LAMA Concert! Lancaster Academy of Music and Art

 

Russian Mystery Day

Our Mystery February Fun Day got delayed because of snow two weeks ago, so we decided to have it this week instead.  The teachers donned scarves, aprons, and shawls.  We played Russian music and enjoyed a delicious lunch of borscht soup, beef stroganoff, wheat rolls, layered wafer cakes, and Russian candies.  Then we played vishibali, a Russian form of dodgeball.  This was a great immersion into the culture for the middle grades which have been studying Eastern Europe, and a lot of fun for the rest of us.  

 

Give a Mouse a Cookie; Give a Student a Lamp

                                                   

      After collecting several lamp bases and shades (purchased for $1-$2 half price at thrift stores for a few months), I made a slide show of several different creative lamp ideas and showed it to my students.  They were required to write down a few ideas that they liked, and then sketch the one they chose to do on paper.  Once that was approved, they got to choose a lamp and a shade and begin working on their design.  I found anything they asked for, and some of them found their own stuff.  The results ranged from airplanes to semi truck horns (yes, that's a real one!) for the guys, and books, lace, trim, and kitchen gadgets for the ladies.  We displayed these at our Christmas program open house, and I overheard one of the adults ask, "Did the students make these?"  Yes, ma'am, they sure did.  

Helping Happy Homeschoolers Prepare Appealing Pottery

 

I enthusiastically planned to make pottery for two of my homeschool art classes, figuring that if it was a big flop, at least we had tried and hopefully had had fun smushing the clay with our hands.  

It was not a flop, instead it was a wonderful experience that we all enjoyed.  

The first class period,  they were given a slab of air dry clay.  I ordered this on Amazon.  (The younger ones got Crayola Model Magic which is much easier to work with.  I got that at Dollar General.   They come in little packages just the right size for each student.)   I got all white clay so that we could paint it later.

      

During the first class we learned to wedge, roll, shape, make a pinch pot, and make coil pottery.  The younger ones made pinch pots; the older ones made coil pottery.   I gave them several ideas: pencil holders, cups with handles, adding coils to the top or sides, etching designs on the sides, etc.  Then I set them loose.    

When they were finished we let them dry on paper plates with their names written on them.  The teachers retrieved these two days later and wrote the students' names on the bottom of their creations after they were fully dried.  

The second class we painted them.  We let the paint dry while we had a P.E. class (hair dryers sped up the process).  The moms helped with that while I ran relay races with the students and jumped through a hula hoop with a funny hat on my head.  

Next, we glazed them with water-based Minwax varnish.   I stressed to the students (and had them repeat me several times) that they are not safe to drink or eat out of.  But, I have a dream of having a real kiln and making stuff that we could really eat out of some day . . . 

Related Posts:  

Fire Up the Kiln! -- Oops!  Explosion

Fruit Loops in Our New Pottery 

Students Make Magnificent Ming Pottery 

Korean Clay Pottery

Shell Sculptures

     Before our most recent field trip to the Delaware beach, I told my students that they needed to collect shells and rocks for a sculpture we would be making in art.  I asked them to find a large rock for the base, and whatever else they wanted to put on top of it.  They always think of ideas I never would have, such as the one below.  I love the creativity.  The instructions on how to make these are included below. 

crab holding sea glass

1.  Take students on a field trip to the beach.  (Always remember to abide by all safety rules and have good parameters.)

2.  Have students take a bag to collect stuff.  (Warning: dead crabs stink.)

3.  Wash everything.  We did this in large bowls of water outside.  Each student got a paper plate with their name written on it in Sharpie to place the washed shells and rocks on.  They dried while we played outside.  

4.  Give each student a large piece of wax paper and use water-based varnish to coat everything (rock base and shells) at least twice.  

5.  Using a large stone (found at the beach) as the base, have students first arrange the driftwood, shells, crabs, in different arrangements until they have an idea they like.

6.  Let the older students glue their own, sharing tubes of glue (we used E-6000 and Goop).  For the younger students, the teachers applied the glue and let the students arrange their sculptures while the glue was still wet.  

One More Idea

Last year, we glued our finds to flat pieces of foam board.  This year, we wanted to do something a little different.