Clay House Assignments

I love that architecture can be an umbrella to teach 3D techniques and 2D techniques, such as drawing. For the clay house assignment, students were focused on learning to rolling slabs and using scoring and slipping techniques, but they had a lot of leeway for their own concept development: craftsmanship and originality.

Each student took their freedom seriously and came up with an idea they could get excited about. 

We talked about the concept of a house: a tree house, a light house, a gingerbread house, a fairy house, etc. Students paid attention to form an color to communicate their idea, while adding doors and windows to something like a mushroom or beehive to make it a house where a human could live. For students who were totally blind, I used painters tape to stop out all of the parts of their sculpture they didn't want to be a specific color, so they could work as independently as possible.

Clay Christmas Crafts

Student made ornaments, some spray painted gold

Our classroom slab roller is more than just a space-filler or a pretend pirate ship wheel as an incentive for kindergartners to do their work. It is the best way to make a blob of clay into a perfectly even blanket of clay, out of which you can build something fabulous. We started simple: see what kind of textures you can roll, stamp and press into the clay, then we cut textured shapes to create ornaments.

Little bird ornaments from textured clay that I made as a demo

whimsical cone trees in bright latex colors

The next day, we thought a little bigger and used the textured slabs of clay to create either vases or cone-like Christmas trees.
Surface treatment didn't end there. Some students made tiny balls or tootsie roll shapes from the clay and then pressed them into tree boughs, using an additive process.

glazed ceramic trees

And of course once the pieces were fired, there were lots of options in terms of color. Students used glaze, spray paint, acrylic, and laytex. Some speckled lights, or painted ornaments onto their tree. One painted snow on the tips of each bough, and another was inspired to trim hers with glittler.