School Auction Project: Kid's Work Progress

Phew. I began the project with the elementary kids at Tara Redwood School this week. This was no small feat. Max and I were not feeling well for about 8 days and things came undone. That means the undone became even more undone, picture Pigpen meets Harry the Dirty Dog and toss in a hurricane for good measure. Balls got dropped. Dogs didn't get walked. I didn't get my own jewelry project done (damn). But, as I promised the kids, I was there at Tara with slabs of clay and lots of little clay tools and hopes that they would have fun and also do a little elementary kid magic with this project. I was not disappointed.

I've made changes in my approach since I last wrote about this project. Originally I thought I would have the kids work on round pieces, I nixed that and went to tubular pieces. However when I experimented with my two boys at home it was immediately clear to me that flat was the way to go. It's less frustrating and the final structure will be more sound (I hope). The children each chose a quality which was attached to an animal totem, they found out what the animal was after they chose their quality ie: wisdom = owl, learned humility and teaching = bear, beauty and spirit messenger = hummingbird, spring and new life = frog (that's what Max chose)...This is a fun project. I worked with the kids in groups of three which is plenty for this project.

Here's how I prepared:
I rolled out slabs of terracotta clay, I think I did 3/8". It's got to be sturdy. I cut them to 14.5"x6.5" which fit my heavy cardboard tube perfectly (I got the tube from the carpet place down the street for free). I placed all the cut slabs onto newspaper and then onto wallboard which has the edges taped with duct tape (any tiny bit of plaster that gets into the clay can make it explode, so don't skip the taping part!). I will put the slabs on plastic first next time, as this really took too much moisture out of the clay and made me rush through a little of it and became frustrating for the kids who came last today. I brought extra slabs with me for cutting shapes and attaching them, and we made snakes and rolled balls of clay for details. We used a lot of little stamps I've made over the years with fimo - but you could use anything, Lego pieces, pen butts, drill bits, little toys. Anything that makes a neat impression.

Check out the progress we made:

This is an otter in progress. Everyone started with a flat slab like this and built their piece from there.

A bear, hummingbird, sun, frog and wolf so far...

Almost a Totem Pole already!