Ceramic Art Lesson Plan: Slab-Built Plates with Textured and Stenciled Decoration
Making a set of ceramic plates can be fun for the beginner, but is also easily adapted for the more-experienced student. This project presents a direct and fresh slab-forming approach resulting in plates that become great canvases for surface decoration. Materials are simple, inexpensive and readily available.
Ceramic Art Lesson Plan: Words of Peace, Images of Peace
Each year, Hiller Elementary School’s student council (K-5) selects a project to do for the school. Two years ago, under the guidance of second-grade teacher Diana Skiles, they decided to make a “peace pole.” They envisioned a wood pole with the word “peace,” painted or inscribed in various languages on it. This would have special meaning for Hiller because approximately a third of the students come from diverse ethnic background representing more than twenty countries.
Ceramic Art Lesson Plan: Little People
Figurative ceramic sculpture has a rich tradition. From China’s ancient life-size ceramic army to Viola Frey’s contemporary grandmother figures, artists select clay as a means for expressing the human figure. I’ve found elementary-grade children just as enthusiastic about shaping figurative sculptures, although on a smaller scale, as ceramics artists from the past to the present.
Ceramic Art Lesson Plan: Little Monuments
A fourth-grade teacher asked if her students could make small monuments using clay. They were studying the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty and I believed that the Statue of Liberty suggested a wealth of ideas. Almost half the students at Hiller are of diverse ethnic origins and come from more than twenty different countries. While I doubt few, if any, arrived by boat and were greeted by the Statue of Liberty, as were immigrants from past generations, this icon still represents the ideals of freedom and opportunity to the rest of the world.
Ceramic Art Lesson Plan: Ceramic Dinner
Food is a great motivator, even when eating isn’t your prime objective. The very familiar things we eat every day are loaded with visual excitement such as texture, form, line and color. A dinner plate is full of opportunities for using compositional elements like balance, rhythm and variety.
Ceramic Art Lesson Plan: Bitten Patterns
This project helps students utilize alternative methods of designing ceramic tile and learn the history behind the patterns; tiles can be displayed as a class ultimately.
Ceramic Art Lesson Plan: Action Figures
This project will help students assemble and sculpt the figure, using texture and proportion for effect.