This is not an "Easy project You Can Do Tomorrow" Art Project Girl special. Although I try to help the community by posting the simplest projects that you can bring to your art room tomorrow, my most favorite moments come with the older grades in these more involved art explorations.
Check out my 5th graders whimsical teapots. If I only could show you how much these students have grown! Some of them couldn't even make a pinch pot in the beginning of the year. Wait, let me rephrase that, some of them couldn't even get to their chair without starting a confrontation in the beginning of the year. I took many leaps of faith with these groups, the first was trusting them with messy materials and huge cleanup. Each day they rose to the challenge (some days with a little less cheerleading then others.) But each day, no matter how I felt, I took out my pom poms or my broomstick (whatever the wanna-be middle schoolers needed) and they did it.
Teapots are my FAVORITE fifth grade culminating project. This is my second attempt doing this lesson and it was way more successful then the first. Taking on a big project like this takes passion for clay, tolerance of mess, and flexibility to not always travel a straight line. It took us four classes to get to this point. If this is your "cup of tea" then I'll give you more instructions about how to actually construct the tea pot in a future post. Make sure to let me know if you want more instructions in the comments below. Otherwise. . . here's some pretty pictures of what's firing in our kiln tonight!
I CANNOT WAIT to see the fifth grade fired teapots in the morning. It will be like Christmas when I open the kiln. . . I hope. We all know, each time we lift the heavy lid of the kiln, we do so with a heavy heart because we have experience with the clay gods being harsh. There is a huge prayer sent up to the clay gods tonight to spare the children's work from their wrath! They worked so hard I cannot wait for them to see their results.
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| A teapot for Mom |
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| Teapot wrapped in grapes |
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| Frog teapot |
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| Elephant Warrior teapot |
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| Side detail of Elephant Warrior teapot |
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| Garden teapot |
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| My Collection of Tag Sale teapots |
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| My Collection of Tag Sale teapots |
2 comments:
Oh wow!I love these, I might steal, err... borrow this idea for my sixth graders next nine weeks!!
I agree with Lauren...these are fabulous! Be sure to share the results after glazing.
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