Clay Tiles Made with Slab Roller Post 2

This is part 2 of the last post on our blog. The links are here:

Clay Plaques & Amaco Art Lesson Plans 

Clay Tiles Made With Slab Roller  

My 3D Art classes in middle school knocked some of these out of the ball park. This class is rather popular, so this quarter I had 2 of them. I had to stay very organized to pull this off...anyone else feel me on that situation? We use low fire clay and a table top slob roller. I introduced kids to Bas Relief. We reviewed terms that related to this clay lesson. 

 

Vocabulary:

Slip and Score

Greenware and Bisque

Overglaze

Bas Relief

Kiln

Slab Roller

Wedge

 

 Here are 6 essential stages of clay: We discussed them in detail. This was pretty much a review for my past students but for anyone new to our school this was a good catch me up!

1. ) Slip. Slip is clay with added water to make it into a paste or liquid. ...
2.) Wet clay. Wet clay is used by many potters to produce their work. ...
3.) Leather-hard clay. ...
4.) Dry clay. ...
5.) Bisque. ...
6.) Glaze ware.
Scroll down to see how they turned out. We had a few with "issues" that blew up. Helpful Hint: For when this happens, I always have basic white tiles for students to design and glaze. This is great to know when you have a kiln party foul during a firing. Ha!

 

Also, do you have hair dryers in your room? If not, I would ask for donations of them as they come in handy during ceramic art lessons. For real, I tell the kids to make sure they use 2 coats of glaze. This speeds up our process. Yes, I have a block schedule, but every little bit of time helps in the process and speed of my lessons. We get to cover more ground and other fun projects if we aren't sitting around watching paint dry.

 

Good to see you, 1969