Clay Beads

I love using clay for art projects for little kids and multiple complex needs students. It's good to give them sensory experiences that help improve fine motor skills. For the clay bead project, I had my students pinch of tiny pieces of clay to roll into balls. Some started with a coil and cut off uniformly sized chunks as well. Something the size of a Tootsie roll or smaller is a good place to start.  I taught them that to make a ball they could put their hand on top of the clay and roll it in a circular motion, but to make a cylinder, they would roll forward and back with the same piece of clay. We poked a hole large enough to allow for shrinkage, and even went back with tooth picks when the beads were leather hard to make sure the holes hadn't closed up. 

Kids pushed cards, metal embossing tools, or skinny paint brush handles into the sides of the beads to make interesting textures and patterns. One day we worked with porcelain and another we worked with terracotta. The colors were so beautiful that we decided not to paint or glaze them. We used Twisteezwire to string them, and it was the perfect size to fit over an adult head )with some overlapping twisted part int he back) for a necklace. The moment that a child realizes that they just made a piece of jewelry out of basically mud.