworks in Mt. Washington, Baltimore City. This community ceramics studio offers some wonderful programs, from artist residencies, to workshops, to children's camps. I had the absolute pleasure of being an intern with their summer camps. Essentially I was a teacher's assistant, but it turned into a lot more than that: I went from T.A., to clean-up crew, to disciplinarian, to kiln loader, to boo-boo fixer, to project fixer, to project bagger, to big kid.

This blog is just a way to document the projects we did, discuss my experiences, and share a handful of the hundreds of photos I took of the great work the children made.