All K-3 students at Fales and Hastings get to participate in ceramics. Each class has a sticker chart in the form of an artist's palette. We earn a sticker towards a Clay Day for every sucessfull class we have. Sometimes classes earn up to 3 or 4 clay days in a school year.
Every 10 stickers we earn as a class, we earn Clay Day!
On Clay Day, students create a sculpture from a lump of clay. Sometimes its a specific project, or sometimes just a specific theme. After the students make their art, the clay sits and waits to be fired in a huge hot oven called a kiln. The kiln heats up more than a thousand degrees! Then students paint the fired clay, now called "bisque" with a special paint called "glaze." After students glaze their bisque, its ready to be fired a second time. If all goes well, and it doesn't get broken or stuck to the bottom of the kiln, students get to take their finished ceramics home!
It takes a few weeks because there are quite a few steps.