Working with air dry clay allows us to make lots of mistakes and discover how to make the clay to what we hope it will.

With clay shapes we start with rolling a ball, our best sphere is how we start.  From there we create pinch pots learning the technique of gently pressing the clay and turning it until a small hole opens enough to hold something.  

Pinch pots can be used for making pots, turtle backs, and well, the limits are in the imagination.

Other shapes to make with clay include rolling coils and flattening slabs.  Attaching one piece of clay to another and welding it to make the seam disappear is a skill we practiced.  

Students created a turtle and birds and then practiced with other shapes.  

At the end of this class students were asked to draw the things they made and to create a story.  We talked about how artists might have a story in their mind or they might just invent a story as the drawing unfolds.  

We agreed that when someone else looks at our art drawings they might see a different story.  It's okay for someone else to put their own story to our art.

Next week we will paint our clay pieces.

A simple idea filled with
skill-building techniques.

First:  Cutting with Scissors
Helping little hands to manevour

​Smooth and curvy
Skill with scissors may vary for young students.  To practice we cut in half two pieces of paper.  The first paper was cut with a very wavy, curvy line, which meandered in all directions toward the edges of the paper and then turned gentle corners back to center.  We went near the edge of the paper but not off the edge until we reached the opposite edge of the paper.
Sharp Angles
The second paper was cut with angles: straight line cuts that end in a sharp turn in another direction.  

Curvy and angled cuts are used to make crayon rubbings.  The paper should be thick like card stock paper so the edges can be rubbed and seen on the rubbed paper.

Warm colors are the colors of things that make you feel warm: fire, the sun, heat.


Cool colors are things that feel cool to the touch like grass and water.  A low temperature flame is blue and not red.

Press the curvy and angled shapes into a work of art
 With warm or cool colored, peeled crayons on their sides we rubbed on top of a clean piece of paper with the cut shapes underneath. 

We created a wavy-curves texture rubbing and an angle-curved rubbing.  One rubbing was with warm colors and the other with cool colors.  

Rubbing with crayons requires strength and determination to see that all the paper is filled with color.

After all that rubbing with crayons we had a snack!

To put it all together we cut one crayon rubbing in half with a curved or angled line.  Then we glued half the cut out rubbing onto the full sheet of crayon rubbing paper.  We created a cylinder by gluing the short edges together.  

All is needed now is an electric candle or you can use a tea light in a jar and set it carefully and watchfully inside the lava lantern.  These lanterns look beautiful at night. 

These Arty Lava Lamps were left as  open cylinders.   I rolled them into a tube tight enough that they stayed in a curve.  I learned this trick after class.  The open cylinder allows me to lay the art flat for convenient storage when not in use.  .  The open cylinder lights up in a sunny window just as nicely as with a candle inside at night.

​Enjoy!