My New Pottery Wheel!!!

   I was really excited about our new toy.  Our school's PTO bought the art dept a nice heavy duty pottery wheel and several kids pottery wheels.  I also stocked up and spent a nice chunk of my art budget on clay this year.  We're going to be hitting 3D hard in the next 9 week block.  Pinched pots, coiled pots, tile carvings, human head and animal sculptures to name a few.  My students have been asking all year when we're starting the clay unit.  It's a little difficult lining up the clay projects with the classroom teacher's curriculum.  Whatever the classroom teachers are doing for that week, I have to have an art lesson that previews or reviews that particular subject.  For example, we did a "Parts of a Lightbulb" collage in 4th grade last week.  Now before you make faces and scoff at that art project, they actually turned out pretty good.  I dont have a pic atm though, sorry.  We used torn construction paper to make a collage of a light bulb, then labled its several components.  I was actually proud of how it turned out.  Anyway, back to the subject, our new pottery wheel.

I let the kids take turns trying it out one day.

     Clay projects are definitely my students favorite unit.  I started this clay pot on the wheel and let each student have a turn manipulating it.  By the end of the class, it was pretty much gone, lol.  It's not as easy as it looks.  I was surprised they did as well as they did for their first time at it.  Well, wish us luck.  One other thing the kids found out was that the pottery wheel is very, very messy, lol.