Tricky Knots

Today was day three of my four day summer ceramics class in Door County.  My students and I worked on our mobiles.  We started crafting the mobile pieces on Monday using air-dry clay. This afternoon, I showed my class how to use washes of watercolor to bring out the textures in their clay pieces.  Once they were dry, we used paper towels to add a thin layer of metallic acrylic paint.  The acrylic paint adds a nice sheen and also makes the pieces a bit more waterproof.

Since the Peninsula Art School is situated in a wooded area, we went stick hunting to find bases to hang our clay beads from while the paint was drying.  We used some natural color string to bind the sticks together to create a triangle or square shape.  Then came the trickiest part, and something I had forgotten since I have been teaching older, middle school kids for the last three years; tying knots!  My class is made up of 6-8 year olds, and I had forgotten how tricky it can be for this age group to tie knots.

I showed students several times how to tie a basic knot and gave individual demonstrations too.  At this point in the project, students were directed to tie clay pieces to the bottom portion of a string and then add a pattern of beads by tying knots to keep the beads spaced. I encouraged them to use a pattern of beads that would match the watercolor layers on the beads. I didn't have enough hands to reteach knot tying quickly enough. But some students were starting to figure it out and were even helping their neighbors and using teamwork. Luckily, several of the parents came a little early and were willing to lend a hand in class to help tie knots.  Some of them even stayed later to help finish the mobiles. It was nice to see parents and students engaged in art making together.

Tomorrow will be the last day of our ceramics summer camp.  The time has gone too fast, and unfortunately, with timing, I won't get to see finished projects.  We will be working on adding underglazes to our monster mugs, slump mold bowls, and gnome homes tomorrow.  Then the staff at the Peninsula Art School will be firing the pieces so families can pick them up or ship them if the students won't be in town long enough to retrieve their works of art.  The time has gone entirely too quickly, but the important part is that the students had fun and learned or practiced hand building techniques in clay.