Quick! I need a 4th Grade filler lesson!

More than half of my 4th grade students had finished their coil pots, but there were still at least 5 in every class who had not.  Anybody who has ever taught clay and had to keep 100s of projects straight knows the difficulty in keeping classes together and still have a good result.  How was I going to keep everyone busy and learning while others finished their pots?  I had recently seen this video  where William Wegman's weimaraner dogs bake bread.  The kids love it!

So I searched for Wegman art lessons and found a very good one at Art Projects for Kids.  What a great idea!  The only problem was that on order to print out the .pdf of the dog pix, you need a Scribd account, for which there is a fee.  Why pay for something when you can get it for free?

So, with 8 minutes before the kids walked through my door, I put together a word doc from these pictures found on Google Images:

(If I could figure out how to upload the doc for you, I would)!

So, everyone kept busy, finished their projects, and are all back at the same place before we start our Claes Oldenburg project next Friday!  Whew!

The LONGEST Coil!

My first graders had an experiential modeling clay lesson in anticipation of making dog scultpures next week.  Specifically, I wanted them to understand how to make spheres, cubes, cylinders, pyramids and other such geometric shapes.  We also counted the number of sides of each shape (Gotta slide those Math standards in whenever you can!)

As a wrap-up, I challenged students to make the longest coil from their piece of clay that they could.  I humbly suggested that they try to make their coil longer than they are tall...

Well, it seems that the collaborative spirit is alive and well in 1st Grade, because here's what they came up with:

 

Yup - that's a modeling clay coil that stretches the ENTIRE length of the art room!  Top that!